Elon Musk

older office buildings, despite plumbing etc, are likely easier code-wise due to the fact we made use-specific housing codes that let builders de-emphasize good general use building practices

or, as my architect friend used to lecture me (he’s moved from pure architecture to structural concerns), architects leave too much to engineering and don’t bother to work beyond the recommended minimums in code, despite whether they’d actually be the best in the building

honestly the same goes in software but idk that’s also why I moved to infrastructure

I think Elon genuinely wants to make it a right wing social media site like Parler or Truth but popular. Of course, by making it explicitly RW (and being a fascist anti-Semite who wants to be King of Mars) he will drive away the people (and with them the advertisers) that made Twitter actually fun and popular and thus just turn into Gab.

― Every post of mine is an expression of eternity (Boring, Maryland), Saturday, 20 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Don't think he can make twitter "explicitly RW", the guy cannot execute a plan.

i do think blue tick prioritisation leans heavily towards it though. you have to wade through a garbage fire of blue tick answers to any particular thread to get any sort of through line of discussion.

i’ve always been fairly relaxed about it. it’s a commercial site, and you can more or less get what you want out of it. but in the last few weeks i’ve noticed it becoming unusable, in terms of how i use it anyway - defaulting to “for you” is an absurd piece of friction to introduce. and generally as an information aggregator it’s becoming epistemically extremely degraded imv.

however, i do think a lot depends on how you use it. a lot of the issues that have driven others away were invisible to me.

My twitter mostly goes to "following".

"i do think blue tick prioritisation leans heavily towards it though. you have to wade through a garbage fire of blue tick answers to any particular thread to get any sort of through line of discussion."

I don't know if answers to a popular thread have ever yielded much, but yes you see the blue ticks mostly first in line, but some are more 'liberal' sounding people.

I think if I were to join now it might be harder to find good people. Because I have already built a good list it's still ok at the moment. As it hasn't gone in a puff of smoke I reckon death will be slow.

I don't know if answers to a popular thread have ever yielded much, but yes you see the blue ticks mostly first in line, but some are more 'liberal' sounding people.

Doesn't matter. If they've paid for a blue check, they're idiots and marks. Block or mute anyone who has one.

Don't really care to block or mute anyone. I'm a grown-up.

then you should pay 8 dollars. You can afford it pops.

the grown ups in the room social media site.

We exist #grownUps

grow up

— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) May 22, 2023

I hid in the clouded warmth of the crowd
But when they said, "Come down" I threw up
Ooh, growin' up

--Elon Musk

the space degrades. and people whose voice you might value don’t feel comfortable posting - because RW libertarian voices are given precedence, because the moderation, poor as it was, is explicitly and deliberately worse, because the experience is *bad*.

lol ganz can give as good as he gets but yes, another one bites the dust.

Fizzles otm in both his posts. This isn’t hard to understand.

xxxp My gut here tells me Elon's involvement in Twitter was 1) not necessarily his choice, he was kompromatted into it (his lawsuit to get out of the sale was about to expose some interesting emails/texts and he instantly caved), and 2) ultimately to help the Saudis (who are investors) and their ilk as well as the interests of Jared Kushner (who he met with during the World Cup and has received billions of Saudi cash for "investments") and Rupert Murdoch (who Elon met with during the Super Bowl).

Him and his investors I'm guessing don't care one bit about the lost $ value of Twitter. I'm guessing they want it dismantled and diminished as it was a viable tool for the left to communicate, advocate and organize world wide (see Arab Spring and women's protests in Iran and many other countless movements and moments). It's an incredibly powerful tool in this regard, worth far more than its lost dollar value if it helps accomplish things like create fascist uprisings in Europe or help a Republican president get elected in 2024, which long term will protect and grow these oligarch and autocrats assets and influence far more. Seeing how the algorithm diminishes the reach of Ukraine posts already shows it being used as a political tool for manipulation.

This whole Elon "is losing a ton of money" thing is just a distraction.

otoh it is quite hard to find stuff like this anywhere else

what a rothko painting is in color and form, a song by the necks is in sound and time

— Toby (@tobyshorin) May 22, 2023

Does Elon Musk really strike you as the type of person who would sacrifice personal gain for ideological gain? Doesn’t it seem more likely he assumed he could just do whatever the fuck he wanted and Twitter would continue to make money because he believes himself to be magic and infallible?

never ever underestimate the ability of a coddled human being to be a 100% ego baby

DJP - Given his motives and the evidence exposed during his suit to get out of the sale, he already knew he was sacrificing personal gain from the get go. Perhaps it's a little bit from column A and B. Given his visible meetings with hard right oligarchs, autocrats et al (which can't be dismissed), at the very least he's being used. I tend to avoid underestimating the ruling class, especially Elon types.

i'm sorry for you that you avoid underestimating the ruling class, seems exhausting.

try overmisunderestimating them

"I'm guessing they want it dismantled and diminished as it was a viable tool for the left to communicate, advocate and organize world wide (see Arab Spring and women's protests in Iran and many other countless movements and moments)."

The movements and protests that failed. Ok.

the Left can only win with pamphlets

Hey maybe I'm overly paranoid, but we underestimated Trump and Russia's impact on social media and its affects on democracy. But yeah perhaps I'll stick to the basketball and music threads here.

Post where you want. But I might ask a question or two. I mean, I thought Facebook took a bigger 'credit' for those uprisings. So why not shut it down as well?

If Musk was blackmailed into buying Twitter (with significant Saudi funding public), why would they let him try to get out of it?

xp Facebook is a reliable medium for disinformation.

I mean, so is every person on the planet earth, ime

Literally nothing about Musk's behavior at any point in this debacle suggests any kind of plan, on his part or anyone else's. I do think he was reacting to and agreed with right-wing troll critiques of Twitter and its "censorship," as he's repeatedly demonstrated he's simpatico with the 4chan view of the world. The Saudis obviously have some self-interest in influencing a potentially powerful communications medium, and that would make sense as a reason for them to buy in. But nothing about it seems organized or orchestrated, Musk seems like he's just been running on incoherent instinct and lazy contempt.

Don't forget the potential value in all the DMs and communications that could be shared to said "investors" as well.

Nobody’s pushing valuable state secrets on Twitter; that’s Discord territory

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/ron-desantis-presidential-bid-campaign-elon-musk-rcna85288

?

oh thank god - he's not running for president

needed a guy with even less charisma as a wingman

he found someone who will love him for who he is, not his wealth

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/05/22/08/71259053-12110105-image-a-3_1684741522248.jpg

oh thank god - he's not running for president

If Musk was allowed to run we've have already lived through two terms of President Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Musk I think would get less votes per $ spent than Bloomberg

“Rin Di Santis”

Like that also confirms what I suspect is that Ron is the VC fascists’ choice for president.

Musk I think would get less votes per $ spent than Bloomberg

but ian miles cheong would vote for him. o hang on.

1/🚨 Dorsey is today pushing QAnon propaganda, derived from an apocryphal JFK quote that has also been used by Wikileaks, and which has religious origins. This is QAnon dog-whistling. https://t.co/oI4Q5B828S

— Dave Troy (@davetroy) May 24, 2023

6/This was the first time Jack has tweeted something new in months.

Elon made sure to amplify it with a “!” tweet. And it includes a link to this portrait of JFK. Pure QAnon nonsense, and full Jack/Elon axis in play. pic.twitter.com/FURur3GNq1

— Dave Troy (@davetroy) May 24, 2023

QAnon otm tbf.

Poling etc. "But.."

https://t.co/E2C52R6bNw pic.twitter.com/Wv413ktiIO

— Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) May 24, 2023

Skeptical that "the rest of the country" all know who Joe Rogan is.

it's "donald trump is a good businessman" all over again innit?

I dreamt last night that Musk was involved in some criminal scheme with Donald Trump in which they were somehow trafficking in stolen microprocessors(?) I think it was my mind attempting to reckon with how genuinely sinister a person or phenomenon he is, in light of his recent flood of anti-semitic conspiracy memes posting, his showcasing Tucker and Desantis, the arrogant rich guy "I don't have to pay these bills, what are you going to do sue me?" while putting lives in danger via fire code violations, etc. behaviors... as opposed to the habit of just thinking of him as being a gormless charmless fraud of sorts.

How is someone having that much money and power and fanbase, who is happy to inanely regurgitate qanon-ish nazi memes and just asking questions responses (or for that matter, Trump still supposedly being a viable presidential candidate in 2024...) possibly going to end well, for the country or the world at large?

Years ago when I first encountered his name regularly I ended up blocking it on Twitter because I was weary of hearing about him and people endlessly complaining about him/making fun of him... "Elon Musk". Somehow his name alone manages to be unpleasant. Then a couple years later I came to understand that he was a terrible person in a way that I hadn't previously realized. Now it just seems so much worse and I wish that everyone who were formally blue checks, back when blue checks meant something, the actual public figures/journalists/govt orgs who aren't the dilbert guy or whoever, would abandon the site en masse and let it rot as a Gab/Parler/TruthSocial-style backwater that he dumped billions into and tanked his reputation over.

remember when elon hosted an event to showcase an unbreakable car window and it immediately cracked. now imagine it was a human brain https://t.co/OeLEXAHcU6

— Law Boy (@The_Law_Boy) May 25, 2023

the people who are utterly terrified of the vaccine are gonna be first in line for this

the chip teaches you to be a very good Musk fanboy

the people who are utterly terrified of the vaccine are gonna be first in line for this

For some reason that Bill Hicks about the world feeling lighter already for having lost another idiot springs to mind.