Calling David Rieff's, others, bluff on Russia-Ukraine peace plans

I don't know if Rieff is totally in the US-NATO-Ukraine tank, but he issued a callout on Twitter to Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute to propose an actual agreement — after saying he didn't like Lula's. I do know David is a duopolist on national US politics.) I do think that retweeting stories like this Bulwark one from Cathy Young show he aims for some nuance on Bandera et al, but a nuance that may dodge issues like the current Azov Battalion, etc.

That said, none of this applies to Rieff only.

Two more notes before we jump in? 

First? Per Thomas Knapp — and others — I don't have to, and don't worry about, calling Russia's invasion "unjustified" or "unprovoked," because those disclaimers aren't true. And, beyond the disclaimers not being true, and therefore not necessary, I in general reject the idea of "just war." It strikes me as a philosophical or theological attempt to put lipstick on a pig, perhaps while also trying to claim some sort of backdoor moral superiority.

Second, as with any peace plan, proposals are never actually written in stone.

With that said, here goes. 

Russia of course keeps Crimea. It wasn't in the Ukrainian SSR until the Ukrainian pig farmer put it there, first. And, in old Tsarist Russia, administrative districts, other than Poland after the former Grand Duchy was gobbled up, weren't based on ethno-linguistic lines. A map of Tsarist Russia shows that, as I blogged here. (And, before the expansion of Tsarist Russia, Ukraine had not existed for centuries before Ivan the Terrible anyway.) Besides, Crimea has, by language, Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Greeks and all others. David, you know this, too. If you object, then I in turn reject any peace ideas you have. See also pieces by me here and here for entangled Russian and Ukrainian nationalisms.

Second, I'll bite the bullet. Since, per what I said above, since the ethno-linguistic boundaries support it, and since Zelensky AND predecessors in Ukraine broke the Minsk Accords (as did Putin), Donetsk and Luhansk go to Russia. Don't give me the "reward aggression" angle. Bill Clinton's "capitalist aggression" against Boris Yeltsin's Russia, spearheaded by Jeffrey Sachs, is part of why we are where we're at today. As for why these areas, or the larger "left-bank Ukraine" were part of the Ukrainian SSR even before the pig farmer? Blame his predecessor, the Georgian seminarian cum Lenin's Commissar of Nationalities, Joe Stalin. That link also gives a first bite from me on the Minsk Accords; this piece has more.

Third, post-invasion annexations, beyond Donetsk and Luhansk, revert to Ukraine.

Fourth, which I didn't even think of originally, showing how stupid, and even more, how hypocritical I think it is? The ICC warrant for Putin's arrest gets tossed. (Or, one gets issued against multiple US presidents, even if the US isn't an ICC signatory, which gets back to that hypocrisy issue.)

Fifth, the "security guarantees" issue.

This is a multi-parter:

First, NATO guarantees that, beyond countries bordering Russia who are already members, NATO membership will never be extended to another bordering nation. In other words, Georgia as well as Ukraine are out the window. Period. And, Kazakhstan, or whatever, in case NATO gets a really wild idea about ignoring geography.

Second, strategic nuclear weapons will not be stationed in any country bordering Russia. (We can fudge on what counts as "strategic" and set aside for now tactical nukes, but my preference is to define "strategic" pretty broadly.)

Third, all post-Crimea sanctions against Russia are raised, with Russia accepting a "hold harmless" against US, EU, NATO etc for any economic damage.

Fourth? I am NOT proposing a DMZ for either Russia or Ukraine on a 50km or whatever setback from the new boundaries. Too hard to enforce. Too sticky of flypaper. Zelensky would try to use it as exactly that.

Now, as Rieff knows, Zelensky, NATO, the US and Western Nat-Sec Nutsacks would never accept that. It IS "realistic" re the actual situation on the ground and on the globe, though, outside the US-NATO-Ukraine axis. And, that's the whole point.

So, I'll throw in a fifth, to let the West save face and to remove a thorn. 

Russia surrenders the Kaliningrad Oblast. It goes to Poland. Putin would still accept that, I'm pretty sure, given everything else.

And, yes, I stand by the "bluff" in the header.

I don't think it's likely Rieff wants anything other than the status quo ante with continuing sanctions until Russia "releases" Crimea. (Putin has previously said part of the reason for its seizure was fears of the Maidan providing a "wedge" for a NATO invasion.) If I'm wrong, David, I'm here.

Green Party: Cornel West vs the field (and duopoly media)

Per Ballotpedia, via this very good piece from A Current Affair, "the field" for the Green Party 2024 presidential nomination, at least as of this time, does NOT include 2020 nominee Howie Hawkins or runner-up Dario Hunter.

That Current Affair piece, via managing editor Lily Sanchez, reminds waverers, and calls out #BlueAnon and #BlueMAGA, by saying that if West, or whomever, is not backed, even if he is Naderized, then the options are just RFK Jr. and Marianne Williamson, an antivaxxer palling around with wingnuts or an antivaxxer New Ager.

As to those "whomevers"?

Randy Toler is allegedly a Green Party co-founder, and co-chair of the Florida party. Ballotpedia lists him as running for the US Senate in Florida against Rick Scott. Wiki smears him (shock me) with the "perennial candidate" tag, even though Ballotpedia only lists him as running for two long-ago school board races. That said, whatever GP he founded at age 17, Toler personally, at that time, was an AccommoGreen, per this piece.

Adam Hollick? Pretty sure it's not the actor, who isn't constitutionally eligible anyway.

Anita Belle? Ran for Michigan state senate in 2018 and house in 2020, so some previous campaign experience.

Jackie Tate? Can't find anything.

Mason Cysewski? Like Toler, also running for the Senate, and from here in Tex-ass. New name to me.

Robert Cooke IV? Can't find anything. Scrub that. Also from Tex-ass and in the Metromess. Nothing else.

Tyler Gray. From Tennessee.

Knock yourselves out, and, yes, some of you are vanity candidates by my definition, and not an MSM one. And, what, no William Pounds or other "libertarian Green" conspiracy theorist types?

This one's a no-brainer. Barring a massive screw-up, West has my vote. And support beyond vote.

Update, Oct. 5: Running indy? That's a massive screw-up. Just lost my vote.

And, that's not just within the Green Party, that's in the general election. He's already got the left hand of duopoly political media scared enough to do their usual #FakeNews smears. Richard Winger at Ballot-Access News nails Mark Leibovich of The Atlantic doing it yesterday. Via Winger, Oliver Hall of the Center for Competitive Democracy called out Second Amendment sellout Laurence Tribe for his slimy attacks on West. The PDF has a sidebar piece from the late Bruce Dixon on Democratic sheepdoggers like Bernie Sanders for added effect. Beyond the GP, Winger nailed Mother Jones getting campaign finance law wrong on No Labels earlier in the week.

The bottom line is that Warmonger Joe and handlers, and #BlueAnon and #BlueMAGA in general are running scared. As Matt Walsh at Reason noted, they've got a craptacular candidate, but made their bed for him 3 1/2 years ago. Oh, and per Leibovich, Tribe and others, the DNC is already holding no primaries, so STFU for that reason, too. And, among the sheepdoggers in chief, as Dixon knew he would be for the 2016 election, when he wrote back in 2015, is St. Bernard of Sanders.

Movies: the next media and music?

Very, very insightful piece from Stratechery about the future of the movie industry in the middle of the SAG/AFTRA strike. (I'm a one-movie-a-year person, at that, myself, pre-COVID; if it wasn't Tom Hanks, I almost certainly wasn't there.)

The two nut grafs are at end:

The broader issue is that the video industry finally seems to be facing what happened to the print and music industry before them: the Internet comes bearing gifts like infinite capacity and free distribution, but those gifts are a poisoned chalice for industries predicated on scarcity. When anyone could publish text, most text-based businesses went from massive profitability to terminal decline; when anyone could distribute music the music industry could only be saved by tech companies like Spotify helping them sell convenience in place of plastic discs.

For the video industry the first step to survival must be to retreat to what they are good at — producing content that isn’t available anywhere else — and getting away from what they are not, i.e. running undifferentiated streaming services with massive direct costs and even larger opportunity ones. Talent, meanwhile, has to realize that they and the studios are not divided by this new paradigm, but jointly threatened: the Internet is bad news for content producers with outsized costs, and long-term sustainability will be that much harder to achieve if the focus is on increasing them.

I'd have to agree with them, and with the background premise of Disney trying to out-Netflix the actual Netflix being stupid.

I would add to Ben Thompson that, given some parallels being from the media industry and some from music, this is a partial double-barrelled "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" the movie biz faces. He's right that studios' stupidity over streaming isn't the problem for actors and writers, but yet it is. Newspaper publishers and music execs engaged in similar stupidity, too. And, unlike the music biz, you can't take movies on the road for live performances.

The other bottom line is this:

Every person on earth has only 168 hours in a week, during which time they are presumably sleeping and working. Those few remaining hours can now be filled by YouTube, or gaming, or podcasts, or reading this article; every single minute spent doing something other than consuming Hollywood content is a minute lost forever.

Other than me still not liking the word "content," I agree. And, I read enough and summarized it for you.

I only wonder if the studios have a shot at making a gaming franchise out of more and more movies.

Seymour Hersh's good Substack, with Thomas Frank

And it's one of the few that's not paywalled.

Sy interviews "Listen, Liberal" author Thomas Frank. Unfortunately, the national Democrats won't listen, and the national GOP, because Trump stole enough from the New Deal on worker-related stuff (or pretended to; Trump has never really cared about employees) it thinks it doesn't have to.

Some of its takeaways?

• Crying wolf on Russiagate by Dems is part of why more people who aren't total BlueAnon don't accept the reality of Jan. 6
• The national Democrat-mainstream media alliance is semi-incestuous
• Neither duopoly party really wants to change right now
  
• We need viable third parties, but in the wake of the Populists of the 1880s-90s, the duopoly continues to raise walls higher.

To summarize where we're at, off one Tweet?

Catturd is indeed a top non-generally famous Trumpian social media influencer on Twitter. (And, in another tweet, despite having a blue check, presumably gratis from Musk, claims Musk gave him no money for Twitter ads etc. last month. Probably got $8 and change and Musk deducted it.) 

A heartfelt message, and for the best that he didn’t go with the first title “Catturd is 54 and Unemployed.” pic.twitter.com/IcIdODC5SP

— Gary Peterson 🇺🇸 (@GaryPetersonUSA) July 19, 2023

The "deal" on how he reinforces Frank is that, this is the type of people that Trump listens to (and probably DeSantis and some others). Note also the junior-league messianic overtones, tying right in with #MAGAts proclaiming Trump the new Father Moon of Reunification Church Christology.

And, at the same time, even a triply-saner version of a "Catturd" is the type of people that Bill Clinton on have ignored. (This sets aside Catturd's slipstreaming on the late Actual Flatticus, who indeed passed away 5-plus years ago.)

The piece isn't perfect, I'll state.

FDR wasn't quite as radical as Frank paints. National Dems first shot themselves in the foot over Vietnam. (If civil rights handed the South to the Republicans and for more than a generation, LBJ expanding the war footing as much as he did made the Northeast and Great Lakes less Democratic-fertile.)

And, on working class America, as America turns more nonwhite, Frank doesn't wrestle with the issue of how well a class-based (but also focused on racism etc.) Democratic Party could retain working-class whites. It would do better than it's doing now, but ... how much better? I mean, this goes back to St. Ronald of Reagan's dogwhistle at the Neosheba County Fair. 

There's also a demographic issue. We've added 100 million people since that 1980 dogwhistling time. I think more and more of Merikkka feels an anomie of isolation and diminished focus.

It's still worth a read, for how the current status of the duopoly is ties to the walls against third parties.

Texas Progressives talk hypocrisy and NIMBYism

It's nice that an old lignite coal mine is being rehabbed into a giant community garden, but what tax breaks, and waivers from liability, is NRG getting?

It's nice that Guadalupe River tubers and people already resident there are concerned about Dry Comal Creek. But, even as the story makes clear that many residents already there are trying to pull the ladder up behind them, how environmentally pristine are current tubing levels?

Rural Texas is losing more volunteer firefighters? I've long thought Louisiana had the answer, with paid parish-level fire departments working along side of parish-level EMS.

At the Monthly, Chris Hooks takes a deeper dive on Roland Gutierrez. 

Off the Kuff covers the first lawsuit filed against the anti-trans gender-affirming care ban.

 SocraticGadfly talks about Zelensky as the new Yeltsin.

I always thought the dreamy Don Huffines was the queen of Highland Park or places around there. But, in a rich-catering piece, the Monthly says it's this Allie Beth.

A bandage on a bullet wound is probably right on describing all urban Texas efforts to mitigate worsening summer heat while we do nothing about climate change.

And, on that issue, the state continues to add renewables, but due to ERCOT's crappy grid, can't always use them well.

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project posted a letter the project is sending to every Democrat running for municipal office in Houston in 2023.

No Labels pretending to be a centrist party when most its talking points are already mouthed by the centrist Democratic Party.

The Current relays a weird conversation between comedian Tom Segura and our cringey junior Senator, Ted Cruz.

In the Pink Texas is not impressed by radicalized political mamas.

The Austin Chronicle notes a forthcoming 30th anniversary celebration of Dazed and Confused. 

This blogger knew what splooting was without having to consult The Bloggess.

Pramila Jayapal continued to be the head Progressive Cuck

That's of course punning on the Congressional Progressive Caucus, of which she is the chairwoman.

Nine months after caving to Warmonger Joe over Ukraine, she collapsed again, this time to Zionmongers of both parties in the House, over a nonbinding "sense of the House" resolution to support Israel, as offered up by Tex-ass' Charlie Pfluger (R-Not from Pflugerville but worse).

Once again, per the 412-9 vote, most of the Cuck-us caved in. Betty McCollum showed the same courage of convictions that she did over Warmonger Joe's cluster bombs a week ago and voted "present." That stood out even more as a vote of "one." Jayapal couldn't even "help a sister out" with a second "present" vote. Ruben Gallego may actually have been absent, or he may just have absented himself. I won't speculate about the other absentees.

Shockingly, all of the Fraud Squad, including the self-alleged Sephardi Jew Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, actually voted against it.  So did Squad add-on Cori Bush, plus Jamaal Bowman, Andre Carson of Indiana, Summer Lee of greater Philly, and Delia Ramirez of Chicago.

Of course, the CPC surrendered leverage when all Dem Congresscritters, including all of the Fraud, voted for Warmonger Joe's first big Ukrainian arms bazaar bill. And, before AOC, Ilhan, etc. speak out, the Tweet above says Jayapal as CPC chair was speaking for the caucus, not just herself. (And, I checked AOC's Twitter Tuesday night.)

Since over that issue, Jayapal threw her own staff under the bus:

"The Congressional Progressive Caucus hereby withdraws its recent letter to the White House regarding Ukraine. 

"The letter was drafted several months ago, but unfortunately released by staff without vetting. As chair of the Caucus, I accept responsibility for this."

Today's action not surprising, as the denouement of the past few days.

Of course, the Congressional Progressive Caucus itself has become more and more bullshit. Per its own website, it has nearly 100 members, or 40 percent of the Dem Congressional caucus. If you think everybody in there is truly progressive, I've got beachfront in North Dakota to sell you. Proof of that? If those nearly 100 members, only 30 signed the letter to Warmonger Joe.

Of course, the Fraud Squad still hasn't worked to put any actual standards of membership up to become a Progressive Cuck, as tackled by Lily Sanchez at A Current Affair in an AOC call-out, nor has it tried to vote out Jayapal. 

The bottom line on this is that "duopoly exit" is about more than presidential voting.

Wagner and wheat

Even without the new attack on the Crimean bridge (and some Ukrainians claiming it was a Russian false flag), I don't blame Putin for pulling out of the Ukrainian grain export deal. New Western weaponry, above all cluster bombs, are an issue unmentioned by Russia. Also, this spring, exports from a Russian liquid fertilizer pipeline being throttled was another complicating issue. (I'm not sure how or if that ever got resolved.)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he'd speak to Putin. But, that's for his own good first, countries running low on wheat second, and Russia and Ukraine after that.

Update: With the wreckage Russia inflicted on Odessa tonight, USAID can send whoever it wants to Kyiv; no wheat or sunflowers are leaving Odessa, period, if the damage is extensive. Twitter's got good stuff; sadly, even an Al-Jazeera appears to be buying the Ukrainian party line on the results of the attacks, talking about "pro-Kremlin military bloggers" but not "pro-Zelensky military bloggers."

Update: In a brief for him piece, John Helmer says last night's attack was indeed tied to the Crimean bridge attack, calling the later part of Zelensky's PR war by mosquito and pinprick. Ukrainian uniformed military reportedly hates this (note: author goes around the bend a bit at times).

==

Meanwhile, in what's surely warmongering by Nat-Sec Nutsacks™, a claim is being pushed that Wagner Group mercenaries now in Belarus will be used to seize the Suwalki Corridor between Poland and Lithuania, to connect Belarus to the post-1991 detached Kaliningrad Oblast. (I forgot to embed a link at the time of writing this, and am not going fishing now.)

First, Putin's not that stupid.

Second, the corridor connects to Belarus, not Russia.

Global media really are that fucking dumb. (It was from UK Metro as posted on MSN.)

But, with a Google, because "Suwalki Corridor" or "Suwalki Gap" are known entities, here's Sky News. That said, teh Google says these claims are nothing new, and that they've largely been spilled by Nat-sec Nutsacks. Basically, it's a modernized Fulda Gap if you will. As for why it become a problem, per the Wiki link at the start of the paragraph, blame Gorbachev.

NATO posturing and bullshit in Vilnius

Here, by Chuck Spinney, a DoD retiree and acquaintance of Andrew Cockburn, posting at his Substack, is the full truth about the bullshit at the NATO summit at Vilnius as well as all the bullshit behind it. It hits hard from the start, with calling Ukraine the most corrupt country in Europe this side of Kosovo. Take THAT, Blue Anon, NAFO Nazis and Uki-Tankies. (The piece is also at Counterpunch.)

Meanwhile, how much is Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spinning NATO along? At Vilnius, he promised to back Sweden's accession to NATO — in exchange for F-16s (that can't fight well against Russians), Swedish and IMF economic aid (and bribery) and a promise that Sweden would shut its mouth about Kurds. Well, Erdogan now has said it won't be considered until the Turkish parliament returns from a summer recess that starts shortly, in October. It's clear he's holding US feet to the fire on the planes even as many members of Congress might balk. And, why can't Warmonger Joe just ignore Congress and cite the global emergency, like he did in saying Ukraine would get cluster bombs? Answer? "Poor widdle (corrupt) Ukraine" has a constituency in the US, even if it's that corrupt; Turkey does not.

Posturing? Melvin Goodman calls out heightened nuclear weapons posturing at the Vilnius summit. He would also seem to offer a note of caution that the US/NATO has Zelensky on a six-month time frame to wrap things up. Tis true that Warmonger Joe would like to soft-pedal this in the run-up to the general election. But, given that majorities of both Rethuglicans and Democraps in the House voted against measures to cut Ukraine weapons funding over cluster bombs, the idea that Zelensky faces a hard deadline likely isn't true.

The Reddit strike after a month

Anybody who's a big social media user, whether or not they're that familiar with Reddit, is probably aware that about a month ago, many subreddits went on a 24-hour "strike," closing their subs over protests about Reddit's decision to greatly up the fees for third-party apps that are used to improve the user experience, mainly on mobile versions. This is being done in part to improve Reddit's business model and possibly in second part to to gussy up Reddit for an initial public offering.

Here's what I blogged at the one-week mark, and this is an update on that, with new items of the past week and with updates I had appended to the original worked into the body.

First, in what was the first update to the original, per the shitstorm at r/NBA, pretending to actually be striking for a week but actually being fucking hypocrites for having a Game 5 post that was apparently inter-moderator discussion. And, they look like the biggest hypocrite yet for banning the Redditor who called them out. Salute to u/kingtupperware.

They're also hypocritical about WHY they reopened, per another commenter:

every other major subreddit that re-opened yesterday admitted they've gotten a threatening mail from admins 

while this sub: "we reopen cos we accomplished enough, we made reddit promise that they will improve the official app, the boycott WON. 🤓🤓🤓🤓" while entire point of the protest was API price increase and saving 3rd party apps. they spammed front page with "dont let reddit kill 3rd partt apps" etc etc 

r/nba pussy ass mods saying "we are reopening because we won, they said they are gonna improve the official app" is such a laughable pussy statement. 

they couldnt even be honest. absolute pussy ass bitch behaviour. 

if the mod yesterday said "look, imma be honest, we didnt accomplish shit, and we dont wanna lose our mod positions, thats why we reopen" they wouldnt get roasted as hard.

Bullshit. And patronizing, too. Anybody who's followed the "strike" knows that there was no new "motion" over the weekend.

Mods then populated the feed with a bunch of posts, probably put up by themselves, from what was missed, besides the Game 5 insider trading thread, like the suspension of Ja Morant, etc., and some old NBA trivia. (And, by timestamps, it seems they did it already late Saturday night.)

That said, for more regular and hardcore users of r/NBA than me? The way this works is, until you get a chance to vote out any mods, you go to r/basketball first, and at least semi-boycott r/nba.

Then, per this OP, yeah, there's the issue of r/NBA seeming to engage in insider trading on taking down non-insiders' versions of duplicate posts on hot and breaking news. (r/NFL, from a lower interaction base, may be worse; r/MLB doesn't seem to have such a problem.)

That gets me into the main new item, from The Verge.

Most mods who talked tough backed down about as easily as r/NBA did. This:

Is the bottom line.

The conflict has demonstrated how crucial Reddit’s community is to the site and also revealed the limits of that community’s power.

The piece cites an r/DIY mod hating on Reddit CEO Steve Huffman's "ask me anything," basically calling it and him irritating. Hareuhal (no first name given, probably his handle) then gets at the edges of something else I noted in the original, with this:

“Going dark for 48 hours was kind of a silly thing for any of the subs to plan,” Hareuhal said. “We joined in on the ‘48 hours’ but also stated and knew it was most likely going to be an indefinite [shutdown].” 

A day after the 48-hour window had passed, more than 5,000 subreddits remained inaccessible. It was around then that Reddit started to crack down on moderators.

Really? You didn't expect a crackdown, even after Huffman could have been seen as supporting that pre-facto in his AMA?

Reddit corporate allegedly started looking for "defectors" to replace mods at still-dark subs, and per the r/NBA pullout above, that worked. (Unfortunately, there's still no voting available there to vote out the hypocrites.) The Verge piece updates by noting that subreddits trolling Reddit by making all posts NSFW have in fact had mods removed since my one-week post. It may have done the same — the piece isn't clear — to those who decided to do nothing but post John Oliver GIFs and videos, etc.

Then, there's this:

Mods and developers, however, say that Reddit lost in one big way: its users are really mad. 

“I think Reddit has got what they wanted, but I’d hardly consider it a win,” Selig said. “I’ve been on Reddit for 13 years, and I’ve never seen Reddit’s community have a lower opinion of the site’s management.” 

“Communities are made of and shaped by people,” said MostlyBlindGamer. “They’re built around a culture and trust. Many people are already deleting their accounts; many have started moving to federated free and open-source alternatives.” (I’ve heard a lot of people talk about Lemmy, Kbin, and Tildes.)

Really? Actually, no, I'm still mad first at r/NBA hypocrites as mods. And, that doesn't count the BlueAnon at r/politics and the Nazis at r/AcademicBiblical. See, mods, this is why you're self-inflated Dum Fuqs. And, why Huffman eventually rolled you. I'm "meh-mad" about the whole scenario, but no more. And, contra one Substack link posted by Kuff the other day, no, this isn't the same as Twitter, and anybody who claims it is doesn't understand social media that well.

Those alternatives to Reddit? From my original, more on these alternatives from Endgadget, which notes that all of them, for now, are "niche," like Mastodon vs Twitter.

Reddit's subs and their moderators largely  brought this on themselves. Yes, reddit sucked as an OS. And? You volunteered your services, and site tweaks, for free. So now, just like Steward Brand's "information wants to be free" and the internet "teaching us" that it should be free, now corporate Reddit wants to continue the exploitation. And, third-party app makers, who water-skiied in the wake, shouldn't be surprised that new turbulence has hit. You made money on the cheap and now you're not.

No. 2 on bottom lines is that folks like Apollo and its developer, Christian Selig, said they liked the changes originally. But, Reddit doing it "well and reasonable"? I guess its price tag wasn't reasonable for him.

I don't know if Selig tried negotiating more with Huffman. Huffman did make the apps free for accessibility-based communities, he said. Let's say he offered Selig a price of 75 cents on the dollar. Let's add that Huffman himself notes, in my original piece, that Selig has admitted making "millions." Would Selig have accepted, or still been a holdout, with a 25 percent reduction? Don't know, but ...

Let's say "holdout." That should show Reddit mods just how little Reddit is financially valued in today's social media world. Deal with it.

And again, the claim that Reddit is "the last page of the Internet"? That's much more an indictment of Google than a tout of Reddit.