2026-05-23

模倣子 Benevolent Aristocracy

 Memetic Index 







2026-05-21

漫画 Happy Hour June Speaker Meeting

Manga Index


 

Deweaponization Slush Fund

 Trump has downshifted from trying to steal $10,000,000,000 from the treasury to actually stealing $1,800,000,000


Fun Fact: the actual amount is $1,776,000,000–touted as “the anticipated sum needed to address these issues” or an allusion to the 250th of the USA 🇺🇸 and “patriotism”?



The $1,776 billion matches the 1,600 people who attacked the Capitol during the January 6th insurrection and were pardoned and who will now be paid a million dollars each, and that's apparently what people are talking about, saying they will receive.


Deweaponization Fund main point may be “forever get-out-of-jail-free card” clause for President Trump and family






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Metropolitan Police Department officer Daniel Hodges and former U.S. Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn sued President Donald J. Trump, acting attorney general Todd Blanche, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent today to block the creation of the fund to pay off those convicted of crimes related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The lawsuit begins: “In the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century, President Donald J. Trump has created a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund to finance the insurrectionists and paramilitary groups that commit violence in his name.”

The suit continues: “The fund…is illegal. No statute authorizes its creation, the settlement on which it is premised is a corrupt sham, and its design violates the Constitution and federal law.”

Both Hodges and Dunn defended the Capitol and the lawmakers in it on January 6. Hodges was the man in the infamous photograph of the rioters crushing a police officer between metal doors. The officers claim the standing to sue because they have had to live with death threats and harassment since January 6 from MAGA Republicans and the plan to pay off rioters “will both compensate and empower the very people making those threats. Militias like the Proud Boys will use money from the Fund to arm and equip themselves. The Fund will grant their past acts of violence legal imprimatur. And, most chillingly, the Fund will signal to past and potential future perpetrators of violence against Dunn and Hodges that they need not fear prosecution; to the contrary, they should expect to be rewarded.”

The lawsuit covers what actually happened at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, beginning shortly after noon, when rioters tried to break into the building to stop the counting of the electoral votes that would make Democrat Joe Biden president. “Hours of hand-to-hand combat ensued,” the lawsuit recounts, “as police officers tried to prevent the rioters from entering the building and killing elected officials and their staff.”

On the west front of the Capitol, rioters broke down barriers made of bike racks, signs, and snow fencing and pushed forward to a line of police officers. “Rioters assaulted officers, sprayed them with chemicals, and hit them with pipes, tools, and the bike racks and stolen police equipment that were now strewn about.” After 2:00 the rioters broke through the line of officers, smashed windows, and forced their way into the building, opening the doors for their comrades.

“As rioters stalked the halls, staffers, journalists, and members of Congress hid in offices, hoping not to be found by people screaming ‘hang Mike Pence!’ and ‘Where’s Nancy [Pelosi]?’” They forced their way into the Senate chamber just minutes after Vice President Mike Pence left it.

Meanwhile, officers continued to fight against the advancing mob. “Rioters punched police, speared them with flagpoles, attacked them with tasers and stolen riot shields, and tried to drag them into the crowd. For three hours in the enclosed tunnel connecting the Capitol to the inaugural stage, rioters engaged in an almost medieval style of combat, pushing exhausted and outnumbered police to get into the building in a “heave-ho” rhythm, nearly crushing officers as they did. Through all of this, amid the fighting and screaming, flash bangs exploded, fire retardant shot into the air, and chemical spray filled the tunnel. Many officers were injured in this fight to defend this entrance, some gravely.”

Hodges was “hit from above with a heavy object, kicked in the chest, and driven to the ground. Shortly thereafter a rioter grabbed Hodges by the face and tried to gouge out his eyes. Hodges shook him off, and eventually made his way to the tunnel connecting the Capitol building to the inaugural stage. There, he joined in some of the most furious fighting that day, as police tried to stop the mass of rioters from flooding into the building. In the rushing crowd of the mob, Hodges was nearly crushed between metal doors by the enraged attackers. He later said that he thought, ‘this could be the end.’”

After several hours, national guard forces, including from Virginia and Maryland, helped the officers to get control and expel the rioters from the Capitol.

The lawsuit recounts the events of the day in detail, making it clear exactly who it is that Trump wants to reward with almost $2 billion in taxpayer money.

Hodges and Dunn are not the only people going after what is not just “the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century,” but the most brazen act of presidential corruption in American history. By far.

In the House, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) today introduced the “No Taxpayer-Funded Settlement Slush Funds Act of 2026,” which would prohibit the use of federal funds to pay off anyone claiming to have faced “weaponization” of the law by the federal government, including any of the January 6 rioters. “Congress must reassert the power of the purse and stop this brazen looting of taxpayer funds before this ‘pilot program’ for massive partisan corruption becomes the permanent operating system of our government,” Raskin said.

Democrats also demanded the Department of Justice preserve any and all documents and communications about the agreement. Scott MacFarlane of Meidas Touch reported that even Republicans hate the slush fund and non-prosecution agreement, telling Nicolle Wallace of MS NOW: “There are so many Republicans coming out against this thing. It appears to me this slush fund is like as popular as poison ivy…. Nobody is claiming ownership of this thing. I have zero statements of support for this fund from any congressional Republican.”

Yesterday, before news broke of acting attorney general Todd Blanche’s addendum to the original agreement, Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats Adam Schiff of California, Dick Durbin of Illinois, and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, sent a memo to the Department of Justice asking whether Blanche was following the advice of ethics lawyers in the department in his handling of issues having to do with Trump, as he had promised to do in his confirmation hearings.

Lawyer George Conway posted that Blanche never intended to carry out that promise. It is clear that members of the Trump administration never intended to honor the Constitution or serve the American people, raising the question of what exactly they do intend.

For Trump, making money is clearly a major part of it. The anger over the slush fund has pushed out of the news a growing outcry over the news from earlier this week that Trump bought and sold at least $220 million in stocks like those of Nvidia, Apple, Tesla, and Microsoft while making policy and public announcements that affected the value of those stocks.

Trump is also into building monuments to himself in the nation’s capital: the repainted reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial, the Kennedy Center, and the Triumphal Arch behind the Lincoln Memorial that would frame the home of Confederate general Robert E. Lee at Arlington National Cemetery.

Trump has paid special attention to the ballroom he intends to build on the site where the East Wing of the White House used to be, saying it will be done by September 2028. Republicans tried to get $1 billion put into a reconciliation bill to fund what Trump claimed was security measures for the ballroom. Unlike most measures that come before the Senate, a reconciliation bill cannot be filibustered and so needs only 51 votes rather than 60 to pass.

But Democrats recently stopped that Republican plan by noting that Republicans failed to give the required instructions to all the relevant committees. The Senate parliamentarian agreed with them and said the request could not go into a budget reconciliation measure. Senate Republicans, who were uncomfortable with the request anyway, removed it.

Trump apparently did not get the memo. Today he insisted that Republicans replace the Senate parliamentarian with a Trump loyalist. His social media account posted: “Shockingly, Republicans have kept the very important position of ‘Parliamentarian’ in the hands of a woman, Elizabeth MacDonough, who was appointed, long ago, by Barack Hussein Obama and a vicious Lunatic known as Senator Harry Reid, who ran the Senate for the Dumocrats with an ‘iron fist.’ Over the years, she has been brutal to Republicans but not to the Dumocrats—So why has she not been replaced?”

He went on to demand the Senate force through the SAVE America Act that would significantly restrict voting and to call for the Senate to “kill the Filibuster, which would give us everything!” He went on: “If we don’t pass at least one of these two provisions quickly, you will never see another Republican President again.”

But Senate Republicans are signaling they might not want to play ball with a president whose approval ratings showed up today at an abysmal 34% and who is demanding loyalty to himself alone, rather than working for the party. On Meet the Press Sunday, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) reacted to the defeat of Senator Bill Cassidy in Louisiana’s Republican primary after Trump backed his rival by saying: “This is the party of Donald Trump.”

Trump made that clear yesterday when, after waffling for months, he endorsed Texas attorney general Ken Paxton in a primary runoff over Senator John Cornyn’s seat to be held next week. Trump called Paxton “a true MAGA Warrior” and complained that Cornyn “was not supportive of me when times were tough.” Bloomberg reporter Steven T. Dennis noted that Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico “has to be doing the happy dance.” “This is going like Dem[ocrat]s would have scripted it,” Dennis wrote. “A late Trump endorsement after Cornyn/Senate Republicans incinerated ~$100 [million] trying to nuke Ken Paxton as an impeached adulterer who violated ethics left and right.”

House Republicans also have borne the pressure of Trump’s wrath. Yesterday representative Thomas Massie (R-KY), who helped to lead the charge for the release of the Epstein files, lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger in what was the most expensive House primary ever. Ed Gallrein, who won the primary, vows that he will do whatever Trump tells him to. Trump-backed primary candidates also won in Georgia and Alabama.

White House spokesperson Steven Cheung posted: “Do not ever doubt President Trump and his political power. F*ck around, find out.” But as political commentator Jessica Tarlov noted, Massie’s district went for Trump by 35 points in 2024, but Gallrein won by just ten points after outside money spent an astronomical $35 million on the race when winning a primary usually costs between $100,000 and $500,000.

Tarlov added that Trump isn’t offering much of a platform for Republicans to run on. She said, it’s basically “I want absolute loyalty. I want to trade stocks, make hundreds of millions of dollars. I want my 1776 fund to make sure J Sixers, you know, get the money that they’re owed. I want immunity for me and my family from an audit forevermore…. I want to get rich, and I don’t care that you are poorer.”

Notes:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.292539/gov.uscourts.dcd.292539.1.0.pdf

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/05/18/trump-trades-stocks-nvidia-apple-microsoft/90142106007/

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5887952-jamie-raskin-legislation-block-doj-anti-weaponization-fund/

The Bulwark
A month and a half ago, Donald Trump reached into his bag of negotiatin’ tricks and pulled out a few threats of genocide: If the “crazy bastards” of Iran wouldn’t “Open the Fuckin’ Strait,” the president warned, a “whole civilization” would die. Didn’t work then, but maybe second time’s the charm: “For Iran, the Clock is Ticking,” Trump posted on Truth …
3 days ago · 737 likes · 379 comments · William Kristol, Andrew Egger, and Jim Swift

https://democrats-waysandmeans.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/democrats-waysandmeans.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/1wm-and-jc-letter-to-doj-and-treasury-regarding-settlement-fund-final.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/us/politics/trump-massie-primary-takeaways.html?smid=bsky-nytimes&smtyp=cur

https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3959

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/20/ballroom-security-funding-reconciliation-00930193

https://www.schiff.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Letter-from-Sen.-Schiff-and-Colleagues-to-Lauria-on-Blanche-Recusals.pdf

Trumpstruth.org:

statuses/38675

statuses/38633

X:

SenWhitehouse/status/2057102459676373465

Bluesky:

gtconway.bsky.social/post/3mmc6ls6pi22w

juddlegum.bsky.social/post/3mmbxehepwu25

atrupar.com/post/3mmavmfpu5k26

steventdennis.bsky.social/post/3mm7u44rbe22t

jessicatarlov.bsky.social/post/3mmcy6ryhhs2a

acyn.bsky.social/post/3mmcqro4t6b23

2026-05-20

模倣子 Synthetic Religion

 Memetic Index - what purpose religion? - ideomemetic appeal - engineering non-violence - memeto-dynamics of group membership - priestly/rabbinical - The Big Other -





Was just having a chat with a buddy last night about “primordial religion” (and also “dogmatic efficiency”) or a perhaps more to the pint term is “minimal religion” or what does a religion minimally accomplish for a group of humans and what is the minimal and essential collection of memes needed to accomplish that function?


Will it inevitably snowball memetically, ie, accrete dogma and lose dogmatic efficiency over time?


It seems to be related to shame and empathy, providing a template for conformity, ie, what can an individual do in order to not invite immunomemetic overtures from peers?


This need is very real—the fear of the other. Anything that addresses this fear is worth paying a high cost, perhaps even the cost of what we see in religious adherence. 


But does religion actually address this?


The dream is that a “minimal synthetic religion” could be devised to fill this need, fit well into our modern scientific and industrial reality (instead of the Stone Age proto-agricultural feudalistic reality that most current religions are based on)


The overarching question is “do humans need religion?” “do religions develop organically, spontaneously, inevitably?” And “if religions are somehow essential, what is their minimal memetic feature set or inventory?”


Assuming there’s something to this, ie, religion is somehow essential, will form organically in a vacuum anyway, feels some real need with some minimal memetic inventory beyond which leads to increasing “dogmatic inefficiency”, and so forth, the question is twofold—can we engineer a “synthetic religion” or “minimal religion” that fills these needs with minimal bullshit harmful mumbo-jumbo, and how do we engineer the transition from the current religions to the new one?


I’ve come up with a concept called “memetic tunneling”. I’ve been working on this idea in terms of “memetically evaporating” the particularly frightening religious fanatic sect in my town. More on this anon. 


Another religion issue is dogma and magical or metaphysical thinking involvement and how memetic pairing works to marry normal life memes, rational stuff, to batshit 🦇 💩 magical made-up stuff, and the result is the creation and concentration of unreasonable and irrational power in the hands of a few over many. That mechanism seems inevitable, is almost certainly the root of “dogma creep” leading to dogmatic overload and inefficiency, and if that cancerous accretive phenomenon cannot be well understood and controlled, then there may be little point to an engineering effort. 


To restate, think of dogma as the collection of the irrational, magical 🧙 memes, which have this radioactive ☢️ ability to pair with “real” memes such as the rôle of women, diet, treatment of children, dress norms, the attitude toward and treatment of outgroup members, proselytization, etc, in other words all the stuff that make religions distinctive and often scary. 


Some minimal dogma is probably necessary to create group identity, ie, create a memetic inventory around which group members can cohere. But what is that minimum?


If we can posit a “minimal religion” then we can begin to think of a minimal dogmatic memetic inventory, which implies a maximal dogmatic efficiency, ie, each magical meme is doing maximal work, and additional memes degrade that efficiency. 


It’s worthwhile to consider how efficiency of dogmatic memes is not necessarily related to sheer number. I could go on at some length about how the “God meme” is a central Pilar of Abrahamic religions, does a lot of the dogmatic heavy lifting, but is also a kind of memetic sledgehammer to which other cultures and religions employ the multiple scalpels to accomplish the same things with arguably higher fine tuning, robustness, etc


Of course language by itself has a lot of magical memetic properties, eg, it is often the foundation for memetic pairing, in addition to a crucial glue for human social groups, so it is like a religion 


Right on!


Their dogma has a lot of crazy and harmful nonsense, but there is also the memetic engineering concept of “packing the meme space” whereby you protect the memetic inventory by creating a bunch of memes whose primary function is merely to take up space (since the brain can only hold so many at once). However, filler memes can mutate and become active, or pair with other internal or external memes, pulling more in and activating more (dogmatic) functionality and pathways 


I wrote at least one essay on the function of

The priestly/ rabbinical class in terms of the husbandry of the memetic inventory of a religion




2026-05-17

模倣子 crumbling feminist narrative

 

Debunk feminist narrative 

Crumbling feminist narrative 

Feminist Future will be Brutal