Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

No one could have predicted…

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

“But what about the lurkers?”

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / $44 Worth of Entertainment

$44 Worth of Entertainment

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I have to admit I’ve been hate watching Elon’s many meltdowns on Twitter. One example: his discovery of something every app developer knows — that Apple takes a 30% cut of everything sold on the App Store by devs who do more than $1 million of business. If Elon ever read a book on his Kindle, maybe he’d wonder why Amazon doesn’t let you buy books directly from the Kindle app. (Hint: it’s because Jeff Bezos didn’t want Steve Jobs to get his 30% cut whenever Jeff sold a e-book.) It will be perhaps even more than $44 worth of entertainment when Apple and Google yank Twitter from their app stores after Musk turns it into another Gab (which isn’t on either app store). However, since Truth Social is still on the app stores, that’s probably too much to hope.

The latest mordant chuckle comes from Elon’s picture of his bedside table, which has two pistolas on it, along with a bunch of empty cans of diet caffeine-free Coke, the drink of manly men everywhere. (Not pictured: his bottle of lotion and a dirty sock.) Well it turns out that one of his little bang-bang “guns” is a replica flintlock, and the other is a replica of a video game gun. The reason is obvious: Elon has a bunch of security (probably ex-SEAL, ex-Mossad and ex-KGB), and those guys wouldn’t let this numpty go within a mile of an unsecured real gun.

While we’re on this loathsome subject, a few quick hits:

  • Elon isn’t going to make a phone and the right response is to point and laugh.
  • I signed up for Mastodon but I can’t see how it will scale, since the overhead of every server talking to every other server to exchange messages will ultimately swamp those servers. Social media scaling is hard enough without adding in the extra complexity of distributed servers.
  • I didn’t sign up for Post.News because there’s no fucking way I want to connect my LinkedIn with a social media site*. One of Twitter’s strengths is that it combines verified blue checks with anonymous clever folks like DougJ, who have tons of followers simply because their posts are good, no matter the identity of the source.
  • There may be many other Twitter alternatives, but they haven’t been discovered, at least by me. If one of these alternatives is compelling, it will struggle when it is flooded by even a fraction of the current Twitter user base.

I suppose I should close with a comment about the terrible fact that someone like Elon can destroy a company that actually did a bit of good in the world, but, frankly, I’m out of fucks to give on that count. We’re doomed for so many deeper reasons than some rich dude acting out his midlife crisis in 240 character increments.

(* To be clear, you don’t have to connect your LinkedIn, but Post.News’ tagline is “Real People, Real News and Civil Conversations”. That’s 1 for 3 as a Twitter replacement, as far as I’m concerned.)

Reader Interactions

117Comments

  1. 1.

    trollhattan

    Elon’s security perhaps remembers what happened when the other famous South African, Oscar Pistorius, got hold of a gun.

    “Just point it and say ‘pew-pew-pew’ boss.”

  2. 2.

    geg6

    Saw the bedside photo elsewhere and I cracked up.  The half dozen soda cans, the cheap fake guns…it’s like he’s an especially hopped-up-on-sugar, socially awkward 15-year-old boy who is trying to look cool.  The guy is 50 years old or so.  Grow the fuck up, Phony Stark.

  3. 3.

    Betty Cracker

    The meltdowns are amusing, but I’m already sick of the Muskrat show. It’s like having the neighborhood coffee shop where you like to visit with friends taken over by a loud, obnoxious asshole who lets loose a truckload of feces-flinging fascist monkeys. 

    I signed up for Mastodon twice. The first time, I never got a confirmation email, so I signed up on a different server. Never got a confirmation email on that one either. One of the sign-ups must’ve stuck because I got a notice from that server, but I can’t log in. So, fuck that noise.

    I am on the Post waiting list, but I had no idea you had to link a LinkedIn account. That makes it a non-starter for me too. Oh well. One less time-suck once Musk brings Twitter down.

  4. 4.

    davecb

    Mastadon doesn’t have to synchronize, unlike a video meeting, so it can be like the old netnews. News used “flooding” over slow phone lines to make sure everyone eventually got everything

  6. 6.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    There is something bleakly, hilariously appropriate in Elmo choosing a fake gun from out of Deus Ex. That’s the world that the right-wingers could well end up giving us while trying to roll back the clock to a 1950s that only existed in the limited imagination of television script writers.

    Plague, out-of-control technology, the poor getting poorer while the rich insulate themselves from it all, tools supposedly meant to fight terrorism being used to surveil and suppress any dissenters at all? It’s all there. Oh, and their Manhattan skyline omitted the Twin Towers for performance reasons, over a year before 9/11.

    Only problem is, none of us want to live in the Deus Ex future.

  7. 7.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    OT: listening to the O’Bros podcast, and they’re saying that the reason Kanye West asked for the Mar-A-Lardo meeting is because West wanted to ask trump to be his running mate. He wanted trump to take second billing. And trump was insulted and enraged. God I hope that’s true.

  8. 8.

    Kristine

    @Betty Cracker: You don’t have to link your LinkedIn account. On the application I filled out, it was optional

    FWIW, I hope Mastodon works through its growing pains and settles into whatever it can be. I’ve found some of the cool science and infosec accounts I followed on Twitter, along with some writers and artists I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. And I am slowly getting away from the daily doomscrolling that ruined my day more often than not. It’s not like it was helping solve the problems.

  9. 9.

    SFAW

    Tony Stark was a “genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.”
    Well, one outta four ain’t bad, I guess, Muskrat.

    ETA: And he seems to be doing his damnedest to make it 0-for-4.

  10. 10.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @SFAW: Yeah. If you threw Elmo into a cave with a box of scraps, I doubt he’d come out with anything impressive. Or useful.

  11. 11.

    SFAW

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: ​
     
    I heard the same thing re Kanye thinking he’d be at the top of the ticket. Not sure where I heard it, but it’s just the latest sign that he’s either nuts, stupid, or both. TFG taking second billing? Ri-i-i-ight.

  12. 12.

    $8 blue check mistermix

    @Kristine: That’s right – you don’t have to link to your LinkedIn account — I updated the post to make that clear.  But I don’t think a site that has a tagline “Real People, Real News, Civil Conversations” will accept “New York Times Pitchbot”, “Betty Cracker” or a dude who uses Nucky Thompson as his avatar and has a catchline “Read a fucking book” (me).

  14. 14.

    way2blue

    mistermix.  Correct me if I misread the Post. sign-up form.  But when I filled it out—adding social media links was optional.  (I don’t even have a LinkedIn account, nor any social media accounts….  )  I simply provided an email address.

  16. 16.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

    Yesterday I asked @elonmusk if, as a free speech advocate and a critic of Covid NPIs, whether he had any thoughts on the protests in China. Now as @neilsinhababu notes the vast majority of the replies are hidden and the exceptions are pro-PRC propaganda.

  21. 21.

    Tom Levenson

    I signed up for Post w/out including social media links. Got in off the waitlist in a couple of days. Have put up a couple of things there, but most of my effort is going on to Mastodon (@[email protected]). I just signed up for the first general-interest instance that would have me (@mstdn.social, which is where a fair number of my Twitter peeps went, was not accepting new folks when I got round to seeking a plan B).

    Right now I’m spending more time on social media than before, as I’m trying to figure out how it all works. That’s not sustainable; I was already trying to wean myself off Twitter before the Muskpocalypse. Who knows? Maybe I’ll just write a book.

  22. 22.

    RandomMonster

    @Betty Cracker: One less time-suck once Musk brings Twitter down.

    I left Twitter recently. If you have an iPhone, you know how it tells you at the end of the week your screen time vs. the previous week? Mine dropped quite a bit, which made me realize the depth of that time-suck for me. At least now I’m getting in more useful activities like reading and drawing.

  23. 23.

    The Moar You Know

    the reason Kanye West asked for the Mar-A-Lardo meeting is because West wanted to ask trump to be his running mate. He wanted trump to take second billing. And trump was insulted and enraged. God I hope that’s true.

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: this does seem to be the case.

    Someone needs to get Kanye some help.  I realize watching him wander around being rich and bipolar is entertaining as fuck, but this can’t end well and I’d like to see the inevitable tragedy, for once, be averted.

  24. 24.

    Roger Moore

    Elon isn’t going to make a phone and the right response is to point and laugh.

    I wouldn’t be too surprised if he did make a phone.  It’s not that hard to do.  You just take an off-the-shelf system on a chip board, pack it in a custom shell, and use a reskinned Android OS with your own app store in place of the Google one.  If you remember, there was some scammer who did this and sold it to MAGAs for an outrageous markup while making all kinds of over-the-top claims about how awesome it was.  I could easily imagine Musk doing the same thing.

  25. 25.

    azlib

    @davecb:

    Usenet originally ran over the UUCP (Unix to Unix Copy) protocol.  UUCP was a point to point protocol which ran initially over dialup phone lines or even dedicated lines driven by line drivers. It worked quite well for the time. Later on (in the late 80s) the NNTP protocol was developed which allowed Usenet to run over TCP/IP which with the wide deployment of the Internet pretty much obsoleted the old modem network.

    Early on before NNTP was developed you could actually run UUCP over TCP/IP which was a bit redundant since you were doing integrity checksums twice.

    Anyone with a computer could join Usenet. All you needed was a neighbor willing to share the feed. Needless to say, there was no centralized control. You could also decide which news feeds you wanted.

  27. 27.

    Betty Cracker

    @The Moar You Know: I have the same level of pity/concern for West as I do for Trump. Both exhibit textbook signs of mental disorders. Both are flaming narcissistic assholes. If a tragedy is inevitable, I just hope no innocent bystanders are harmed but otherwise DGAF.

  30. 30.

    Origuy

    There’s a picture floating around Twitter which is a Photoshopped version of Elmo’s bedside table, where the glass bottle has turned into a penis enlarger.

  32. 32.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Elmo beside guns. The other odd thing is that flintlock pistol is positively dinky by 18th century standards.

  33. 33.

    CaseyL

    I’m on Post and Mastodon (the New Zealand instance), and still kind of feeling my way through both.

    Mastodon’s vibe depends a lot on your home instance and how diligent/sensitive the managers are.  I’ve heard many stories of people from marginalized groups having a hard time due to “community standards” being overbroad and selectively enforced.  I have no idea if that’s universally the case, but it has upset me to hear about it at all.

    OTOH, I have found Mastodon to be more, um, Twitter-like in its ability – or my ability – to find and follow people and topics.  That’s a big plus.

    And Post, I just don’t know what it wants to be when it grows up.  You can make long-form posts, which is great, and leads to a really entertaining mix.  But I don’t think anyone’s using it as a source of breaking news, or for building an activist community.

  34. 34.

    azlib

    Global social media sites have to be distributed. You are not going to run the whole mess on a single server.  I suspect Twitter’s architecture is a geograhically dispersed set of server clusters in data centers around the globe. They are likely connected via a high speed backend network which synchronizes the content of the databases in near real time. The addresses used on the private network can be different than the addresses used on the public facing side Twitter.

    If you look at the IP address for twitter.com you will see it returns different IP addresses depending on your location which indicates you receive the service from different servers. There are protocols which return a DNS IP address which is “near” to your computer in a network sense.

  35. 35.

    Betty Cracker

    I suspect this is good news for Senator Warnock!

     Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Record 301K early votes cast in one day in Georgia runoff for US Senate

    @Sister Golden Bear: Good to know. Thanks!

  36. 36.

    MattF

    I’ll survive without Twitter. And, I suppose, without social media. What I’d like to see is a revival of blogging.

  38. 38.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    We’re doomed for so many deeper reasons than some rich dude acting out his midlife crisis in 240 character increments

    Why are we “doomed”?

  39. 39.

    Sloegin

    I’m on Post now as of yesterday, and the interface is very clean.  AKA it currently has about 10 percent of the functionality of other social media sites.  I created an account there just so my @twit name is the same over there.  Wanted to hop over to mastadon social, but oh, that’s for accounts with loads of followers, would you like a science mastadon or tech one, maybe sysadmin?  um… nah, I’ll explore mass blocking options first on twitter.

    Tribel?  Pffht, supposedly it’s run by some D hucksters.  Pass.

  41. 41.

    Jeffro

    Right on cue, ol’ Double Standards Ron DeSantis is publicly taking to Musk’s defense and saying that Congress needs to look into Apple’s “use of monopolistic power” to um er withdraw its advertising from another business um er also possibly not carry a product that facilitates hate speech.

    Appropriate use of government power, amirite?  (eyeroll)

    Then again, this is the guy who DOES think it’s appropriate to pull his puppet legislature’s strings to punish a major corporation for being LGBTQ-friendly. (double eyeroll)

    Dems: you’re the party of person AND corporate freedom now, let’s make some hay about it!

  43. 43.

    Geminid

    @SFAW: I find it rich that Kanye West propositioned Trump for second spot on the West ticket. Trump must have noticed how little impact his campaign announcement made the week before. He wanted to make a big splash but produced nary a ripple. Now a supposed supporter and ally wants Trump to play second fiddle. Trump can lay this off on West’s mental illness, but that raises the question: what about the rest of his followers?

  45. 45.

    Miss Bianca

    @rikyrah: Are we sure that’s not a DougJ post?

    Oh, right…political reality continues to outstrip the ability of political satire to keep up.

  49. 49.

    rikyrah

    Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) tweeted at 5:45 PM on Mon, Nov 28, 2022:
    Why do we need 51 senators rather than 50? Because right now at 50/50 every committee has a tie. Moving anything out of committee requires a superhuman effort. If Dems win a 51st seat, they’ll have committee majorities.

    The Georgia runoff MATTERS.

    Re-electing Warnock MATTERS.

     

    Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) tweeted at 5:49 PM on Mon, Nov 28, 2022:
    And why else? Because in 2024, out of 33 senate seats up for election, Dems will be defending 23, the GOP only 10.

    So any seat we pick up now gives us an edge in 2 years.
    (https://twitter.com/TristanSnell/status/1597377158372274176?t=UIulSWdNfJYg-mJBMoRgVQ&s=03)

  51. 51.

    rikyrah

    They all aren’t shyt to me.

     

    Chester A. Arthur (@ZacAKAMadu) tweeted at 4:59 PM on Mon, Nov 28, 2022:
    Normal-ish 2024 Republicans
    – Larry Hogan
    – John Kasich
    – Asa Hutchinson
    – Liz Cheney
    – Chris Christie

    White Nationalist 2024 Republicans
    – Donald Trump
    – Josh Hawley

    Trying to Play Both Sides
    – Ron DeSantis
    – Mike Pence
    – Mike Pompeo
    – Ted Cruz
    – Kristi Noem
    – Glenn Youngkin
    (https://twitter.com/ZacAKAMadu/status/1597364641084149762?t=5i7Uykt6VX7jy9ZiapzwCw&s=03)

  52. 52.

    Marmot

    We’re doomed for so many deeper reasons than some rich dude acting out his midlife crisis in 240 character increments.

    You mean Twitter’s doomed? Otherwise I don’t get this “we’re doomed” fad. Won’t someone please think of the Gokus?

  53. 53.

    rikyrah

    We need to find candidates RIGHT NOW for these districts, and start hammering the GOPers from the moment they take ANY vote in Congress.

    Daily Kos Elections (@DKElections) tweeted at 2:10 PM on Mon, Nov 21, 2022:
    There will likely be 18 Republicans in Biden districts in the 118th Congress—far more than the 5 Democrats in Trump districts. That gives Dems more targets in 2024. Pres-by-CD data from @DKElections

    (Four races are still uncalled but all current leaders will likely prevail) https://t.co/Y9OHdq88pd
    (https://twitter.com/DKElections/status/1594785225657225228?t=01G-y5FBOwf2J1a6g2_Hcw&s=03)

  54. 54.

    Alison Rose

    @rikyrah: It will never stop simultaneously amusing and depressing me to see super religious Christians buddying up to white supremacists. Like, damn, wait till they find out what color Jesus’ skin was!!!!!

  55. 55.

    Ken

    @rikyrah: Now [Masters will] advise the GOP on the path forward.

    “First, find a rich sugar daddy who will bankroll you for the primary.”

    “Shouldn’t they also bankroll you for the general election?”

    “No, the exposure during the primary is your ticket to the grift gravy train.”

  56. 56.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @UncleEbeneezer: Yes, these assholes West and Trump just have to creep on someone, and no one too the Left of Franco in their politics is going to let West near them, so that leaves Trump as the obvious target for West’s trolling.

  57. 57.

    WaterGirl

    @rikyrah: I’m glad to see so many people voting.  How to interpret that, though?

    Seems like that would have to be based on who is predicted to be voting, and that’s what we never know – because in this year and in this runoff, there’s no history that can accurately predict who is going to show up and vote, and who is not.

  58. 58.

    different-church-lady

    I’m going to go watch the sunset.

    (While I still can before someone figures out how to charge me for it.)

  59. 59.

    WaterGirl

    @rikyrah: It only makes sense if Blake Masters learned something from his loss.  Do we think that’s even possible?  I hope they do the same course correction after this post-mortem as they did after the last one!

  60. 60.

    Matt McIrvin

    I signed up on the Mastodon instance mathstodon.xyz, not so much because I think it will be a Twitter replacement as because I see it as a low-pressure venue for the kind of mathematics chatter that used to happen on Google+.

    But it seems to be creaking under the strain of the Twitter exodus right now.

    In related news, my Representative in Congress seems to be one of the few members who has signed up on Mastodon, though she hasn’t done anything with the account yet.

  62. 62.

    rikyrah

    As a Gen Xer, I think that this is true. My parents were of the Greatest Generation (they were both 40+ when I was born) and thus, being from the South (Mississippi and Tennessee), their entire lives were shaped by growing up in the Police State known as American Apartheid.

     

     

    💉💉💉💉 Flip the WI Supreme Court on 4/4/23 (@Needle_of_Arya) tweeted at 9:57 PM on Mon, Nov 28, 2022:
    My personal opinion is that Gen X broke along racial lines because our parents were Silent Generation.

    Silent Generation white people generally went to the grave angry that anything had changed since 1957. Silent Generation Black people lived through late-stage segregation.

     

    💉💉💉💉 Flip the WI Supreme Court on 4/4/23 (@Needle_of_Arya) tweeted at 10:26 PM on Mon, Nov 28, 2022:
    @Budda_in_Shadow and I have had conversations about the difference in the lives it makes in white Gen-Xers, if your parents are Boomers versus your parents being SG.

    So it turns out that Boomer parents tended to be more liberal than SG and likely transmitted far less bigotry.

     

    💉💉💉💉 Flip the WI Supreme Court on 4/4/23 (@Needle_of_Arya) tweeted at 0:07 AM on Tue, Nov 29, 2022:
    Black & white Gen X also diverged because Gen X was the first generation to live completely in a world where significant civil rights movements had not only begun, but were on a slow path towards fulfillment.

     

    💉💉💉💉 Flip the WI Supreme Court on 4/4/23 (@Needle_of_Arya) tweeted at 0:10 AM on Tue, Nov 29, 2022:
    Depending on what kind of family one grew up in, either your parents were the types who welcomed change, or they were the types that resisted & resented it. If your parents resisted & resented any & all social change, that attitude was passed to the next generation.

  63. 63.

    rikyrah

    @WaterGirl:

     

     I’m glad to see so many people voting.  How to interpret that, though?

     

    I have to cling to the conventional wisdom of:

    The more people that vote, the better it is for Democrats. 

  64. 64.

    Matt McIrvin

    @rikyrah: Yup.

    “Family Ties” was a lie: the Reagan Youth weren’t rebelling against their hippie Boomer parents, they were parroting their conservative Silent Generation (and early Boomer) parents. I went to school with those kids.

  66. 66.

    pacem appellant

    @davecb: @Matt McIrvin: The Fediverse developers are all well aware of the scaling issues and are addressing them. Mistermix’s concerns are not mine. A lot of anxiety over scale comes from a decade or more of walled-garden social media. But we forget that the World Web Wide existed, exists, and will continue to exist long after Twitter is buried deep in the ground. Scaling TCP/IP is a known problem, has been known since the 70s, and has had lots of clever computer scientists working out solutions.

    The Fediverse/Mastodon will be just fine without all the servers owned by one dude.

    The moderation problem (a human one) is the Fediverse’s main hot spot right now. And while everyone on Masto is gnashing their teeth over Content Warnings and Server Block, the background infrastructure is scaling exactly as its developers intended.

  68. 68.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @Sloegin: I went over to Wonkette’s website and signed up for their Mastodon instance, just to dip my toe in and see if I can figure out how to use Mastodon.  I got my verification email right away and signing up was easy

  72. 72.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Love to be a free-market, small-government conservative

    Florida’s Voice @FLVoiceNews

    WATCH: Ron DeSantis says Apple removing @elonmusk‘s Twitter from app store warrants Congressional response “That would be a huge, huge mistake, and it would be a really raw exercise of monopolistic power that I think would merit a response from the United States Congress.”

  75. 75.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    Don’t know all that much about alternatives though I read an article on them in some publication (may have been WaPo) – most of said alternatives have been discussed here…the one that hasn’t been so much and was a real blast from the past was Tumblr. I know that was set up to do “micro blogging” which seems like it would appeal to fans of blogs but really have no idea how it would be as a twitter substitute. I know Yahoo bought it for a bunch of money and then sold it for a pittance so…I guess it must have its flaws if it lost that much value.

  76. 76.

    cain

    @Roger Moore: With so many multiple scams and grifting going on – how do these marks have any money at all? I just find the whole thing kinda nutty. It’s like they go to the well and there is always water there.

  77. 77.

    cain

    @azlib: Hey don’t forget the Opus BBS – which was kind of like UUCP. I had a setup where it would during the night do a call up and download all the messages. USENET was quite large in terms of scale and my university had all the groups including the alt.* – which had such dubious groups like *gasp* alt.sex!

    The Opus BBS stuff was cool and my first group of people I bonded with were Science Fiction/Fantasy writers that I would later meet up at a convention.

  81. 81.

    Jinchi

    One of Twitter’s strengths is that it combines verified blue checks with anonymous clever folks like DougJ

    Does Twitter still do this? It seems like the new rule is that you can get a blue check and claim any name you like (as long as it isn’t “Elon Musk”).

  82. 82.

    Gravenstone

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: And trump was insulted and enraged.

    I did hear something about Trump screaming at West about elections and such. That sort of offer and corresponding ego abuse would certainly trigger him.

  83. 83.

    J R in WV

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: ​
     

    Ron DeSatan, or Ron DeSanctimonious, which is it, really? The guy strikes me as stranger than Ye in many ways. So UnAmerican in every way!! And so totally unaware of that simple and obvious fact.

  88. 88.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    Talking with various people from his other companies

    It’s a nice theory except the Boring Company is based on a pack of lies and gullible pols and media people pumping it up.
    It has real consequences. Musk’s bullshit led to cities and states NOT building mass transit in favor of his ridiculous “tunnel of self driving vehicles” idea.
    He’s not harmless at all. He causes harm.
    Why are so many fancy people so gullible? It isn’t education! They have very prestigious degrees! They are just the easiest marks in the world.

  89. 89.

    Kay

    Here’s what I bet happened with the Boring Company- why mayors and governors fell for Musk’s bullshit.

    Elizabeth Holmes used this in Theranos- she told investors and backers that all of her critics and doubters were “protecting incumbent industries” and “guarding the status quo” – the “savvy” fancy people loved that idea, they were willing to be completely cynical about blood scientists and test engineers BUT completely suspended all critical thinking when it came to Holmes.

    I bet Musk told them the “incumbent boring and excavation industries” were protecting their turf when people who know what they’re talking about said he was full of shit. Positioned himself as a brave “disrupter” – they just eat that shit up with a spoon.

  90. 90.

    tobie

    I’m likely in the minority but I like Mastodon. Following groups and hashtags is key for getting info. Some can be serious (#chinaprotest), others playful (#fountainpens). I haven’t signed up for the US politics hashtags because I need a break but may eventually. In the meantime I’m enjoying the number of German accounts and news sources I’m seeing. I picked an “instance” at random and haven’t felt the choice mattered much.

  94. 94.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    Here’s what I bet happened with the Boring Company- why mayors and governors fell for Musk’s bullshit.

     

    Mass transit always has a racial component to it. If folks can avoid that, and dealing with that, they will take the path of least resistance- every time.

  95. 95.

    Zzyzx

    The problem I’m having with mastodon is that my instance (I went for the jambands one) feels more like a newsgroup than the whatever the hell Twitter was.

    My friends list only has like 5 people on it right now and they rarely post. The server feed is just all on topic and, while not bad, isn’t very interesting. The federated feed is just complete randomness. There’s no stickiness for me there.

  97. 97.

    Jinchi

    @Kay:I think there are a lot of people in politics who measure genius by the size of your bank account. These people are “obviously” smarter than us. What right do we have to challenge them?

    As long as Musk is among the richest men in the world, he’ll be fine. God help him if he loses everything and the bankers come looking for their money back. He could end up in the dock, like Holmes and SBF.​​​

  98. 98.

    Miss Bianca

    @Kay:

    they were willing to be completely cynical about blood scientists and test engineers BUT completely suspended all critical thinking when it came to Holmes.

    I remember absolutely devouring that book Bad Blood about the whole Theranos scandal. And yeah, that “cult of cynical savvy” seems to have been a big part of the BS “mystique” about Holmes. Being a young blonde female probably had a bit to do with it as well.

    I bet Musk told them the “incumbent boring and excavation industries” were protecting their turf when people who know what they’re talking about said he was full of shit.

    And I bet you’re on to something with that theory.

  99. 99.

    Jinchi

    @tobie:

    My connection to Twitter is almost entirely via links from media and this blog. If they find a better place to source information, I’ll probably forget that Twitter even exists.

  100. 100.

    Miss Bianca

    @Jinchi:

    God help him if he loses all his money and the bankers come looking for their money back. He could end up in the dock, like Holmes and SBF.

    Oh, please, oh please…

  101. 101.

    $8 blue check mistermix

    @What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:

    […] Tumblr. I know that was set up to do “micro blogging” which seems like it would appeal to fans of blogs but really have no idea how it would be as a twitter substitute. I know Yahoo bought it for a bunch of money and then sold it for a pittance so…I guess it must have its flaws if it lost that much value.

    It was purchased and then — this is important — banned porn.  Tumblr was a huge microblogging platform for people posting and re-posting porn.  It died a fairly quick death after that.

    This is a lesson for the Post.News, Mastodons, etc. of the world that want to promote “civil discourse”.   Not just the porn part, but also the clapbacks from no-names to blue checks.  Twitter allows porn and clapbacks.

  102. 102.

    Bobby Thomson

    @Roger Moore: if you read the article, the “new app store” was just open source Play Store.  As I understand it, the hypothesized Musk workarounds always assume ability to sell the app through Google Play, which is like the economists’ famous assumed can opener.

  103. 103.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    Elizabeth Holmes is a good example of the unfortunate ability of a smart , well connected con artist convincing the “smart people” that they are the next cool innovation.  Someone I work with thought Holmes (and Musk) were brilliant and were going to change the world.  Elizabeth Holmes did not graduate from Stanford she quit in her sophomore year, did not EVER study anything related to biology/hematology or any related field.

    But she grew up in Washington, DC and had a parent who was I believe a congressional staffer, while the other parent worked  for USAID.   She had influential, government adjacent people willing to vouch for her and invest in her company.  And she had the pretty, blonde looks to get people to believe she was sincere.   I think she had brains, she just used them for a massive con, that could have killed people because her magic, lab in box from a drop of blood did not give accurate results.  And certainly could not test for dozens and dozens of conditions simultaneously.   I wonder how many good inventions that might actually help people never get investors or press because their inventors are not well connected, and well off.

  105. 105.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I was genuinely asking. There’s problems for sure, but I feel with time and effort they’re surmountable. I don’t feel doomed as much anymore. The midterm results really gave me a sense of relief; a lot of people care and it’s absolutely possible the Republicans can be beat back

  106. 106.

    pacem appellant

    @Zzyzx: When I joined the Fedi three years ago, my feed was like that. I built up a good collection of follows and followers in the intervening time, but it didn’t happen overnight. Right now, with the Twitter Migration, my feed is blowing up, and I’m having too much to sift through now.

  107. 107.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: Positioned himself as a brave “disrupter” – they just eat that shit up with a spoon.

    I’m sure that’s right, he appealed to their egos by saying he knew more than people who had been doing this for years, and because of the decades-long trend to discount experts, they went along with him. I don’t know why people think whole industries need to be “disrupted” – there’s a reason taxi drivers were vetted and bonded, as many people found out to their chagrin. I’m not saying there aren’t changes that could make things better, but there’s no need to destroy whole industries just to find out later that there is often a reason why things are the way they are. I’m just waiting for someone to start selling bundles of streaming channels, just like cable or satellite – it might be already happening! Ala carte is expensive, that’s why there are packages!

    Atrios for one has been saying for years that Musk is a fraud and a huckster, and he’s taking a lot of pleasure in finally being publicly proven right.

  108. 108.

    Kay

    @Miss Bianca:

    To me it’s like “apricot pits cure cancer and big pharma and doctors won’t tell you because they would be out of a job!”

    Intense suspicion and vetting of big pharma and doctors but none at all for the snake oil apricot pit guy.

    It’s weird. If you’re ultra savvy and sophisticated and sure everyone operates cynically doesn’t that apply to these huckesters and conmen too?

  109. 109.

    Zzyzx

    @pacem appellant: the problem I have with it right now is the local feed. It makes it feel more like a newsgroup where I worry that things might be off topic or I could be dominating conversation, where on Twitter, I was just talking to the void unless someone chose to follow me.

  111. 111.

    Hamlet of Melnibone

    I’m enjoying Mastodon.  I joined one of the big instances.  I’m at

    @[email protected]

    One big piece of advice is not to use the official app.  It doesn’t have many features, is buggy, and most importantly I couldn’t figure out how to look at the Local and Federated feeds. I moved to MetaText and found it to be much better, but there are a bunch of good 3rd party options.

    Mastodon doesn’t have any kind of algorithm pushing you content, so when you start it can be hard to figure out who to follow.  You can search by hashtags that interest you and follow those people.  On a bigger instance, the Local feed is a good place to start as well.  That shows all of the public posts of users on your server, so it is a bit of a firehose.  You’ll see a lot of stuff that may not be what you are looking for, but you’ll see interesting posts and you can start following the people that interest you until your personal feed is busy enough to keep you interested.  The Federated feed includes all of the local server’s posts and all of the posts of people that are followed by someone on that server.  On my instance it is too much junk for me to look at, but on a smaller server it might be useful.

    When you post, include appropriate hashtags so that people searching on those hashtags find you.  People typically do an #introduction post at some point so that people can find them.  Searching on the #introduction hashtag is a good way to find other new users to follow.

    Mastodon has a lot less of the “gotta get more followers so I can go viral” folks and a lot more people just trying to connect about their interests.  It’s a lot healthier place than Twitter, IMO.

  113. 113.

    MazeDancer

    I’m on Post with the same anonymous nym I use at Twitter.

    And also signed up with at Mastodon. But since I truly do not like Mastodon  unlikely to use.

    Am grateful  for some kind of useable emergency refuge place if Twitter mplodes

  116. 116.

    wombat probabilty cloud

    @tobie: I signed up for a Dutch instance, based on their site rules (https://mastodon.world/about), which so far has worked well. On my phone, metatext is friendlier than the other apps I’ve tried. As others have pointed out, there may be severe issues in scaling as membership in mastodon becomes mammoth, but I wonder if there may be ways to circumvent that.

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