Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Everybody saw this coming.

I really should read my own blog.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

We will not go back.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

In my day, never was longer.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

Not all heroes wear capes.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Cold Grey Pre-Dawn Open Thread: You’re Not Allowed to Buy Serfs Any More…

Cold Grey Pre-Dawn Open Thread: You’re Not Allowed to Buy Serfs Any More…

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… but, the Apartheid Princeling Bitchboy is pleased to discover, you can rent them — and at surprisingly reasonable rates!

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MAGA!

Reader Interactions

47Comments

  2. 2.

    Geminid

    @Steeplejack: I thought it was a dominance technique, Musk requiring people to document and justify their value in a situation where he is the one whose value is dubious.

  4. 4.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    Just looked at that “team” photo in the top tweet, and my first thought was, “Did Musk fire all the women?”

    It can’t be healthy to have that much sausage.

  7. 7.

    Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)

    @Lacuna Synecdoche:

    The women probably read the writing on the wall and took the severance.

    God knows it’s not like Musk-operated companies have a long and disgusting history of sexual discrimination and harassment.

  8. 8.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Fun fact. If you’re on an h1b visa and lose your job (or a supervillain takes over your company) – you have 60 days to find a new job to sponsor you (an outrageous Byzantine process) or else you & your family gets kicked out of the country. Twitter basically has hostages ??

    This. This has always been my problem with every “guest worker” program ever proposed. Anybody who takes such a job has less rights by default. Maybe there is a way to thread that needle, but I’ve yet to see a GOP even try.​
     

    eta That group photo: Can you spot the most slappable face?

  10. 10.

    circular reasoning

    I’m a near Luddite who knows nuthin’ about nuthin’, but I assumed relying on his indentured servants was part of his cost-saving plan all along. Maybe seems obvious because I’m from an area that relies heavily on migrant farm labor while still maintaining stereotypes of the “lazy, mooching, drug lords we must build a wall to protect ourselves from!”

  11. 11.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    And the stuff on the white board is Not code it is more like a process diagram…how is Elon qualified to review code anyway?

  12. 12.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @circular reasoning: it’s fairly common practice to buy a smaller company  gradually do a reduction in force/ RIF, often of the most senior  programmers then after a time fill those vacancies with either contractors or direct hires who are much younger and less experienced so can be paid less.

  13. 13.

    MisterDancer

    @circular reasoning: Maybe seems obvious because I’m from an area that relies heavily on migrant farm labor while still maintaining stereotypes of the “lazy, mooching, drug lords we must build a wall to protect ourselves from!”

    Oh yes. There are…too many situations in the world, much less history, where these kinds of power imbalances occur(ed). And in those situations, you learn quickly to put up masks around your true feelings when anyone on the other side of that imbalance is around.

    And a major part of why is that those stereotypes serve to enforce that imbalance, while also forcing individuals to work outside safe capacities. To raise concerns, or even disgruntlement, is to lose what little leverage you have — and perhaps far more.

  14. 14.

    sdhays

    “Here I am wasting time pretending to do a ‘code review’ with the people too stupid or fucked to run away” for a company who’s actual problems are not code-related and mostly boil down to ‘I am horribly stupid, and also just horrible'”.

    Elmu could have built a shitty social media site with the workers he wanted and his own vision for considerably less than he spent buying Twitter and no widespread damage to his reputation.

  16. 16.

    Rich2506

    Never even occurred to me about the working/visa issues. I saw the “sausage fest” picture (and the “before” picture with all of the women) and thought immediately “Yeah, all young, single guys with no children. Probably all work from 6am to 9pm, go home, sleep, shower, shave and back to work.”

    I’m sure the “tough, macho” guys work from 5am to 11pm.

  17. 17.

    gene108

    I worked for an IT staffing firm for many years. Our H1-b employees were a lot more aggressive in demanding higher rates than American workers.

    Anecdotal of course, YMMV.

  18. 18.

    gene108

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Simplest ways to resolve problems with guest worker programs is to (1) eliminate country quotas* on GC’s issued, which leads to extreme backlogs (an Indian H1-b employee, who filed for a GC in May 2012 is eligible to start the final part of the GC process in November 2022) and (2) expand the categories of guest worker programs that can apply for GC’s.

    *Applies to family sponsorship for GC’s as well. Some Mexican family sponsorships have priority dates going back to 1998 or 1999.

  19. 19.

    Elizabelle

    Sausage fest, indeed.

    Someone needs to photoshop those H1Bs into emerald/blood diamond mining attire.  With Mr. Boss.

  20. 20.

    gene108

    @EmbraceYourInnerCrone:

    how is Elon qualified to review code anyway?

    He wrote some code, in like 1995, when he dropped out of college to grift in Silicon Valley.

    Elon was on a student visa. He worked here illegally for a couple of years, until he actually did graduate.

  22. 22.

    gene108

    @Elizabelle:

    I doubt most of them are on H1-b visas. Some probably are, but I doubt one company would have so many East Asian H1-b’s when 74.5% of H1-b visas are held by Indian nationals.

    The only South Asian looking people I see are two women in the back, and a couple of guys in the “second row”.

    They all look very young, probably most under 30, but other than that I can’t say more about the picture (oh yeah, mostly male).

    A lot of stereotyping to believe people in the picture can’t possibly be Americans. California is a majority minority state, Twitter HQ is in California. It could just be hiring a typical cross section of local computer science majors from nearby universities.

    https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/data/h-1b-petitions-by-gender-country-of-birth-fy2019.pdf

  24. 24.

    Spanish Moss

    @Lacuna Synecdoche:

    The front row is all male, but I think some of the women are shorter and thus harder to see in the back. Judging by hairstyles for the ones barely visible, it looks to me like 7 women and 17 men in the photo. Not sure that is unusual for a tech company. For my EDA company that would be a higher than usual number of women. Can’t disagree about the ratio being unhealthy!

  25. 25.

    Ken

    @EmbraceYourInnerCrone: And the stuff on the white board is Not code it is more like a process diagram,,,

    PROGRAMMER: “Oh, you don’t mean a code review, you want our services diagram!  Here’s the visio file with the 3Q22 architecture.”

    MUSK: “You’re fired.”

    (Three hundred man-hours later, the same diagram has been re-created on the whiteboard, except with multiple errors.)

  27. 27.

    mrmoshpotato

    Deleted.  Too insensitive after reading the post.

    Elon Sucks should deport himself into Sun.

  28. 28.

    Shalimar

    @sdhays: The whole point is to be boss of Twitter, not boss of some pathetic knock-off like Trump is.  To Elon, his ownership of Twitter has been incredibly successful.  The Trump poll got 800k likes.  “Twitter is ALIVE” from yesterday has gotten 1.4 million.  He has never gotten this much love before.  And he also cut payroll by 90% without anything bad happening so far.  When the advertisers come back, this will be the best period in Twitter’s history.

  31. 31.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Ken: Funniest thing I’ve seen on Twitter in a while, Grady Booch pointed out that this isn’t code but a services diagram, and some nobody was arguing with him about that.

  32. 32.

    Ken

    @Gin & Tonic:  some nobody was arguing with him

    Probably the same guy who was arguing with a European employment law attorney who said Musk did not follow the law when trying to terminate employment contracts in the EU.

  33. 33.

    MisterDancer

    @Starfish: This is what tech workers dress like.

    A lot of tech workers — myself certainly included — present more as Creatives than anything else. For example, the person who coined the term “open source” also writes poetry on the side.

    So the t-shirt thing is a long-held outward symbol of that positioning among many (not all) people doing tech, esp. programmers.

  36. 36.

    MisterDancer

    @schrodingers_cat: Zuck and Musk wear t-shirts so that they can pretend that they haven’t lost the common touch despite their billions.

    Sure, I guess? It wasn’t the point of my comment, which was about the other people (and other typical tech workers) in that picture, and why they dress as they do.

    That said, there’s a lot to unpack about why people with wealth — no matter your background and you’re money’s source — act as they do, and this isn’t a good thread for it.

  38. 38.

    Dadadadadadada

    @schrodingers_cat: I’ve read that Zuck wears t-shirts because he can’t be bothered to make decisions about something as silly as fashion. Which, frankly, is probably the most sympathetic and relatable thing about him.

  39. 39.

    schrodingers_cat

    OT tech question. Does the hive mind have recommendations for a KVM switch I want to share my monitor, keyboard and mouse between my laptop and desktop. Thanks.

    So a KVM with two USB and one HDMI inputs.

    Thanks.

  40. 40.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @schrodingers_cat: Startech makes some pretty good ones that won t break the bank. I ll have to look up the model number of the one I got my daughter it’s for one monitor with usb mouse and keyboard and audio, I think. I’ve had fairly good luck with Startech docks and cable adapters too. There’s also the Iogear GC562HU which has the advantage of being pretty small so takes less desk space.

  43. 43.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Come to think of it they all got that IT dork look about them, rather than programmers. IT, all the ego of a programmer, none of the talent. This will end well. lol

    And it worth keeping in mind Twitter’s BoD would have never sold Twitter to Elmo like they did if they weren’t sure Twitter was doomed and Elmo stupid offer was their best to get their money.

  46. 46.

    StringOnAStick

    @Geminid: We know someone who got laid off in the first round.  When Phony Stark announced he was buying the company, I asked him what he thought about it; he was excited because he had a lot of stock options and that price meant a lot of $ for him.  As all this first started and 2 days after he was laid off, he was still stanning a bit, saying Twitter needed to cut some payroll because it had grown too fast, and he was working his contacts to get his H1-B team members new positions so then can leave Twitter.  At this time I felt like a lot of his support of Twitter was from his loyalty to his team and pride in the work he’d done.  When I quoted this Twitter wag’s comment that “being on Twitter is like being a violin player on the Titanic making fun of the iceberg, and the iceberg hates you” he laughed uproariously.  Now I’m really curious about what he thinks of the last 2 weeks of events, and I will find out before the week is out what he thinks.  I suspect the scales have fallen from his eyes as he sees all the work that was done by so many being lit on fire.

  47. 47.

    VOR

    @Spanish Moss: Agree. A handful of years ago I attended a major IT conference. Just looking around, you could see the attendees were probably 90% male. I took an optional class which had 60 people in it, only 3 of which were female. There were lines at the men’s bathrooms, none at the women’s bathrooms. We badly need more women in IT.

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