As soon as this guy wakes up, this is probably going to go away, so I saved y’all a picture which you can click to read in all its glory. (via) Another open thread? If you say so.
Reader Interactions
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Only Democrats have agency, apparently.
Infrastructure week. at last.
People are complicated. Love is not.
Consistently wrong since 2002
Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.
Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.
Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.
Everybody saw this coming.
I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.
The revolution will be supervised.
Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.
He really is that stupid.
… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact
New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.
Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.
Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.
You cannot shame the shameless.
If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!
Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.
The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.
We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.
Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.
Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?
Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.
Bullsmith
Now that put a smile on my face. And I don’t even know who Mark Davidson is.
Zifnab
Revenge of the Nerds
4tehlulz
Ghostwriting 140 characters.
The asteroid can’t come soon enough.
Cat Lady
Four ghostwriters? That alone makes him a world class douche and I don’t know who he is either, although I’m going to take a wild guess that Orange County locates him in the teatard ranks.
slippy
I’m trying to figure out just how much of a boring loser you are to need someone to ghostwrite your Twitter feed.
And then I’m trying to figure out who the hell is Mark Davidson anyway. I don’t actually know and I don’t actually care. But that thread is funny as all shit.
Frank Lulz
Fortunately this could never happen to Sarah Palin because she writes 110% of her Twitter posts.
Soprano2
That’s awesomely funny.
piratedan
@slippy: obviously he’s a “job creator” that needs to be encouraged/coddled/protected, after all, he’s rich enough to outsource his own twitter feed.
soonergrunt
That’s a win just for sheer je ne sais quois.
NonyNony
What’s really funny is his little bio blurb:
Each sentence might be less true than the one before it!
MattMinus
According to something I read on the Agitator a few days ago, this may actually be a federal crime.
I’m not joking.
Warren Terra
Who the hell is Mark Davidson? I Googled the name, and found a Wikipedia stub about some dude who played Major League Baseball for five years, about twenty years ago. Somehow I don’t think it’s the right Mark Davidson.
Jennifer
This kind of strikes at the heart of just what it is that I hate, hate, HATE about so-called “social media” – it’s that it’s just one blathering, never-ending orgy of relentless self-promotion. “Look at me, look at me! I’m SPECIAL.”
Um…no. No, you’re not, particularly when you display all the subtlety of a local car dealership in attempting to attract attention.
I’ve tried to explain my loathing to others who are all on the facebook bandwagon (and, BTW, I HATE those fucking buttons at the bottom of blog posts for twitter and facebook – they pop open windows I don’t give a shit about seeing and make the whole page take longer to load) and finally this is what I came up with: remember in high school, that one kid who took journalism and got on the yearbook committee for no other reason than to make sure that his pictures would be the ones most published in the final book? Well, facebook is that kid X half the people in the country. It’s irritating when it’s just one kid; when it’s half of everyone you know, it just makes you want to end it all.
Guster
@Jennifer: I ‘like’ your post. Will you friend me?
Emma
As a very proper friend of mine says, this will be one of those “oh shit, oh dear” moments for the guy. On the other hand, I can’t stop giggling…
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Jennifer: what a pill
Linnaeus
@Jennifer:
Like any other communications technology, social media can be put to use for things that seem petty and/or silly, but can also be used for some really interesting things. Let’s take Twitter, for example. Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff on there that’s just internet noise, but there’s also people I know who post web links and such and I learn something I didn’t know before. Like anything, you have to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Jennifer: I think you’re confusing facebook with blogging. That’s a lot more work than most people on facebook were ever willing to put in. Facebook is for all of those people who, when the photographers for the yearbook went around to take “natural” pictures, always had to come up with some pose that totally ruined the shot.
Jennifer
@Guster: AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!
Amir Khalid
I done thunk three thoughts:
1. A more honest name for Twitter would be BrainFartZ. If you called it that, fewer people would be tempted to tweet. This might well be a good thing.
2. No way this Mark Davidson guy has four Twitter ghostwriters. Only the really important people like Sarah Palin get to have that. So what did he do, really? Leave his Twitter account unprotected by a password? If so, that was kind of dumb.
3. Uh…
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Facebook is for whoever want to use it however they want to use it. . .or not.
blondie
Or this Mark Davidson, whom no one knows, just got himself some free online notice, and if he leaves up the tweets, “what a sense of humor and ability to laugh at himself.” Yes, I’ve become entirely cynical.
superking
Who the fuck is Mark Davidson?
shortstop
Mark Davidson sleeps late. It’s 7:06 in California. Up and at ’em! I wouldn’t hire his slothful ass.
cleek
@Guster:
Like!
magurakurin
@Jennifer: Facebook is just a tool. People use it all different ways. I communicate with small group of people who all live very far apart (oceans and continents in between far apart) with Facebook. I get a window into their lives that I wouldn’t normally have. If someone mentions something that calls for deeper discussion we email or pick up the phone. Two other, different tools. “Facebook is (insert: various incarnations of great evil)” comments aren’t really very interesting or enlightening. The only thing perhaps more tiring are constant threads of how evil Starbucks is and how “blah blah coffee shop” is so much better. As if anyone gave a shit.
deep cap
I suspect this is fake. After all, isn’t he really popular now that this was posted? Seems like his little scheme worked.
mistermix
@blondie: I think there’s some chance it’s a hoax and he’s the kind of “any publicity is good publicity” douche who would do that. Or that someone hacked his account who wasn’t his ghostwriter.
shortstop
@mistermix: And yet, he’s still boring after all that effort.
jwb
@Amir Khalid: Or maybe Mark Davidson, whoever he is, has a secret calling as a performance artist?
shortstop
@magurakurin:
And amazingly, in 2011 we still have to point this out. FB isn’t monolithic and doesn’t require everyone using it to act like idiots or self-promote endlessly. But at least the “I hate FB” line has replaced the old “I don’t even have a TV!” bit, which makes for a nice change. (That’s not to say that Jennifer ever used the latter line, but a lot of the same people who did are now running around demonstrating that they have no idea how FB works.)
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@shortstop: I dunno, we get a lot of that TV thing here.
Joel
@Jennifer: I kind of like Facebook, sometimes I learn something interesting about friends/family, but it usually happens once a year. For this, I can spend roughly 5 minutes a day checking my feed.
As for twitter, I absolutely hated it, until my wife started following some comedians. For the most part, they just post funny links.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
And let me point out that, while there were some people here that were really really upset that there was not a Troy Davis thread last night, my Facebook was Troy Davis non-stop.
Hillary Rettig
this is one of the funniest threads I’ve read in a while. <-56 characters, all written without the help of a ghostwriter
khead
This thread sucks.
– khead’s drunk ghostwriter
Amanda in the South Bay
@shortstop:
Or, you have some people who hate Facebook, and have a good idea of how it works?
kindness
I agree with the above. 4 Ghost writers? And he’s a no-body to me. Got no clue who the moran is but apparently he thinks he’s somebody, or he thinks if he pays others to write Galtian jibberish he will be a somebody in Orange County politics.
Got a clue for you buddy…Orange County is the cesspool of LA.
RareSanity
@deep cap:
Bingo!
The guy is a self-proclaimed “internet sales & marketing professional”. There are now thousands of people, that previously had absolutely no knowledge of this guy, that have now done at least a quick Google search on him.
Mission Accomplished.
Why else would anybody care that someone hijacked his twitter account? It’s not like he’s Kim Kardashian or someone important like that.
shortstop
@Amanda in the South Bay: Sure, there are some of those. But suggesting that there’s only one way to use it and that everyone is using it the same way is a pretty good clue that the speaker doesn’t fall into that category. People who know how to use it but don’t care to tend to say that they haven’t found it fits into their own lives/correspondence/preferred ways of interacting; they don’t claim that it’s an innately objectionable thing that has no truly useful function to anyone.
I’m not a huge Twitter fan. I don’t want to tweet, and the vast majority of those who do don’t seem to have anything interesting or funny to say to me. That doesn’t mean I don’t read the tweets of those I do find informative and/or amusing–or that I assume Twitter doesn’t have beneficial reasons for being.
geg6
This, if this is true, is an idiot. Full stop. And deserves whatever ridicule is coming his way.
As for social media, I like some and despise other. I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever use Twitter. Sorry, folks who love it (I’m looking at you, Cole), but it’s just too insipid and stupid for me. 140 characters? Really? I guess if you don’t have anything to say (I’m looking at you, Claire McCaskill) and feel the need to let the world know it, it’s fine. But there is nothing I will get from anyone’s 140 characters that I can’t miss completely and still go through life happy, fulfilled, and in contact with important things.
Facebook, OTOH, is a tool for me and one I don’t obsess over but do spend some time with. It’s a great place to interact with my students and with friends and relatives all over the world and with whom I probably wouldn’t interact with otherwise.
In my world, Twitter is named perfectly. Useless, self-obsessed, and, for the most part, pretty stupid, as far as I can tell. Facebook is a tool that can be useful. YMMV.
David in NY
So why has mistermix (or anyone else) been following Mark Davidson, and where did mistermix get this, and WhoTF is Mark Davidson (just so I can forget him immediately)?
newly unemployed twitter ghostwriter
Mark Davidson sucks ass and has no sense of humor.
Gin & Tonic
@geg6: I follow the Twitter feeds of several small local chefs/restaurateurs I’m fond of, and find out about specials, events, new ingredients they’ve gotten hold of, etc., without having to check their fairly static (and generally pretty boring) Web sites. Seems like a pretty ideal use to me. The information can be contained in 140 characters, it is timely and perishable, and I can get it on my phone passively.
Litlebritdifrnt
I love Twitter because of who (or what) I follow, for instance the Daily Telegraph and the BBC. I like getting instant news from the UK, stories about the Rugby World Cup etc., that I wouldn’t get anywhere else. Being a politics junky I also follow most of the political sites. I just like the idea of getting instant information.
beltane
Why is an entire FP post being devoted to the ghostwritten Tweets of someone no one has ever heard of?
I use FB to keep in touch with my European cousins and few old HS friends. I have no interest in any of the games or apps or in announcing what I am going to eat for dinner. My husband is one of those people but I am not. Different strokes for different folks.
Jennifer
I agree with those who note that facebook is a tool.
As are many of the people who use it.
Note that I did not say “ALL”.
Personally, I hate it, and facebook doesn’t have a button for that. But it does strike me as amusing that some are so invested in it that when I make an observation that is indeed true of many facebook users, they feel the need to “defend” using it. Don’t bother; I’ll never know if you use it or not because I don’t, for the reasons already stated and others besides.
Linnaeus
Some people don’t dig Twitter, some people do. I’m cool with that.
Mnemosyne
@magurakurin:
The thing that’s annoying to me about Facebook is that apparently companies have just discovered it and are basically forcing you to join if you want to find out about their new products. Apparently updating their websites is so 2010.
OTOH, I’ve basically stopped buying products from companies that try to force me onto Facebook, so it’s a win-win for me.
beltane
@David in NY: Does Mark Davidson have granite countertops? That is what I want to know.
kindness
@beltane: I’ll do you one better:
Mark Davidson it has been said, is reputed to be Andrew Breitbart S&M love slave. Does this mean Andrew Breitbart shares his Ghost writers as love slaves also?
Enquiring mindsdimwits want to know.Rob
8:20 a.m. on the left coast and this guy still hasn’t checked his Twitter account?
beltane
@kindness: I’m glad you’ve explored the human interest angle of this story. I knew the original post was lacking that certain something.
Culture of Truth
I wonder if John Davidson is on twitter
Mark Davidson
OMG WTF?!?
Villago Delenda Est
I hang out with some guys who date their involvement with the Intertubes back to the 80’s.
They all avoid Twitter like the plague.
RareSanity
@Mnemosyne:
This is where I am with Facebook. I’ve never had an account and, in general, am quite indifferent about it.
I do, however, hate the fact that there seems to be the constant pressure from commercial entities to require I sign up. It’s very subtle, but it’s there. “Want the best deal? Join our Facebook page!”
Honestly, it just re-enforces my resolve that I will never sign up for Facebook.
MBunge
@magurakurin: “Facebook is just a tool.”
So are handguns.
Mike
shortstop
@Mnemosyne:
Yeah, I’m not wild about that practice. I’m also amused at the semi-monthly friend requests I get, and ignore, from my damned dentist. People like this are the reason I guard my cell phone number religiously. If he had it, he’d be texting me all day long about veneers and new whitening procedures and crap like that.
Gin & Tonic
@Villago Delenda Est: My first Usenet post had its 25th birthday this summer, so I fall into your “some guys.” As noted above, I find Twitter useful.
flamingRedDingo
morning lulz! thanks mistermix!
too bad I have no idea who this guy is…
oh well. still funny =)
Catsy
One of three things is true:
1. The person posting these is telling the truth, in which case this guy is a world-class narcissistic douche and deserves whatever scorn he’s getting.
2. The person posting these hacked the owner’s account, in which case the owner’s competence as a “professional” in anything whatsoever related to the Internet is suspect–though he’s obviously made an enemy of someone.
3. This is a clever bit of social engineering by the owner in an attempt to bump his Google ranking and drive traffic to himself, in which case he’s a world-class narcissistic douche whom hopefully no one will hire now.
scav
Well, speak of convenient timing. Look at the oddity I found (that will also likely disappear at some point) in the ChiTrib (Poll results from NH). I think I can see what happened but simply cannot explain the presence of fish (without invoking the snarky original writer trusting to a benign editor).
Interesting little article in other ways too. First, early early days yet, but the temporal and geographic variability in polls might not be exactly the signal of as strong a field as the GOP might wish for and Second, the fingerprints of the lowly text slave do seem to have leave a snarky residue (last line anyone?) although I’m sure the general management is well and fine with the ever-continuing neck-and-neck horse race that is the current GOP field.
David in NY
@beltane: I had not considered the granite countertop angle.
And I gather that if I could connect with twitter (which I cannot from here, thank god), the links at the bottom might give a clue where this was coming from.
Chris
That trio of Jennifer/Guster posts made me literally laugh out loud, and subsequently email it (with “Person A” and “Person B” as the people in the dialogue) to a few friends I thought would appreciate it.
I considered posting it on facebook, I seriously did, but thought that’d be just taking it too far.
Violet
Did anyone figure out who Mark Davidson was yet? I skimmed the comments here but didn’t see it. Is he just a mystery Twitter creation?
catclub
Is JCole in a fetal position because the stock market has lost over 500pts in the last 4 hours of trading?
M Yglesias pointed out that the flattening of the yield curve corresponds to tight money. The initial response of the Euro/$ exchange rate actually confirms that view.
I am do not know that the actual approach will be equivalent to tight money in the slightly longer ( more than 2 days) term. Opinions?
The Twist is twisted.
stuckinred
@Jennifer: nobody cares
Yutsano
@scav: New Hampshire thinking it’ll be the stopping point for Teh Crazy. How adorable. And am I the only one who groaned about another damn Republican debate?
Jennifer
Just to add, I have to agree that there are some humorous uses for twitter. For example, the person who was pretending to be Rick Santorum, and posting epic twats like, “Soon Santorum will be on the lips of every Young Republican.”
I mean, there’s just nuthin’ there that’s not to love.
Jennifer
@stuckinred: which is why you’ve responded twice, I suppose.
bemused
A couple of items amused me this am:
Santorum attempting to make an analogy between Medicare and “food insurance”. (Crooks & Liars). I can’t wait to see what Stewart or Colbert do with this stream of unconsciousness.
Republicans’ freakout over the $16 muffin myth. (Think Progress) I particular liked Think Progress’ use of the phrase “muffin bashing”.
How do these people manage to walk around by themselves.
slag
@Catsy:
You might be surprised at how often being a world-class narcissistic douche is actually considered a feature not a bug.
piratedan
@stuckinred: yes, but Everybody Hurts…… sometime
Jennifer
@slag: these days, that’s pretty much ALL the time.
Witness: Kim Kardashian, who’s made a fortune out of being a dirty video whore with a hugely out of proportion ass.
slag
@Jennifer: Exactly. That’s why all the traditional rants about social media could just as easily be applied to television or many other areas of our culture. The only difference is that some people get paid for it and others do it for free. Not sure which I find more respectable.
Suffern ACE
So how much could I make as a Twitter ghost writer, and is lunch break mandatory, or am I expected to work through it at my desk?
Southern Beale
New York Magazine has a piece up on it.
Either Mark Davidson is still asleep, in a coma, or the ghost-Tweeter changed his password and for some reason Davdison can’t unchange it. Cuz it’s all still up.
Martin
@catclub:
Well, obviously the solution to the EU mess is a tax cut.
I mean, I don’t know why all the criticism over the Fed effort – what the fuck else are they to do? They have limited authority here. Congress won’t fucking do a thing because burning shit down in order to win in 2012 is the recipe. I mean, if your house is on fire and the firefighters are too busy arguing to do anything, do you really get pissy when your neighbor pulls out his garden hose?
Southern Beale
I think I ate something bad. I suddenly feel really queasy.
MikeJ
@Southern Beale:
Too much heroin?
catclub
@Martin: “Well, obviously the solution to the EU mess is a tax cut.”
I cannot even tell if this is irony. The prescription from the GOP has been tax cuts for all economic ailments.
Budget in surplus? Tax cuts! Budget deficits? Tax cuts!
Erection lasting more than 4 hours? Tax cuts!
Martin
@catclub: Got that last one backward. It’s tax cuts that cause the erection to last more than 4 hours.
catclub
@MikeJ: Amazing! Maybe they mean that Obama is Coke Zero? And Palin truly is Heroin?
Too subtle for me.
Southern Beale
I”m starting to think Mark Davidson is a hoax. His LinkedIn profile has that same goofy head shot that looks like he took it himself.
Amir Khalid
@MikeJ:
Sarah Palin must refudiate that T-shirt at once!!
RareSanity
@Jennifer:
(preface: this comment is being made in a playful nature)
I respect your opinions and have thoroughly enjoyed your posts, on this, and other threads.
However, the line must drawn somewhere, dammit!
I will not stand idly by and allow you to disparage Kim Kardashian’s posterior. It is about the only positive thing about her.
I am always for the proliferation of women that have the bodies of, you know, women. Not the anorexic “stick” model type, or the anorexic “fake boobs on stick” type that has saturated every part of today’s media.
There are a lot of negative things to say about Kim Kardashian…a lot…so many negative things. However, the one positive thing I can say about her is that, physically, she is a naturally beautiful woman with a healthy, natural body.
Of course at some point, she opens her mouth to speak, and the reality of “who” she is, hits you like a ton of bricks.
Tim in SF
Christ. After all this time, you windows users still don’t have anti-aliased text in your browsers? Windows sucks ass!
Use this image instead: http://blog.hisnameistimmy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/markdavidson1.png
Or this one: http://blog.hisnameistimmy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/markdavidson2.png
slag
@MikeJ: Ha! Palin positioning herself as the anti-Reagan?
MikeJ
@slag: To be fair, it was done by dimwitted Palin fans, not dimwitted Palin employees. Still a good larf though.
slag
@MikeJ: You never know. Maybe that shirt was created by one of her disgruntled ghostwriters.
Yutsano
I just peeled a bunch of sweet potatoes. On my bed. At 9 AM. Submitted without further comment.
shortstop
@RareSanity: If you vacuum, too, you’re going to be added to a lot of women’s wank banks today.
Jennifer
@RareSanity: Yep, she’s really gorgeous…but it ain’t all natural. There’s been some plastic work done there.
Don’t know if you saw the latest Kathy Griffith special, but she dumped all over all things Kardashian, particularly the stupid media trope that “the Kardashians are the closest thing we’ve got to royalty.” (Really. There were media twits who said this.) Griffith’s response was “no, they’re the closest thing we’ve got to a family of dirty whores.”
catclub
Anyone else notice this? I was stunned.
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/09/how-different-is-this-consumer-credit-cycle/
It IS different this time!
Jay in Oregon
So it looks like Mark Davidson finally woke up…
https://twitter.com/#!/markdavidson/status/116913047775346688
Yutsano
@catclub: From your link:
I find this idea awesome. It’ll never happen because it would make Goldman Sachs cry, but it would be very interesting. Execution could be a nightmare though.
Martin
@Tim in SF: Actually, that is anti-aliased. Windows just uses this really light hinting algorithm that would probably look great on a 300 dpi screen, but IMO looks like shit on a regular one.
But much has been said on the debate.
licensed to kill time
As someone who is frequently baffled by persons referenced on Balloon Juice (often necessitating a quick Google search) that I have never heard of, I am gratified to see that no one else knows who the fuck Mark Davidson is either.
Kinda funny, though.
Southern Beale
Today’s WTF moment:
Beam me up, I can’t take any more of this shit.
khead
Khead is a dirty whore with (that is?) a hugely out of proportion ass.
Why isn’t he rich and paying me better?
– khead’s GW
sukabi
thought I was late to the party.. apparently Mark Davis either isn’t out of bed yet, or he never even checks his twitter acct… this was the last tweet:
Martin
@Jay in Oregon: Actually it looks like ghostwriter #1 or #2 just woke up.
Jay in Oregon
@Southern Beale:
And half a dozen writers at the Onion just started drinking early…
trollhattan
Speaking of failin’–rhymes with Palin–check out Strange’s supah find:
http://www.rumproast.com/index.php/site/comments/campaign_t-shirt_fail/
“Get with the heroin.”
[whoops, beat to it upthread. Carry on.]
Jay in Oregon
@Martin:
Even better!
My guess is, the real Mark Davidson probably has no idea what’s being written on his Twitter account because he’s too busy strategemizing and developing forward-thinking paradigms and stuff.
Southern Beale
@MikeJ:
That CANNOT be for real. NO way.
Hilarious.
I think I had some bad bacon. But the queasies are starting to go away. So maybe not.
scav
@Yutsano: I demand the sound track to said action of peeling sweet ‘taters. [in bed]
Tonybrown74
@Southern Beale:
[BLINK] [BLINK]
Martin
@Yutsano:
Why? Should be easily enough. You’ve got to have the cost basis, which necessitates tracking when the asset was acquired, and the price you sold the asset at, along with that date. IRS creates a simple formula where you plug in the number of days between transactions.
Of course, someone in Congress will insist that holidays and weekends not count, with the sole purpose of complicating this so much as to make it impossible – that way they can oppose the idea while looking like they support it and support the ‘little guys’. But there’s no reason why any days shouldn’t count – it’s no like it’s impossible to buy or sell an asset on a Sunday or on Christmas Day or anything.
It would create some odd market distortions, though. Anyone doing short term trades will concentrate them on Friday-Monday buy/sell cycles, but the formula could smooth that out just fine by making all trades under 3 days taxed at the same maximum amount. I wouldn’t do 100% because we do want those transactions to still be able to happen, but I’d be okay with 75% and go from there.
And with this kind of move, you could effectively eliminate most of the retirement/education account exceptions since you already have an incentive in the standard tax code for long-term investments.
Martin
@Southern Beale:
Sorry, no such thing.
MikeJ
@Martin:Not just retirement/investment, but also the loopholes on cap gains for house sales. If you bought a house to live in, stayed ten years, and it appreciated you’d be fine. If you bought a house to flip and sold in three months (don’t laugh, those conditions could in theory return) you’d pay a higher rate.
RareSanity
@shortstop:
I can vacuum! Sadly, these things can only benefit me with my wife, and usually I do something stupid to screw up when it does…why can’t I just shut up when she give me, “the look”…
@Jennifer:
You get no argument from me regarding the media fascination with the Kardashians. They are spoiled, entitled, promiscuous, unintelligent, unaware bimbos.
And I’m sure she’s probably had some work done, but as a whole, she was born with most of what she has. She doesn’t have disfigured lips from silicone injections, motionless artificial boobs, unnatural skin tone from too much time spent in tanning beds, orangish hues from spray tans, tattooed makeup…etc.
I detest the reasons she is famous and the media machine that has made it possible. However, her kind of beauty is something that could stand a bit more attention in today’s media.
Yutsano
@Martin: I didn’t see how it was originally planned out, so I’m coming to the idea rather blindly. I think the major squak will come from the micro-traders who will insist it will cause them to go bankrupt and you’re oppressing our Galtian overlords and WHY DO YOU HATE OUR FREEDUMBS YOU SOCIALLIST HIPPIE?? just like all these arguments go. Having said that, it’d be a nightmare for hedge fund managers, which is reason enough for me to support it even if it has flaws.
RandomChick
Back to the original topic of the open thread, looks like his other writer is leaving too. Two new tweets. Most recently:
Cris (without an H)
@MattMinus: Are you referring to this story? I don’t know, the WSJ article seems to be dramatizing things a bit. I would agree with the underlying concern, that violations of the CFAA needn’t be expanded from misdemeanor to felony, but the doomsday scenarios outlined read like those chain emails I get from my hippie friends claiming that organic gardening will soon be criminalized.
MikeJ
@RareSanity:
I’ve never heard what that was. Just all of a sudden one day people here were talking about a reality show following around somebody I’d never heard of.
Cris (without an H)
oh god, i would love to know what part of my previous post tripped the moderation filter
licensed to kill time
OT: Ahmadinejad giving speech at UN right now; ripping the US pretty fierce. Just called 9/11 a ‘strange incident’ that gave the US an excuse to start unjust wars, US walks out.
eta: Mass walkouts now. Hall is emptying fast.
catclub
@Martin: a vanishingly small transactions tax (just not identically = 0) would be simpler.
remember that with cap gains, you figure out all your short term gains and losses, and net them out, then do the same with long term gains and losses and net them out. Now you might have 3 day gains and 7 day losses. Waaah!
I am not even an accountant and I can figure ways to make it arbitrarily complicated ( if suitably motivated.)
asiangrrlMN
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): Wot you said. Same with Twitter. I get a lot of political info on Twitter, and I do a lot of general info swapping on my FB. Then again, I am very selective about whom I friend on FB and whom I follow on Twitter. As many have said, social media is what you make of it.
Yutsano
@licensed to kill time: He’s famous for those. What’s funny is how the vast majority of the Muslim world pretty much hates him. But that has as much to do with the Sunni/Shi’a divide as the little shrimp himself.
licensed to kill time
@Yutsano: I know that’s his usual MO. I was listening to what he was saying and thinking that a lot of it is true, unfortunately. But it’s funny watching the mass walkouts. He may end up speaking to a mostly empty hall.
Poopyman
@licensed to kill time: Guy sure knows how to clear a room.
HyperIon
IMNSHO anything that needs to be said cannot be said in 140 characters.
IOW tweets are
substanceless, superficial, and ephemeral. That must be why it’s so popular. We are doomed.
licensed to kill time
@Poopyman: It’s like he farted in an elevator and everybody started mashing the floor buttons to get out quick. Sudden looks of dismay, fast grabbing of papers, we’re outa here.
Martin
@catclub: These guys have pretty sophisticated trading systems at their disposal – even the day traders in their mom’s basement – they’re using computational power to beat any casual investor. Surely they can use some of that computational power to give them moment-to-moment tax implications of this. It’s not like it would affect 99.9% of the public. We can already pick and choose which assets in a bundle we’re buying/selling to maximize tax benefits, so just extend the same to cap gains, or put a rule in that the longest held gains (lowest tax rate) are the first gains offset with a loss.
Honestly, these are such trivially easy problems to solve in excel or whatever that basing the tax code (as we always have) on the idea that the calculator hasn’t yet been invented is just aggravating as hell. Shit, the whole tax bracket political debate can be solved by moving from a discontinuous (tax tables) to a continuous tax formula. Now there’s no confusion as to whether that 39% rate applies to the first or last dollar earned as everyone uses the same formula. Fair, no?
Martin
@HyperIon:
Not a fan of haiku, I guess.
Joseph Nobles
This may yet be performance art, but it’s clever enough if so. If it’s real, I will be laughing.
catclub
@Martin: Agreed, but the thick booklet with tax tables convinces me it would never happen. Some congressman would have to wrap his head around the concept of continuous functions implemented in a computer program.
Jay in Oregon
@Joseph Nobles:
So it’s been 2 hours since another ghostwriter (?) posted to his Twitter account, and there’s been nothing.
Do you think anyone has told the real Mark Davidson what’s going on yet? And if he tries to claim he was just goofing around, will anyone believe him?
maus
My vote, viral marketing.
No way in hell a “social media maven” would not be this linked in. I could imagine that there’d be some that have 4 ghostwriters and not know much about tech, but they’d know SOME people who would text them, etc.
I’m not buying.
Jay in Oregon
@maus:
After rereading the tweet from the “second” guy, I think I concur.
If I came to work and found one of my co-ghostwriters pulled crap like that, I wouldn’t post about it on the account; I’d email the guy, say “clean up your own damn mess” and that’d be that.
Ben Cisco
I say it’s a spoof.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Jennifer:
welcome to blogworld, no self-promotional, attention seeking, aggrandizement permitted.
table for 1?
middlewest
Holy shit, you people are gullible. Even Reddit could tell that this was just a version of the “Help, I’m trapped in a fortune cookie factory!” gag.
(another) Josh
@middlewest, given the tweeter’s name, shouldn’t that be the “Help, I Am Dr. Morris Goldpepper!” gag?
Jebediah
@Yutsano:
That is what winning is all about.
Julia Grey
Notice that the “aggrieved ghostwriter” doesn’t really say anything very bad about Mark Davidson. “He’s not very nice” and “he doesn’t pay much” don’t exactly cut to the bone.
I don’t personally have any idea how Facebook works. Til today I didn’t realize that my ignorance meant that I was trying to demonstrate my cultural superiority. Sometimes an ignoramus is just an ignoramus.
Besides, my husband does all that icky stuff for me.
HyperIon
@Martin: made a good point.
my response: but i never get haiku flashes from the stuff i see quoted from twitter.
Glen Tomkins
On the other hand, it’s possible that Mark Davidson suffers from Multiole Personality Disorder. After years of no discernible personality, nature comes back in through the window and gives him multiple personalities.