Maybe I’m way off base, but I’m seeing a correlation between the idea that people should leave Twitter since Musk is turning it into a right-wing cesspool and the notion that folks who live on the West Coast should secede and leave red states to their fate. I get the many ways the situations aren’t analogous; for starters, participating on a social media platform is a trivial choice for most of us.
Where I see a similarity is in the idea that the “red-pilled” would leave us in peace if they had their own space. They won’t. That doesn’t mean liberals have an obligation to remain on Musk’s Twitter any more than a liberal born in Bugtussle, Texas has to stay there — if your safety and personal peace of mind draw you elsewhere, by all means, go. But realize that the escape is incomplete and possibly temporary.
That’s in part because the people who have decided that “cancel culture” is the greatest threat to civilization ever — greater than Nazis, even — have too much money, power and influence to be sidelined and ignored. Cancel culture is what this idiotic “Twitter Files” bullshit over the weekend is/was all about, and even if Musk makes Twitter radioactive, right-wing pols, religious cranks and flinchy media figures will keep banging the cancel culture drum because they’ve got a direct stake in the outcome.
Take this NYT article on the “Twitter Files” — a classic of the “view from nowhere” genre (gift link here):
The so-called Twitter Files, released Friday evening by the independent journalist Matt Taibbi, set off a firestorm among pundits, media ethicists and lawmakers in both parties. It also offered a window into the fractured modern landscape of news, where a story’s reception is often shaped by readers’ assumptions about the motivations of both reporters and subjects…
Mr. Musk and Mr. Taibbi framed the exchanges as evidence of rank censorship and pernicious influence by liberals. Many others — even some ardent Twitter critics — were less impressed, saying the exchanges merely showed a group of executives earnestly debating how to deal with an unconfirmed news report that was based on information from a stolen laptop…
The central role of Mr. Taibbi, a polarizing figure in journalism circles, set off its own uproar.
Once a major voice of the political left, Mr. Taibbi rose to prominence by presenting himself as an unencumbered truth teller. He is perhaps best known for labeling Goldman Sachs a “vampire squid” in an article that galvanized public outrage toward Wall Street. But his commentary about former President Donald J. Trump diverged from the views of many Democrats — for instance, he was skeptical of claims of collusion between Russia and Mr. Trump’s campaign — and his fan base shifted.
Musk and Taibbi’s alleged motive — highlighting “evidence of rank censorship and pernicious influence by liberals” — is presented on equal footing with and/or instead of facts that can be gleaned via objective analysis of the material, i.e., that the Biden campaign wasn’t in a position to “censor” anything and that non-Murdoch news organizations were trying to understand the provenance of the alleged laptop content along with Twitter executives before blasting it out.
But the reporter is onto something when he says “a story’s reception is often shaped by readers’ assumptions about the motivations of both reporters and subjects.” You’re damn right it is. As a media consumer, I make no apologies for applying the lens of the publishers’ and reporters’ priors when evaluating content. Therefore, anything breathlessly hyped by Musk and tediously dripped out by Taibbi will be consumed — if it’s consumed at all — with a massive grain of salt.
The NYT article credulously implies that Taibbi is the same old truthteller he always was but that his “fan base shifted” when he expressed skepticism about allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. That’s bullshit. It’s true that Taibbi acquired fans on the right when he started producing content they found useful in the “even the liberal…” sense, but Taibbi shifted first, and before he fled Rolling Stone to join the rest of the cancel culture warriors on Substack, he gave his version of why:
Suddenly, news articles appeared arguing people like myself and Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept were rushing to judgment, calling us bullies whose writings were intended to leave reporters “cowed” and likely to “back down from aggressive coverage of Trump.”
This was baffling. One of the most common criticisms of people like Greenwald, Michael Tracey, Aaron Mate, Rania Khalek, Max Blumenthal, Jordan Chariton and many others is that Russiagate “skeptics” — I hate that term, because it implies skepticism isn’t normal and healthy in this job — were really secret Trump partisans, part of a “horseshoe” pact between far left and far right to focus attention on the minor foibles of the center instead of Trump’s more serious misdeeds. Even I received this label, and I once wrote a book about Trump called Insane Clown President.
Formal pact or no, it’s hard not to draw conclusions about their agenda when self-described independent journalists consistently apply a double standard in their coverage of political figures. It’s also hard not to notice the formerly crusading muckrakers’ indifference to the massive stench of white collar crime and public corruption emanating from the Trump campaign, Trump White House and post-presidential Trump bunkers. And that used to be exactly the kind of story Taibbi covered.
I don’t claim to know why people do what they do. But so many pillars of the Contrarian Industrial Complex who found that their “fan base shifted” are men of a certain age who exited cushy sinecures at around the time sexual harassment controversies like Shitty Media Men came to light, Taibbi very much included. Others found themselves singed in public arguments about race and trans rights and similarly retreated to the (highly profitable!) Substack barricades.
Weird how so many shitty (mostly) middle-aged (mostly) men simultaneously acquired an aversion to “the pernicious influence by liberals” — as if that’s the 21st century equivalent of buying a sportscar upon hitting the big 5-0. I wish these dickheads would just buy a bimmer instead of wrecking Twitter and undermining democracy, but we live in complicated times. And there’s no escaping that.
Open thread.
The Moar You Know
As a native Californian, let me get this out of the way – secession is madness, unless the deal somehow comes with our own nuclear arsenal, which it will not.
Otherwise, you can look at Ukraine and see exactly how secession will work out.
The Moar You Know
A BMW just doesn’t own the libs in the way it used to. You gotta get one of those giant pickmeup trucks. I parked next to one of those goddamn things the other day, got out and walked up to the grille. The damn hood is roughly the same height as my forehead. I am six foot two.
ETtheLibrarian
I have debated with myself about staying on Twitter.
My bestie left when he let tRump back on saying that insurrection was a line for her. I don’t disagree.
On the one side, I don’t want to cede the field so to speak. BUT I don’t want to stay if that means giving him users. Elon is banking on people staying. He expects that most won’t like any of the alternatives or find them too complicated or can’t decided so why not just stay.
Conundrum.
PaulB
I regard the secession talk as about 90% blowing off steam, as just another way to show frustration. It’s much the same as the talk of people leaving the U.S. to go to New Zealand. They don’t really mean it, and virtually none of them do it, but it’s another shorthand way of saying, “This sucks.”
For the most part, it’s harmless. So, sure, remind them that we can’t do that, that even if we could, the cost would be unacceptable, that there are far too many good people trapped in those states and counties we deplore, and so on, but otherwise, just let it go. Life’s too short to fret about something like that.
Betty, you left out one “mostly”: Weird how so many shitty (mostly) middle-aged (mostly) white (mostly) men….
pacem appellant
At this point, one cannot ethically consume Twitter. Once it’s no longer commercially viable, it’s toast. It never really was making money, and that that’s 4chan, he’ll be lucky to get Mike Lindell to advertise on the platform. In two months, it’ll start to be filed with Yahoo! and MySpace; interesting but otherwise inconsequential footnotes in the history of the Information Age.
ian
Re: Taibbi (from the Reuters link posted by B.C.)
Anyone familiar with Mr. Silverman’s work would know that Kompromat
Taibbi is a dupe of Putin. His actions he so blithely writes of in Russia certainly were captured by FSB monitors. Nothing he says or writes needed to be taken at face value. Anything he publishes should be viewed as potential propaganda, not as reasonable things to debate.
pacem appellant
@The Moar You Know: We aren’t going to secede, though tempting as it might be. Without an army and a navy (and not blanket assurances from the U.S. for security), it’s very unsafe to secede.
And as sucky as it might be to reside in the union, depending on the federal government’s current intransigence, CA is much mightier as an economic power with the US government backing it.
Omnes Omnibus
A pretty strong statement.
pacem appellant
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s my spicy take of the day.
Zzyzx
If me posting on Twitter was making enough money for the place to be profitable, it wouldn’t have been sold in the first place. It was never worth $44 billion regardless of my posts about Phish tour.
As for wanting to leave the country, I mean I get it. My patriotic loyalty as it is is much more about the Bellingham to Eugene I-5 corridor than the entirety of this vast place. It can get frustrating because a few bad decisions made in the 1780s made a system that can (and now is) being gamed and it can’t be fixed because that’s subject to the same issues. I get the temptation to just say screw it.
But yeah, practically, I have no idea how it could ever work. Missoula would want to be part of greater Seattle (as would Coeur D’alene as we’re their economy) but eastern WA wouldn’t and neither would, well, Coeur D’alene.
So it’s a pleasant fantasy, a it would be nice to live in some sort of Cascadia that goes from BC to San Jose and east to Glacier NP or something, but it’s not something people are proposing as a serious solution.
Roger Moore
@ETtheLibrarian:
I’m halfway on quitting Twitter. I also saw allowing Trump back on as a red line. When he came back on, I announced I was going to stop posting, and I haven’t posted since. OTOH, I have checked Twitter since then. It would be easier if I had been able to get on one of the Mastodon servers, but they mostly seem to be overwhelmed and having trouble with new users.
What I have noticed is that Twitter seems to be changing in a number of ways I’m unhappy with. One I have really noticed is the search has changed in a way I really don’t like. For some search terms, notably the ones on their “What’s happening” list, it tries to be smart rather than do a literal search for the term you’re using. It’s really annoying, because it frequently brings in stuff that isn’t related. I don’t know why they made the change, but it’s really obvious.
In any case, I suspect Twitter will soon die from the company’s inability to keep it functioning. Musk has cut too many staff, and they are going to have a hell of a time keeping it functioning with the people they have, much less adding all the features he wants.
Omnes Omnibus
@pacem appellant: California gave the US Nixon, Reagan, and the property tax revolt among other things. You don’t get to just walk away from the country because you got the disease first and have now gotten over it.
Brachiator
I live in California, but I would never in a billion years suggest that the state leave the union and leave everyone else to suffer. This is a profoundly dumbass idea.
If Musk turns Twitter into a raging cesspool of bullshit, people will have to decide whether to stay or flee. I’ve read that once Musk sealed the deal on his purchase, racist and sexist messages escalated exponentially.
We live in a time where angry white men have decided that entertainment and social spaces belong to them and only to them. Apparently, this is fine with Elon.
Since Twitter is international, maybe EU regulations will provide some check against Musk.
But Twitter has proven its value and suggests a model. If people have a need for something like Twitter, a competitor will emerge.
Ejoiner
I finally dropped twitter last week – no one I followed is around (yes, mostly academic historians and progressive voices) and the few that are being swamped with nonsense. Twitter is in flames and will burn out and cease to be a media instrument for anyone except those on the right. I have no obligation to sit in there yelling into the void. Something else will come along – probably pretty soon – and in a few years I’ll jump back in again.
Secession, on the other hand, is a totally different beast….
lee
Since this is a ‘twitter/musk’ thread I’ve got an slightly interesting story:
Long before Elon purchased twitter, I had blocked him and his topic. Shortly after he purchased twitter, that block was removed.
So far it has been removed 3 times. I posted on reddit about this and others have chimed in that the same thing has occurred and in some cases their account started following Elon.
He really is turning Twitter into his own little playground where all the fascists can stay and play.
Have not bailed yet.
Sister Golden Bear
@PaulB: As a native Californian, I agree. Sometimes venting is just venting.
It’s kind of the analogy of how gay bars provide temporarily safe spaces. We know the haters are still outside, but for a few hours we don’t have to think about them.
Succession is madness for a variety of reasons, but dealing with the red state fuckheads is especially galling when you live in state where we have made progress, and could make a lot more, if weren’t for the massive inequities of Senate representation — why should my vote count far less than someone in Montana? — that means we can’t have nice things. Plus the ability of reich-wingers to judge shop in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal knowing that they’ll find a judge will to decide verdict first and then make reasoning to support it.
Miss Bianca
Do BMWs really own the libs, though? (as always, zeroing in on *the* most salient point of the post!)
Hoodie
The purpose of abandoning Twitter is not to escape the red-pill crowd. They were already there, albeit in toned-down form. No, the purpose is to make sure that Elon loses $44 billion because of his abject failure to understand that ownership of an entity with public stakeholders implies a certain level of public responsibility. There have to be consequences for rich assholes who think they can insert themselves into the public sphere and do whatever they want just because they have money. No different than stripping Kanye of his brand deals.
Zzyzx
To be honest, post-Covid I’ve lost a lot of my (already weak) ability to socialize in real life. I’m going to need to have some kind of social medium in my life. Facebook is evil in different ways and I have it locked down to my actual friends anyway. The potential Twitter replacements aren’t sticky for me. So right now I’m staying on Twitter until it dies. When and if my friends all jump to the same place, I might move there.
Cameron
I don’t think states leaving is desirable, and it may not be legal. Individuals, though, should feel no hesitation about departing for friendlier places to settle. I may do that myself if the Republicans keep trying to flush Florida down the drain.
Ruckus
@The Moar You Know:
Around where I live in the eastern San Gabriel valley those pickups are seeming at least 25% of the vehicles on the road. (unscientific wild ass estimate based upon their size and noise level) But the majority of them are jacked up higher than stock and with big off road tires. Bet they get really good milage at an average of $4.75/gal. Maybe even as high as 18mpg.
Roger Moore
@Zzyzx:
I want to push back on this point. Yes, our Constitution is imperfect, but we managed to have a functioning government under it for the vast majority of our history. What’s changed isn’t that the Constitution is broken, it’s that our politics is broken. The Constitution isn’t magic. Any Constitution is ultimately just a bunch of words, and they require human agency to continue functioning. Even the best written Constitution will struggle when a substantial minority of the electorate would rather burn everything to the ground than accept electoral defeat.
pacem appellant
@Omnes Omnibus: Ouch! That’s gonna leave a mark.
I do get incensed when I’m in Socal and see billboards for the Ronald Reagan presidential library. Last time it was for a patriotic paeon to WWII veterans.
Matt McIrvin
@Hoodie: It reminds me of the discussion about whether people should stop consuming everything related to the Harry Potter franchise–“separating art from the artist” and the merits of the fandom are one thing, but then there’s the direct problem that consuming or even incidentally promoting this stuff puts money in JK Rowling’s pocket which she will use to do harm. So I’ve seen a case made for a kind of damnatio memoriae–no fanfic; no fandom discussion; act as if the Harry Potter books and movies and theme-park rides and all the rest never existed, because the alternative is doing direct harm to trans people.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@Omnes Omnibus: I’ve become convinced accepting employment isn’t acceptable right now. More or less anywhere. I still do it, gots to live.
Miss Bianca
@Ruckus: I would doubt any of those jacked-up monsters make 18 mpg. That’s the *best* that our non-jacked-up 2003 F250 makes. Makes it pretty consistently, tho’, and right happy I am about it, too!
Roger Moore
@Sister Golden Bear:
I agree that secession is madness as long as the US continues to function as a democracy. I see no reason why any state should stay in the union if that ceases to be the case.
Tom Q
Betty, I want to strongly endorse what you say down near the end of this post: it seems to me the guys (and it’s almost entirely guys) I hear constantly moaning about cancel culture — whose careers, as far as I can see, are thriving — seem to live in fear that some sexual faux pas in their past will rise up and catch them in the metoo.
It’s not that I don’t think there have been excesses in that vein — I’ll always believe Al Franken got railroaded — but these guys seem obsessed with this possibility, and they genuinely act as if the Republican rush to fascism is of minor importance by comparison. I don’t know what secret sins these guys have in their pasts, but it’s flipped their politics to a scary degree.
Hoodie
@Matt McIrvin: Twitter isn’t art; it’s pretty easily replicated. If it is abandoned, something else will arise to serve that particular function. Right now, some people seem willing to effectively give Musk a monopoly on a certain form of social media just because people are invested in their Twitter personae.
Ksmiami
@pacem appellant: it’s dangerous for liberals to be on Twitter. Time to go
Omnes Omnibus
@Qrop Non Sequitur: Have you considered being born to wealthy parents? I hear it can be a great career path.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
As one on twit rather regularly beforeEM, I find it to be a far worse cesspool than it was. I now go on just to see the results, once or twice a day and very briefly then. It is mostly a rather full cesspool at the moment, some decent folks staying just to make the attempt to keep it from getting worse. Right now that takes a lot more effort and blocking, sort of making a subset of users who have always done that, and one that seems like a lost cause, as well. Plus I’d bet a lot of people do not want to give EM any level of even sideways support. I sure do not.
Ksmiami
@Omnes Omnibus: babies need to be smarter about picking their parents…
Zzyzx
Maybe it’s just how my feed is cultivated but Twitter is little different for me today than it was 2 months ago. I expect some bugs will take over but I’m not being drowned by right wing idiots or anything.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Ruckus: I have yet to see one of those on the road that wouldn’t be massively improved by three or four passes through a car crusher. There’s a long list of reasons why you don’t find jacked-up trucks like that in Europe.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: Again, I have never let the algorithm choose my content on Twitter, and the only thing I am seeing is that some voices are gone. I am not seeing right-wing shit except in screen shots, and that is the same as before.
Matt McIrvin
@Hoodie: Network effect produces tremendous inertia and is a barrier to new services taking over. The #1 thing people want in a social-media network is for their friends to already be there. Right now, people seem to be trying to make bets on which potential Twitter successor will take over, but maybe none of them will because people decide Twitter’s flaws are still tolerable.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@Omnes Omnibus: High earners, but that stopped getting me too far after about high school.
Zzyzx
@Roger Moore: I mean, sure, any constitution will eventually have some issues. It’s just that the rural/urban divide and the Internet/cable TV were unforeseen. We’re moving into a direction of minority rule and so far the only thing saving us is that the Republican primaries are bringing candidates that can’t quite appeal to enough people in the general election.
But yeah, our system requires good faith actors and we’re starting to lose them. It’s a scary time for sure.
Ken
Are the unrelated posts they’re recommending all from Musk? It might be just (“just”) part of what @lee was talking about. Putting a narcissist in chart of something like this is like putting the
fox in chart of the henhouserat in charge of the lever that gives an electric shock to the pleasure center of its brain.Parfigliano
Twitter. Never had an account. It’s in the name Twit.
Roger Moore
@Zzyzx:
Any constitution requires good-faith actors. If you don’t have them, nothing will work, no matter how well written your Constitution is. I agree there are serious problems with ours that make it easier for a minority to take control, but that’s a difference of degree rather than kind.
lowtechcyclist
@pacem appellant:
I think there’s a much stronger case that one cannot ethically be a spectator to NFL football. But that’s another argument for another day.
The thing about Twitter is, it’s going to stand or fall on Elmo’s (in)ability to attract advertisers back. Whether I’m too lazy to switch over to Mastodon just yet isn’t going to make a difference. (I almost never see ads there anyway.) If the crazies really do wind up overrunning the parts of Twitter where I hang out, then of course I’ll leave because it won’t be a good place to be anymore. So far, there’s really been no change in that respect that I can see.
SoupCatcher
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: One of the silliest things I’ve seen was a generic SUV driving in Cavtat, Croatia (just south of Dubrovnik) around twenty years ago. Over here (eta: in the US), now, the SUV would look tiny compared to the typical ones. But there, it was hugely out of place with everything. It felt wrong at a fundamental level.
MattF
If you read it without allowing the algorithm to feed you, Twitter isn’t so bad. Even so, I’ve signed up with Mathstodon.xyz, a mathematics-oriented Mastodon server. I applied and was approved overnight, so if you’re a mathematical person looking for a server, you might try it. This fits in with my feeling that what makes Twitter valuable are the various little domain-specific groupuscules. Maybe what we’ll end up with are several ways to access a lot of domain-specific groupings. Which would not be so bad.
pacem appellant
@Ksmiami: d’accord.
Get off of corporate social media. Facebook, too, if you can (which, in my opinion, is even more unethical than Twitter).
Hoodie
@Matt McIrvin: That’s obviously what Musk is betting on. However, is Twitter so essential that people can’t drop out for six months, a year or even longer? We did have other ways of communicating before Twitter. This is about the lowest-effort boycott I can think of. It’s not like you’re doing without food or fuel or even depriving a lot of people of their livelihoods. However, seems like some people are saying “Hey, I can’t see the fascists, con artists and disinformation peddlers from my chair and I really do love to Tweet, so I’m cool with Apartheid Clyde”, which is particularly galling given that this asshole got hideously rich with generous help from government subsidies.
rikyrah
Taibbi is a piece of shyt. Why wouldn’t anyone who knows that he’s a piece of shyt not be suspect of anything that he does?
Same with Musk. A White Afrikaner racist who has a anti-discrimination lawsuit against him.
Freedom of Speech means the capability to spam and harass non-Whites on Twitter without impunity.
I don’t blame folks for leaving.
And, as soon as a viable alternative is presented, I’m gone too.
Nicole
Good post, Betty, and I think you’re right that it’s #metoo that freaked out a lot of these guys. They were happy to be liberals as long as that still included “straight white men on the top of the pile” in the unspoken platform.
I don’t know why so many men (so many of whom end up in media) find it so hard just not to touch women without consent. Geez louise, we get told from the time we’re wee bairns to keep our hands to ourselves; at what point do these douchecanoes decide, “Nah, I think I’m just gonna grab this woman’s rear end.”
lowtechcyclist
@Ejoiner:
It is weird how we have such different experiences there.
Roger Moore
@Ken:
No. What it seems to be is that they algorithm is trying to figure out what the real topic of your search query is and provide posts relevant to that topic, rather than just look for the literal search term. Some of the results are relevant, but not all of them, and that is generally worse than what I saw before.
As I said, this seems to be a bigger problem with Twitter’s own topics. In that case, they seem to be trying to identify a trending topic, and their search term is just a key to the trending topic they’ve identified. It’s not a bad idea in principle, but I find the implementation lacking.
karen marie
@Omnes Omnibus: But accurate.
pacem appellant
@lowtechcyclist: On the Great Orange Satan, any time there’s a discussion of Herschel Walker and his mental illness, I jump in to explain how he has CTE (not DPD), that it’s a result of our maddening national obsession with the world’s dumbest sport, and that one can pity Walker and still kick his ass to the curb.
lowtechcyclist
@MattF:
That’s the one I signed up with too, being a professional math geek and all. Haven’t done anything further there yet, but at least I’ve got my lifeboat if I need it.
Matt McIrvin
I get gas at BJ’s, a discount membership place, because it happens to be convenient for me and I am, I think, coming out ahead on it. But people who get gas at BJ’s tend to be the most price-conscious of buyers. So often it seems like everyone there other than me is driving the most absurd vehicles–not just SUVs, but Escalades and Expeditions and F-250s. At busy times it’s easy for the place to get blocked up so that you can’t get to the furthest pumps at all just because these monstro-trucks are in the way. And it takes a long time to fill up the tank on one of these things.
I know that the people who buy these things do so in part because they make them feel comfortable and safe. But I think I’d be constantly anxious driving one–boosted way high up above the road like you’re on a stepladder, in a vehicle so wide that it can’t really fit in a lane. I’d be afraid of scraping against everything. My car is a bit too long for my comfort as it is.
Omnes Omnibus
@karen marie: Others’ mileage may vary.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
This may be put to the test in 2024.
twbrandt (formerly tom)
I was on twitter for 14 years, and enjoyed it as long as I kept my follows list in check. I was very much on the fence when Elon took it over, because I still found value in keeping up with former work colleagues, and following people who had interesting things on a wide variety of topics. But when he posted a pic of an actual nazi I deleted my account. I was not going to give my time, attention, and eyeballs to that asshole.
I was already on a mastodon instance that revolved mostly around local issues, and spend my social media budget there.
lowtechcyclist
@pacem appellant:
Don’t know about their relative ethics, but I personally loathe FB due to my own experiences there. So I just don’t go there.
Matt McIrvin
@MattF: I got in on Mathstodon too but my impression is that it’s having growing pains. Might not be trivial to sign up now.
Steeplejack
@Zzyzx:
Same here. I don’t have a Twitter account and self-curate my Twitter exposure via browser. The one change I have noticed is that one of the accounts I follow daily (@Zeddary) has protected his tweets, I think in preparation for moving to Mastodon. (He may already be there; I haven’t checked.)
trollhattan
@Matt McIrvin: Worst fuel nightmare involves being stuck in a July 3 Costco line behind an RV towing a boat or 6-foot tall ORV, with extra jerry cans.
Betty Cracker
@PaulB: & @Sister Golden Bear: FWIW, I agree with y’all that sometimes venting is just venting — probably 99% of the time. I saw someone getting dragged for that in an earlier thread, and if I had happened upon it when it was a live convo, I would have chimed in to say so.
MattF
@Matt McIrvin: I applied early this morning (at around 2 am) and was approved an hour later.
lowtechcyclist
@pacem appellant:
Has Herschel been diagnosed with CTE? It certainly wouldn’t surprise me. And yeah, that’s what it’s about for me. Even if my watching didn’t put a red cent in Dan Snyder’s (or any other NFL owner’s or exec’s) wallet, the fact is I’d still be deriving entertainment from watching people damage each other’s brains in that way.
FelonyGovt
Another Californian here echoing that we aren’t going to secede and don’t really want to. It’s just frustration. Just as I see a surprising number of Republican evangelicals, racists, homophobes, anti-Semites, and wanna-be book burners here in California (hell, even in my town), I understand that “red” states are full of people who are good guys.
We’re not safe from these people anywhere. I don’t know what the answer is. For myself, I’ve left Twitter, leaving my tens of followers devastated, I’m sure. (I do know my leaving has frustrated one of my friends, who “liked” my few tweets, retweets etc. that it was beginning to creep me out).
karen marie
@Steeplejack: He has: @[email protected]
I am finding Mastodon to be quite easy to adapt to. One of the things I did was create a list where I put the people I’m really interested in so I can see their posts without having to swim through the gigantic federated feed.
It’s a bit baffling to me that people complain it’s complicated. I have not found that to be the case.
Kent
I’m not a power user of Twitter. In fact until the Ukraine war I never even used it and now mostly just use it to follow various Ukraine war reports and local HS sports scores.
For me the issue isn’t really about whether Kanye or Trump or the Nazi’s can post on Twitter. I honestly don’t give a shit about that one way or the other.
For me the issue is whether the people l follow and the subjects I read get overwhelmed by a tsunami of porn, racism, misogyny, and financial scams due to lack of content moderation. If that happens I’ll be gone in a heartbeat and won’t be back.
I have no interest filtering through 50 garbage posts in order to find the one piece of content I’m looking for. And that is honestly where I see Twitter going given what Elon Musk is doing.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
Honestly, I only keep my Twitter accounts because they’re my primary line of communication to some people I don’t want to lose touch with. But I don’t use it on my phone or tablet, just my computer, and basically never with their default client; I’ve used Tweetdeck for it since Tweetdeck was an independent Twitter client. I’ve set up replacement accounts on Mastodon, but I haven’t really started using them yet; I suppose I’m waiting for Twitter to suffer a catastrophic technical failure, which I’m still betting will be what ultimately kills it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack:
I’ve downloaded my Twitter archive and set up a mastodon.cloud account. I am ready to go when the time comes, but I still think Twitter provides more value than its potential replacements. I am not an early adopter as a rule so I am waiting to see what grows from the wreckage.
trollhattan
@lee: I liken his buying Twitter to buying an extremely expensive collectable car then beating it with chains and hammers.
It can never recover the purchase price.
He either does not care, or is so thumplingly self-centered as to believe lending his name to Twitter is sufficient for it to succeed beyond anything that it could otherwise have achieved. A coin flip, that.
It will limp along, a shadow of its former self and not cease to exist. Perhaps eventually become a property of Walmart or Tata Motors.
Bobby Thomson
I think Gore Vidal had a quote about that. Something about when asked why he did not leave the United States when he was so critical of it, and the answer being that he did not want to become a victim of its foreign policy.
scav
@Matt McIrvin: A favorite hobby after an early-season snowstorm is to count up the massive 4-wheel drives v. regular cars that have skidded off the road. It’s so often the 4-wheel I do it for the safety! crowd that fails to adjust (I’ve got 4-wheels to handle just this!) and crashes out while the little old lady in a teeny car creeps safely home.
trollhattan
@lowtechcyclist: CTE is identified post-mortem.
cain
@karen marie: They are trying to apply twitter and the algorithms – they are used to one timeline and find having to look at content in multiple timelines to be likely confusing.
I would describe mastodon as 3 lines of content – the content that you’re getting from people you follow, the local “neighborhood” content that could be subject related based on what mastodon server you joined on, and finally the federated “water hose” content that comes from all over.
cain
@Omnes Omnibus: amount of account registration seems to be quite large – literally half a million users a month. But account registration doesnt’ mean active users of course.
Bobby Thomson
Twitter is quite manageable if you block all advertisers and assholes.
Old Man Shadow
I deactivated my Twitter account not because I wanted to “escape”, but because I refuse to allow myself to be monetized by a company platforming Nazis.
Granted, it’s a small gesture that costs me little since I never had a large following on Twitter and I do not use it to do my job, but it’s a gesture I felt I needed to make.
Ruckus
I toured New Zealand for 3 weeks in 2003. I really, really like the place. I did look into moving there, I have job skills that are sellable but there is an age limit, so that you will be productive long enough to earn the retirement benefits of allowing another body on the islands and I was at the outer limit and would be too old by the time immigration could happen. It is a beautiful place and yes it has earthquakes, but I’m used to them, I live in CA. Oh well life goes on.
One the concept of CA, secession and all, it seems that CA (and possibly OR and WA) is almost a separate country now. Yes there is still a very red contingent in CA and they mostly are in areas that resemble very red states, lower population rates, more rural. And I say this while knowing that cities like Atlanta change the political landscape quite a bit, some states fight modern liberal life like it’s the second coming of the devil. But I think a lot of what is being fought is that if one has limited exposure to a change such as what CA has gone through, it seems like it will change everything. And it will. There is still racism here in CA, it just is better than it was. There is still quite a segment of the population that seems like this century – this change has passed by. Ride public transit and you will see them. They aren’t hidden unless you refuse to see them. And to me that is a lot of the problem, many people, especially those in power in the “old states” are exactly the people that fought change here in CA. They do not want equality, a better life for all, they want is a better life for them. And fuck everyone else. CA is trying and has made some pretty good steps. But it is a long process, it might take a generation, or 3. And it might never get all the way, but continuing to try seemingly goes a very long way. I believe that contrary to some general thought, the entire country will get there, it will just take a few more lifetimes and a change in the old guard dying a natural death, which is what had to happen in CA. (Mitch McConnell and Joe Manchin come to mind as examples)
AM in NC
@Tom Q: This is really interesting to hear. I’ve always said that it simply cannot be that every single woman I have ever gotten close enough with to talk about sexual assault/harrassment has at least one story where it’s happened to her, without there ALSO being a lot of “good, liberal men” out there doing some of the harassing and assaulting. It is just pervasive.
I have 2 sons, and from the time they were in late elementary school onwards, I have had many conversations with them about “enthusiastic consent”. Namely, if everyone involved (including yourself!) isn’t enthusiastically participating – not just not resisting what’s happening, but enthusiastically participating – you have a duty to slow down/stop. A duty to yourself or to the people you are with.
This made sense to them and is absolutely NOT what they are seeing in porn (which, FYI, is absolutely ubiquitous among both boys and girls). Sex education is absolutely happening; it’s just happening through a lot of male-centered porn).
Zzyzx
TBH, that’s my worry about Mastodon. What makes Twitter so interesting to me is that I found some good people and they talk to other interesting people and I get swept up in conversations I wouldn’t expect. Like a subset of Phish Twitter is 1-2 removes from a lot of sex workers so I learned a lot about that industry and also got better up to speed on LBGTQ rights by reading their conversations. Others are really into urbanism or current situation in China or…
Mastodon feels like it’ll be more on topic. I’m on a jamband mastodon server and the local feed is 75% jambands, 20% food/sports, and maybe 5% everything else.
Whereas on Twitter it’s all over the place and I never know what I’ll see when I get there. When it works, it’s like a party filled with interesting conversations from intelligent people that you can join at will. Mastodon feels more like an academic convention on a topic. It has its own appeal, but not what I want.
rikyrah
JJ in NH (@JustJoshinNH) tweeted at 9:19 AM on Mon, Dec 05, 2022:
The corn caucus and snow primary gave the bend the knee crowd legitimacy they didn’t deserve in a party they wanted to hijack. See how their teeth gnash when they’re decentered.
(https://twitter.com/JustJoshinNH/status/1599785608704012288?t=Bv2AU1MamLlx4dB3HDVSaA&s=03)
rikyrah
The ENTIRE PHUCK!!
Matthew Murphy supports Sen. Raphael Warnock (@CDMatthewMurphy) tweeted at 10:18 AM on Mon, Dec 05, 2022:
Alito “joking” about Black children in KKK robes. This is where we are at SCOTUS in this absurd #303Creative case.
(https://twitter.com/CDMatthewMurphy/status/1599800288738955264?t=L4o8tBn6OZKRW6CCogru-g&s=03)
Steeplejack
@karen marie:
I knew Zeddary had set up an account on Mastodon, but I haven’t checked it to see if there’s any activity. I think when he set it up he said (on Twitter) that it was a place-holder for when Twitter got too awful.
Omnes Omnibus
@Zzyzx:
That is one of the reasons that I have been against threaded comments on this blog. I like the weird juxtapositions, etc., that come from conversations not being siloed.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Same.
Betty Cracker
@trollhattan: Great analogy. I keep hoping the dickhead will get bored and wander off because so far, for me personally, the worst thing about him being the owner is that a) Musk’s antics keep the conversation revolving around him, and b) lots of interesting people have decamped. I believe the stats about the influx of creeps and hate speech, etc., but because of how I curate my account and view tweets, I don’t see it unless someone posts it into my timeline to denounce it. That is basically what it was like when Trump was on the platform as a sitting POTUS.
A Man for All Seaonings (formerly Geeno)
@The Moar You Know:
THIS – I cannot envision a scenario where Red America doesn’t try to conquer Blue America. They’re bullies, and they would try to bully us militarily at the nation level.
Booger
Roger Moore
@lowtechcyclist:
AFAIK, the standard test for CTE can only be performed post-mortem. It’s terrifying that a number of the NFL players who committed suicide deliberately did it in a way that would preserve their brain so they could be tested. They’re working on tests that work on live subjects, but those tests haven’t been approved yet.
kindness
Succession. Odd how it always seems to come up wrt the West Coast trying to succeed. As a Californian I think succession won’t be a viable option unless (which I hope will never happen) A) evangelicals/theocrats succeed in passing national laws making all citizens subject to their Handmaiden Tales world, which those theocrats happily admit they are striving for or B) other states (red ones) pull out first running up a new Confederacy. Were that to happen, no blue state will send their children there as armed combatants, trying to re-unite the Union.
The ball really is completely in the court of our reddest states.
rikyrah
Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) tweeted at 11:08 AM on Mon, Dec 05, 2022:
Big news:
Sen. Thom Tillis and Kyrsten Sinema have reached a deal on a framework of immigration reforms:
*Protections for 2 million Dreamers
*New resources to speed processing asylum seekers
*Fast removal of migrants who don’t qualify
Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) tweeted at 11:47 AM on Mon, Dec 05, 2022:
This is the last chance for non-Trumpy GOP senators to reform our immigration system. Once the MAGA House takes over, there is zero possibility of any progress. Kevin McCarthy has told us so himself:
https://t.co/3pT0l1Y97V https://t.co/gWMjDEyy8d
(https://twitter.com/ThePlumLineGS/status/1599822673214951424?t=UNyrxcKFTs5faCWuhdqVuQ&s=03)
Ksmiami
@pacem appellant: oh I never trusted Zuckerberg and Facebook is a scam…
sdhays
The analogy is fundamentally flawed. Twitter has been taken over by a nasty moron. Twitter users aren’t stake holders (or “citizens”) in Twitter; they are the product. It’s perfectly reasonable and rational to find another platform to produce content, one that isn’t run by someone who hates you. Elmu made a bet that he can shit all over Twitter while figuring out what to do and the product, the users, would ride it out. I’m rooting for him to discover he’s wrong.
It’s unfortunate, but that’s where it is. It’s done. I don’t fault anyone for wanting to stay – that’s your choice. But I just can’t agree with equating it with foolish talk of secession (which is a boring discussion). I do hope that a viable Twitter replacement gains critical mass sooner rather than later so that we can forget Twitter altogether.
Kay
The “you know I’m not PC” makes me so sad, because that was such a big part of the time these men came up and rose to fame in- women were always, always apologizing and defensive for mild, polite requests that they stop pestering other women (I include myself in this- I was SO CAREFUL not to offend them or appear honestly concerned) and always with the qualifier: “I’m not PC” or “I’m not a feminist”
Ugh. It makes me wince looking back on it and I see young women on the Left doing the same thing now in or order to remain “cool” and mollify middle aged men on the Left. They’ve gone backward. It’s a shame.
Almost Retired
@Omnes Omnibus: Exactly. We passed Proposition 8 banning marriage equality in Two Thousand Fucking Eight, so we’re not so long out of the loony bin here.
Zzyzx
@A Man for All Seaonings (formerly Geeno): I use Free Republic as my baseline. It’s a hardcore conservative site but not Parler or 8chan or something like that that actively courts Nazis.
In the lead up, weeks after the 2020 election, there suddenly were a lot of Pinochet helicopter memes and “Don’t kick California out. This is OUR COUNTRY! They don’t get one square inch!!!” comments.
Ultimately if the US falls into real fascism, I don’t know where there would be that would be safe to escape, so I am trying to stay and fight (albeit from a very safe spot) rather than to leave.
rikyrah
Tee ‘Openly Black’ Gray (@niknup21) tweeted at 10:00 AM on Mon, Dec 05, 2022:
As a reminder…
Both political parties were created by white men for the benefit of white men. Black people as a whole tend to vote for less harm… so saying Black people voting for Democrats is “plantation thinking” is less about us because plantations WERE NOT our idea
(https://twitter.com/niknup21/status/1599795780285476864?t=sFsgk8C0cOnjrDkfJbKCpg&s=03)
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
I think this is the main reason he followed through and bought Twitter. The man is a raging narcissist, so making everything about him all the time is completely predictable. I find the bit about people who blocked him discovering that Twitter has removed their blocks- sometimes several times- very telling.
trollhattan
@Roger Moore: Aaron Hernandez. Murdered the guy dating his fiancee’s sister, commits suicide at 27. The level of CTE shocked the professionals.
rikyrah
TELL IT
NewDemocrat4Life (@reesetheone1) tweeted at 8:58 AM on Mon, Dec 05, 2022:
Progressives have a hard time understanding that most African American voters are MODERATES and won’t accept their hard left revolutionary Bold structural change plans because they KNOW white voters will vote against it.
(https://twitter.com/reesetheone1/status/1599780282705448960?t=SMoZLUpNgHF2GVizYMtl0Q&s=03)
brendancalling
Outside of Instagram, which I use to share pictures and chat with my kid, I have zero use for social media. None. Zero.
Burn it all to the ground.
artem1s
@pacem appellant:
Without
an army and a navy (and not blanket assurances from the U.S. for security),a reliable source of fresh water for CA agriculture it’svery unsafeimpossible to secede.azlib
@The Moar You Know:
And they are the same people who complain abut high gas prices. I think their heads will explode with Ford’s electric pickup truck which will out accelerate and gas fueled pickup.
rikyrah
Say it again for those in the bleachers!
Jaime Harrison, DNC Chair (@harrisonjaime) tweeted at 8:41 AM on Mon, Dec 05, 2022:
Zero tolerance- ZERO for any disrespect or dismissal of Black voters.
These voters are always pragmatic & clear-eyed. Their knees have never buckled. Their spines have been stiffened in the perpetual fight for freedom and equality for ALL of US! #RESPECT
(https://twitter.com/harrisonjaime/status/1599776062870724608?t=hwRGJnoNFZuvWuJBPjl1Rg&s=03)
Anotherlurker
@lowtechcyclist: I left FB on Jan. 8, 2021. The reason I left is that I saw a post on a friend’s page, by one of his friends, that was very supportive of the Jan. 6th traitors.
I tried to resist, but I had to tell him what I thought of him and his ilk. I felt bad about crashing my friend’s page, but it felt so good to really say what was on my mind regarding the horrors in the Capital.
I don’t miss FB, at all!
Omnes Omnibus
I saw this today because I am still on Twitter. I would not have seen it anywhere else. That, to me, is why it still provides value.
rikyrah
Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) tweeted at 11:45 PM on Sun, Dec 04, 2022:
Look, I don’t care if you think you give a shit about women’s volleyball or not. You need to watch this point.
https://t.co/oREGw7oyoa
(https://twitter.com/Super70sSports/status/1599641160242565120?t=gvSxhU67wMgY4xYBuzrs0g&s=03)
rikyrah
What Biden Has Done (@[email protected]) (@What46HasDone) tweeted at 7:18 PM on Sun, Dec 04, 2022:
Ah, yes. “no, you don’t understand, we hate South Carolina because they are the bad kind of black, not the good kind of black! See, you’re the real racists!”
Explain to me how this is different than Republicans talk about black people?
What Biden Has Done (@[email protected]) (@What46HasDone) tweeted at 7:22 PM on Sun, Dec 04, 2022:
Progressives have limited success in the Democratic Party on a national level because they haven’t figured out how to appeal to black voters. So they have two choices:
1. Do the work to improve their standing.
2. Denigrate and mock them.
Y’all are choosing the wrong door.
(https://twitter.com/What46HasDone/status/1599574849604661249?t=r-t8EiHuGaeYy4_EmBnkhg&s=03)
trollhattan
@kindness: The only place I ever see it brought up and discussed is poliblogs. Never in day-to-day life, even living in a political town.
Now, splitting California in two (or more) has been a constant topic since the 19th century (never mind the State of Jefferson yahoos). That’s different from succession, though.
The US west has too much federal land and critical infrastructure for separation to be viable. (We get to keep the Pacific Fleet too, right? How about the boomers at Keyport?)
Matt McIrvin
@karen marie: I think a lot of the extra cognitive load is up front, in figuring out what Mastodon actually is, and which instance if any you might want to be on (or if it even matters), and how to sign up for it. That is actually more complicated than Twitter. Once you’re on it, it’s just a lot like Twitter–the main extra complication is finding people who know who are not on your instance.
Kay
It’s funny because what Musk is doing is not an attack “on the Left”. It’s an attack on normie Democrats. They’re the people who support Biden, oppose DeSantis and are horrified by the rise of actual Nazis in the US.
Normie Democrats came out in droves due to the far Right outlawing abortion. “The Left” said little or nothing about it- it’s not a hipster-cool enough issue for them and they’re horrible on womens issues anyway. “The Left” has actually been either affirmatively, agressively bad or MIA on all these issues.
Elon and his Substack employees are now fighting mainstream Democrats.
He doesn’t get how this politics thing works at all.
trollhattan
@artem1s: We would “feed ourselves” regardless. Whether it makes since to continue supplying the globe with its almonds needs to be debated even with the present structure.
A Man for All Seaonings (formerly Geeno)
@Zzyzx: Stay and resist is all you can do.
Lady WereBear
@Roger Moore: I can send you an invite to my server. Contact Email at my nym
@[email protected]
West of the Rockies
California has 40+ million people and three of them on BJ have vented about secession. Here in NorCal one sees stupid State of Jefferson signs frequently (rightwing/libertarian secession kooks). It don’t mean a thing. CA isn’t going anywhere, and neither are all the red state secessionists either.
It’s venting in the same way that all white men suck or all boomers suck is venting.
WereBear
The titles/land conservation was a scam. Heads up. Didn’t get my certfication. At least some of it went to trees.
Betty Cracker
@sdhays: It’s definitely a dumb analogy if you take it literally, but the point I was trying to make is that you can’t really escape the dickheads so easily in either case. They have too much of the money, power and cultural control.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: For a long time I’ve noticed a public disconnect on the idea of who is really a “radical far leftist”.
The people who self-identify as radical far leftists tend to obsess about foreign policy and economics, and sometimes even actively dismiss civil rights/race/gender/sex stuff as a distraction. (Though I think it’s changed somewhat–this was more true circa 2008-2016 than it is today.)
But to the average low-info non-liberal voter, “radical leftism” is 100% about race/sex/gender, and it’s normie Democrats who are freaking them out by radicalizing on these issues. It’s why you hear them say that the Democratic Party has gone insanely far left. It’s not about socialism. It’s stuff like trans rights and not wanting cops to murder black people and having a black/Asian vice president.
In 2016, there were some low-info people who regarded Bernie Sanders as less radical than Hillary Clinton. That was what they were talking about.
Sometimes, the leftists in category 1 pick up on this and say, see, the Democrats just need to drop that civil-rights crap, concentrate on pocketbook socialism and the white lumpenproletariat will flock to them. But that’s really Murc’s Law (“only Democrats have agency”) stuff–they forget that conservatives can and will bang the drum by making these issues salient, and insisting on full fascism as the only alternative to “wokeness”.
Miss Bianca
@trollhattan: I think you all are actually talking about “secession”, not “succession”, right? Or are my political instincts even more borked than I thought?
JoyceH
@Cameron:
MAY NOT be legal? How about it’s not legal? I mean, we fought a whole Civil War on that question. And it’s not.
Chip Daniels
There is no escaping bigots because their entire purpose is to seek out and harm those they hate.
No forces Proud Boys to grab a gun and stand outside a drag show. The bigots have an insatiable desire to inflict pain and suffering on their hated Outgroups and they will go to any lengths to achieve it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: Succexy?
trollhattan
@Miss Bianca: I’m still wrestling with “accession” after the queen died.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
Oh, you don’t have to tell me. I have been active in D politics locally for decades. I can’t count how many times some asshole Lefty man has lectured me on how it’s worse to be killed by a drone than it is to be sexually harrassed. Because that’s the comparison they make- they’re not killing US women with drones so women should all shut up. I have been told it here, on this site. That I have it better than women in Afghanistan so I guess should be grateful. Oddly this never applies to men- US men can complain although they have it much better than a contract worker on a container ship, for example.
kindness
@West of the Rockies: With all due respect if I travel up to the Sierras above me (Tuolumne, Calaveras) I see State of Jefferson signs all over. They’re impotent of course. Those areas, were they to suceed, would have no income to run their own state. Those signs are angry twits who resent the rest of us here in CA. Sucks to be them.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: Heh! : ) Don’t remember that one.
UncleEbeneezer
@rikyrah: This! I’ve seen this first-hand with discussions about Defund The Police, locally, when that was the hot topic. White Progressives in our local police-reform coalition were very into Defund but the Black members (who we always defer to) were like “Nah. That will never fly with white voters in Pasadena” and wisely suggested we use better framings like “Fund Our Lives” for the same concept of moving $ from police to better resources (which, it should be mentioned, is a concept that has been around since the ’60’s at least, and really is nothing new or revolutionary.)
The Moar You Know
@lowtechcyclist: Mike Vick’s dogmurder operation and the NFL’s frantic whitewashing of it was the end of the line for me. I haven’t watched a game since then.
Had it not been Vick, it would have been Seau’s suicide. The game is killing humans as well, has been for a long time.
You run out of excuses sooner or later to keep patronizing a service you like when it’s harming others. I feel bad for those who use and like Twitter. But Elon’s going to make this a real easy decision for you all.
Omnes Omnibus
@trollhattan:
Charles succeeded his mother as monarch, but acceded to the throne.
Bill Arnold
@PaulB:
I regard people who argue for secession as enemies/opponents of the United States of America, and put them in the same category as instigators of the Treasonous Slaveholders’ Rebellion. Harsh, but reasonable.
WereBear
@Zzyzx: I haven’t been there since musk announced thingamajig could come back.
But I feared it would deteriorate into a right wing hell scape and there you are. Anything you even invite Trump to touch, dies.
In this case, I don’t mean turning it into Gab lite. He’s fired vital personnel who keep the lights on.
Unless he hires them back it will become very crashey.
Geminid
@trollhattan: Ah yes, the Ohio class submarines called “Boomers” in Navy lingo.
I got a laugh out of an interview Hew Hewitt did with retired NATO Commander Admiral James Stavrides. Hewitt never served, but he’s a real military geek who loves the jargon. So he and Stavrides got into 10 minute conversation about the challenge the Navy had replacing all the Boomers that were reaching retirement age.
pacem appellant
@lowtechcyclist: He has not been diagnosed with CTE. He was misdiagnosed by quack doctor Jerry Mundgadzi with Multiple Personality Disorder.
Walker does not have MPD Nor does he have Dissociative Personality Disorder, the successor diagnosis to MPD. Mundgadzi does not believe in DPD, he’s a strong proponent of the non-existent MPD.
If Walker were to get proper psychiatric care, he’d get the right diagnosis and the right treatment. Unfortunately, he was treated by a color-blind doctor who believes that brain disorders can be diagnosed by patients coloring in pictures of a brain with crayons. I am not making that up.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@ian: Likely, not blackmail, there has been a history of Russian dictator fan bois in the American media since the Russian Revolution. Tabbi is just a Tankies.
Martin
I would like to think that I’m the most unvarnished/annoying California booster on this site, so I would like to at least be consulted if we’re going to adopt a ‘this is what Californians think’ stance.
I gets the exasperation that leads to wanting CA to secede – I really do. But apart from the Jefferson confederates, Californians don’t want to secede. We’ve got a future presidential candidate in a really good spot right now and I’ve got a representative that would make a really good AG, and those two are buds.
cain
@Zzyzx:
I have that very experience with Mastodon. I’m following all kinds of people – lot of science, history, DEI and politics – the politics are more constrained – but it is a delight to actually have real conversations that doesn’t have right wing trolls coming in talking about deluded shit.
I think if you pick the right boosters, you’ll find plenty of great content.
The Moar You Know
@A Man for All Seaonings (formerly Geeno): more to the point, we have all the money.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Twitter was pretty awful long before Musk; I noticed when I joined Twitter someone how Twitter knew my politics and was recommending other twitter users to me along those lines. That place was always working on drama.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
I saw a lot of change in my timeline, a lot of crap. I also saw ads, almost every other post and I never used to see ads. The comments I’ve seen are all over the place in this regard, from massive change to no change at all. And to me that seem highly possible, because so much of the twitter experience was how your experience is set up. And I believe that comes somewhat in not only what you chose to see but the order in which you chose. We may have set the same limits but we may have set them in a different order and that would/could effect how our desired place on twitter looked and acted. I believe there is an element of logic taken as to our choices and choice direction and that is reflected in the rules and direction our posts and comments are handled. IOW a blocking logic chain is set up by your use of the rules, same as a posting logic chain is set up by your commenting style. And with so many leaving twit we see that the chains fall apart, as long as the length of a comment chain has a set minimum, which it will always show depending on how far down you go on most chains, IOW your use of the site also sets what you see. Your contacts, your posts, the comments you read.
Bill Arnold
@pacem appellant:
Fuck off. You’re trying to bully other people about ethics; that is itself ethically dubious, especially since there are not currently viable alternatives for many communities using twitter.
When twitter collapses for technical/regulatory reasons, fine, people will be forced to leave.
When the communities using it find that it is no longer viable because of disruption even with blocks, fine, they’ll leave.
Your argument is essentially that “everyone knows that the ethical way to defeat Fascists is to run away”.
Scout211
Changing the subject . . . the reporters at SCOTUS today are commenting on the Christianist majority favoring the website designer who doesn’t want to work with same sex couples.
It’s not a surprise, but it is really worrisome and yeah, depressing.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Worth point out that Musk, Twitter, the Techno Bros and that oh so evil Silicon Valley (as in 40 miles south of San Fransisco) that so many of you here hate is all in California. Along with Orange County, the hillbilly heaven that is Jefferson, Imperial Valley (moar south than the south) Hoover Institute (the home of the neo cons and kill the poor Libertarian).
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
My youngest is a Lefty – a lot of his opinions are sort of half baked but I would expect taht at his age and he’s smart and curious and ultimately a social person and an optimist so I think the worse “horseshoe” people on the Left will eventually bore him. I listened to Chapo Traphouse with him once though and they did this (kind of funny, initially) take on women like me- mainstream older female liberal Democrats – and I get it, we’re an identifiable group – “moms” – but as it went on it took on this mean tone so I asked him “why do they only talk about groups of women like that?” and he admitted that mostof their sneering about liberals is directed at “moms”.
I don’t want him to become one of these men. I would be ashamed.
Martin
@cain: I agree. Mastodon has been a lot better for forming relationships and having conversations. The thing I miss from Twitter is the official sources – government agencies, reporters, news outlets, recognized experts. They’re slow in coming. Having an instance just for journalists is the right direction, though, because that bakes in verification.
I’m on an urbanist oriented server and it’s pretty great. I have both my social graph and feed and the local feed is also pretty great. Federated surfaces Twitter folk that have come over since I last chased down my Twitter follows.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@Bill Arnold: I’m not a big fan of the secession talk, myself, but I’m interested in whether states have plans in place for any potential form of national dissolution.
Miss Bianca
@Martin: There’s an instance just for journalists? I’d consider joining that one. I just wonder if I’d be considered a “journalist”, by their standards – being naught but a lowly local government meetings reporter.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I suspect the big moment for Chapo-style reactionary dirtbag leftism has passed. Some of these people will never change, but helping to get Trump in office was a real embarrassment.
It also seems like trans rights is sort of a watershed civil rights issue where Gen Z kids my daughter’s age see themselves out in front of even normie liberals; anyone who opposes trans rights is going to be Not Cool with them.
Bill Arnold
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes, this.
There are not many blogs with this characteristic.
Also, the comment section here is indexed by search engines (at least the early parts of a thread), so if e.g. one drops a name, there is a spicy possibility it will be read by the person attached to that name, links in comments can link the blog with rest of the web, and similar games such as SEO can be played.
Matt McIrvin
…Also, while there’s always another woman to demonize, they don’t really have Hillary Clinton to kick around any more. She filled this almost unique role where there was this ancient misogynistic/anti-feminist beef with her that had metastasized into general “don’t like her, can’t put my finger on it” vibes, but also she was connected to Bill and thereby to an older, more moderate form of liberalism that angered leftists, and there was all the deranged conspiracy shit swirling about them that the fringe left never entirely ignored.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It’s part of how Cal is just scaled down version of the US, The Jefferson Hillbies destroyed their own economies in the ’80s, ’cause who need a sustainable lumber industry? Live off the cities while screaming about socialism.
The Moar You Know
@rikyrah: Read some of his other comments today as well. There is no question he is gunning for a lifetime achievement award of “all-time asshole of the Supreme Court” and I think he’s gonna make it happen.
Whatever choke chain Roberts had on the guy is long gone.
Sister Golden Bear
@kindness: I’ve also seen lots of Jefferson signs up in the Western Sierras as well as the far northern counties along 101 (i.e. Fort Bragg and points north. It’ll never happen, if for no other reason than they’re utterly dependent on by subsidized by the parts of the CA that they despise.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Moar You Know: The idea that the Chief Justice post makes someone somehow the boss of any of the other Justices always amuses me.
Sister Golden Bear
@The Moar You Know: And all the technology — and worst of all for the Red Hats, we produce the pron that they piously claim not to watch.
sdhays
@Betty Cracker: It’s still not a bad idea to leave platforms run by people who are nasty and unstable. At the individual level, who wants to always be concerned with whatever
stinking turdbrilliant idea Musk has plopped out today when you could post your content somewhere else that better appreciates you?At the macro-level, Musk’s actions deserve to turn his $54b investment into a cool $0. You can be an asshole or you can try to foster a sustainable community. You shouldn’t be able to just buy a community and wallow in your assholishness and have the community stick around.
rikyrah
Paris Marx (@parismarx) tweeted at 6:22 AM on Wed, Nov 30, 2022:
Across the US, Elon Musk’s Boring Company shows up to pitch transport projects far below the cost of competitors. Local officials get excited and pursue them, for cost savings and to associate with Musk.
But when it has to deliver, the company disappears.
Paris Marx (@parismarx) tweeted at 6:22 AM on Wed, Nov 30, 2022:
The Boring Company’s actions show Elon Musk isn’t ushering in a transport revolution; he’s stifling any hope of one.
In the same way the Hyperloop’s purpose was to get high-speed rail canceled, Boring is distracting from transport projects that could make a real difference.
Paris Marx (@parismarx) tweeted at 6:22 AM on Wed, Nov 30, 2022:
A funny fact in the WSJ piece is that the Boring Company’s permit in Las Vegas isn’t a transport permit, but in “a category called ATS, for Amusement and Transportation Systems.” That’s for amusement park rides.
I’ve been making this comparison for a while.
Paris Marx (@parismarx) tweeted at 6:22 AM on Wed, Nov 30, 2022:
One of the most egregious examples of this for me is what the Boring Company did in Fort Lauderdale: disrupted a process to build a new train tunnel and instead redirected that energy into a tunnel for Teslas to the beach.
(https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1597928958389293059?t=Ql6tutprCknBiZBcDCKERw&s=03)
Martin
@rikyrah: I don’t think that makes them moderates, but pragmatists.
I would also note that most black voters didn’t at first think we’d break for Obama until he won Iowa. Sometimes the black voting community holds itself back. (Who doesn’t.)
There’s another comment here regarding Prop 8 in CA. In hindsight we know why that split happened – why CA voted for Obama and Prop 8 in the same election. Black voter sensibility is mostly centered in the south, which makes sense since that’s where more black voters are. And in the south, your white community is dominated by white christians. That’s not true on the west coast though, or New England, or a few other places. As such white voters here are much more open to progressive voices. I can tell you authoritatively that Katie Porter, as deputy chair of the progressive caucus does not at all hold back in how she campaigns here in Orange County and wins, in a historically conservative and pretty white area. OC white voters are not like South Carolina white voters. But religious latino voters do split their vote – they voted for Obama and for Prop 8. But they don’t look *anything* like white voters in the south. Interpreting passage of Prop 8 to mean we’re wingnutty like Alabama is a terrible take. On most issues latinos are in pretty good alignment with black voters, even if they break with certain kinds of progressive ideas.
I get that we have a really bad blindspot for white christian opposition to things, because they’re so fucking loud and desperate, but don’t give up on us that are not part of gods army. We’re the fastest growing political demographic in the US – mostly because most young people are in our camp.
Sister Golden Bear
@Scout211: I’m fully expecting the revanchists on the SCOTUS to use it as an opportunity to further legalize discrimination against us LGBTQ+ people. The only question is how far they’ll go given that several of them have been slavering for a case to do so.
This case is especially galling because the plaintiff never has actually had any clients — it was business created solely for the lawsuit — shouldn’t even have standing since she’s suffered no harm (albeit Omnes may correct me on that point).
Bill Arnold
@Qrop Non Sequitur:
Fair enough; plans are good. I think any such plans would crumble at first impact with reality, though. Excepting maybe Alaska or Hawaii, which are already isolated.
WereBear
@Zzyzx: Mastodonians use hashtags and you see all servers.
My clowder are part of the #CatsOfMastodon
Scout211
Rural Calaveras County here. Before they moved to a much more conservative area of Oregon, my neighbors were very active in the State of Jefferson movement. They invited all the people from the neighboring properties to attend their meetings and educate ourselves about the movement.
It was hard for me to reconcile my view of them as wonderful, helpful and generous neighbors to the leaders of the state of Jefferson in our county. When asked who will educate the children, fix the roads, set up a police force and government, clean the streets, etc., their answer is always that the money will come from the federal government. Huh? They believe that there are billions of federal dollars going directly to Sacramento, LA and the Bay Area and those cities are just hoarding all the federal bucks for “those” people. They are delusional. But they are also not as strong right now as they were during the Obama 8 years. I wonder why . . .
They got the president that they wanted in 2016 and their anger around here faded somewhat. It’s still a movement, but during the Obama years, there was much more media engagement around here in the local news and in local governments.
Emma from Miami
@Omnes Omnibus: Hot damn!
Sister Golden Bear
@Scout211: I’ll add that CNN and other MSM are missing the real objective—not Oberfell but Lawrence v. Texas, which decriminalized gay sex.
Shorter future SCOTUS decision: Congress may mandate that you perverts can get married, but we’ll make sure you can’t consummate it.
NOTE: If I’m especially salty today it’s because yet another drag queen story hour was cancelled on Sunday due bomb threat, and also the Proud Boys tried to intimidate a gay bar elsewhere.
karen marie
@cain: Which is why I’ve created a list where I can isolate accounts I’m interested in and see only them.
There is a prejudice against lists because of abuse at twitter but it’s a very useful tool at Mastodon.
Nora
@Scout211: I realize that the concepts of standing and mootness, which I learned about in law school decades ago, are of merely historical interest to this Supreme Court, which evidently thinks anyone it likes has standing to sue against anything the Supreme Court doesn’t like, but how exactly is this a “case or controversy”?
The plaintiff has lost NOTHING. The plaintiff hasn’t even STARTED this business. Plaintiff has no way of proving that the business would succeed if it were started — but plaintiff is suing the state because the state’s rules would make it harder for plaintiff to start this business if it decides to do so later?
I know what my Federal Courts professor would say about a bullshit line like this. Too bad she’s not on the Supreme Court.
karen marie
@Steeplejack: I saw one post from him in his Mastodon feed that led me to believe he’s done over there but I don’t know if that’s accurate. He’s not posting a lot on Mastodon – that I saw – but I don’t know the volume at which he was posting on twitter.
Martin
@Miss Bianca: Yeah journa.host. They’re somewhat open to retired journalists, academics that study journalism, etc. so you’d probably qualify. There’s a form you can fill in to get an invite.
Miss Bianca
@Sister Golden Bear: I am sorry. I don’t know what it is about drag queens and transgender folks that make these gibbering Proud Boy types go absolutely mental (or even more mental). Same with abortion or any other issue. Don’t like abortions? Don’t get one. Don’t like drag queen story hours? Don’t go.
Honestly, I don’t know why we all can’t be making more of a great big noisy fuss about the whole issue of *privacy* – the right to privacy. The right to make free, unfettered decisions about our lives that don’t affect anyone else. The absolute NON-right others (ought to) have to INTERFERE with those decisions.
karen marie
@Matt McIrvin: I took a shortcut – one of the people I followed on twitter posted an invitation. All I had to do was click on the link, fill out the basic info required for an account setup anywhere, and, boom, it was done. I guess the “instance” I’m in is fairly large – @mastodon.online. I didn’t bother looking at others because it’s largely irrelevant to me. I’m there to read what other people are talking about/doing, and your server/instance is irrelevant unless you’ve never used social media before. I looked for and found a large number of people I followed on twitter, and I spent some time going through the federated and local feeds to find others who are interesting. The people I follow “boost” others they find interesting, so the posts I’m seeing are varied and outside the narrow framework of who’s in my list.
It’s working for me. I’m an old person annoyed by constant changes in how things work, yet I’ve had no problem adapting to Mastodon.
Scout211
@Steeplejack: @karen marie:
https://mastodon.social/@zeddary
Looks very active.
karen marie
@cain: Hear hear!
Scout211
@Sister Golden Bear: @Nora:
IANAL, but even I could see that this person couldn’t possibly have standing since she hasn’t even started this business. And how did this get through the appeals court without being dismissed?
Can one of the ballon-juice commenters who are attorneys explain please?
Denali
I left Twitter when TFG was approved and Musk started making political statements before the election. I miss it sometimes, but I wouldn’t go back. Post.news is getting better every day.
Geminid
@Sister Golden Bear: That’s why I had to laugh when, after the Virginia Assembly passed six common sense gun safety laws in 2020, cranky conservatives started pushing “Wexit,” whereby red border counties would secede and join West Virginia.
These are relatively poor counties and their public services and infrastructure are subsidized by the economically dynamic regions of Northern Virginia, the Richmond metropolitan area, and the Hampton Roads area (these regions are in turn subsidized by federal tax dollars from 49 other states, but that’s another story).
Virginians living in the projected “Wexit” counties drive into West Virginia enough to notice the poor roads and and public infrastructure, and the even worse economy. Despite all the defiant talk, there was very little buy-in on the part of the proposed Wexiteers and the “movement” has since disappeared without a trace.
rikyrah
@Kay:
They don’t want Freedom of Speech.
They have Freedom of Speech.
They want freedom FROM CONSEQUENCES OF SAID SPEECH.
rikyrah
@Kay:
All to hang with the ‘ cool’ guys – the women, I’m talking about.
A fundamental thing that’s wrong with them, and definitely the crowd that came up with eleven billionty reasons why they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Hillary in 2016
Kay
@Denali:
Oh, I’m glad. There should be a Twitter replacement.
Kay
@rikyrah:
Exactly. It’s why it makes me wince. I did it in mechanical drawing in college- trade school. I was the only woman and, you know, peer pressure. It was awful. An awful thing to do but at the time it seemed like I had to do it, like I couldn’t be one of the Women Who Complain :)
Now I could give a shit what they think, so it’s easier.
Geminid
@Denali: I saw a few days ago that Cheryl Rofer is now on Post.news. She said she’d still hang out on Twitter for a while longer.
rikyrah
Max Burns (@themaxburns) tweeted at 8:22 PM on Tue, Nov 15, 2022:
Trump has succeeded in doing what Mitch McConnell has tried for weeks to avoid: making Georgia a referendum on Donald Trump.
Now is the time to organize for Raphael Warnock as if your life depends on it.
(https://twitter.com/themaxburns/status/1592704640537223169?s=02)
Qrop Non Sequitur
@Bill Arnold: I suppose that would all depend how things specifically transpired in this hypothetical.
NotMax
Nearly 200 comments in and still don’t have clue #1 what a bimmer may be.
raven
@rikyrah: It’s really shitty out and it supposed to be all day tomorrow. I think that favors us?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@NotMax:
BMW, I think? I’ve only ever heard “Beamer”
raven
@NotMax: BMW, they even had a repair joint here with that name.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@NotMax: About a minute ago I started to think it might be like a Beamer as in BMW.
Martin
@NotMax: It’s a BMW. Southern variant of ‘beemer/beamer’.
Martin
Seeing headlines for the Tampa chief resigning after flashing her badge and completely dumbfounded about this news story when we have countless police not getting fired for murdering people. Oh, to live in a world where flashing a badge is the top of the pile of policing issues we need to crack down on. And why do reporters fall for this bullshit every goddamn time?
Subsole
@rikyrah:
Just want to point out the bitter irony of people lecturing black folks about plantation thinking as if they’re a bunch of dumb field hands who need to have their self-interests explained to them by some dude who in a rougher age would most likely be sleeping outside the man-of-the-manor’s doorway at night…
Ruckus
@Kay:
Look where elon is from and it’s and his history.
That he doesn’t understand or believe is not at all difficult to imagine if one looks at his history and monetary upbringing. He’s attacking everyone and every thing past him having a lot of money and anyone black having any power. His racism is different than a KKK member, his racism is monetary power racism as practiced in his home country. Money bought him subservience, position, power along side his whiteness, in his home country. Here it’s more basic hate, the common white man’s bigotry if you will. Neither is worth a damn in the context of humanity, the end result is basically the same, but the way it’s accomplished is different and overcoming it is likely differnt.
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
I locked my bird account over a week ago. All I have seen of it since is the references here. Don’t much miss it. Mastodon is working out fine.
rikyrah
@Martin:
Also a Woman. I think that has a lot to do with it.
Suzanne
I heard that deleting your Twitter account means that someone else can get the same name in six months. So I am keeping it open but not going to Twitter at all.
Subsole
@UncleEbeneezer:
Funny enough, it’s an issue where I think the Left (TM) could get mileage out of their ‘class/money- uber alles’ approach.
Break it down like this. We have to carry guns everywhere because we aren’t safe in our churches, our schools, on the highway, at little league games, at work, at the hospital…we aren’t safe. The cops have forced us to do their job for them. They have outsourced their responsibilities onto the civilians who pay them.
I have to carry a gun to Walmart to buy groceries because the assholes they keep voting for keep handing out milspec longarms to every foaming-at-the-ears fcukup who asks for one,
AND they want a chunk of my paycheck to boot??? Nah. Nah. Get rekt, sonny James.
I don’t know that it’d work, or produce a good outcome (I am inclined to think it wouldn’t). But it might sell.
Bill Arnold
2022’s Most Sinful Cities in America (Adam McCann, Financial WriterDec 5, 2022)
Betty Cracker
@Martin: I haven’t dug into the data much, but it looks like Florida latinos vote a lot like white Floridians — both went for DeSantis in a big way. More generally, I’d love to see some deep dive analysis on regional cultural sensibilities and how they intersect with politics across various groups: latinos, blacks, whites, etc. My life experience tells me there are wide variations.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Bill Arnold: Be nice if they did a ‘most sinful county’, population adjusted. The list would be full of red counties.
Bill Arnold
@NotMax:
My shortcut is to type the word plus “urban” into the search bar, e.g. “bimmer urban”. The first search result is almost always the urban dictionary entry, if there is one. (Have heard them called bimmers, in the Northeast.)
Princess
@pacem appellant: yeah, I agree. What’s continuing to keep Twitter financially viable at all is the normies like us. What keeps the fascists entertained on Twitter is being able to shout at normies like us. Take away us, and you stop enabling them. I realize it’s hard to walk away. It’s designed to be addictive. But there’s no good reason or excuse to keep filling Elon’s pockets and providing targets for fascists. There will be something new, I promise. But Twitter is gone.
UncleEbeneezer
J R in WV
@rikyrah:
Damm, woman, you cover this shit so well ~!!~
Thanks again !
UncleEbeneezer
Remember, even when the Grand Jury expired and a couple prosecutors resigned (others disagreed), Bragg said that the probe would continue. I remember the #SistersInLaw podcast advising the audience at the time that it was likely not the end of Manhattan DA potentially charging Trump.
Slightly_peeved
@Zzyzx:
100% safe doesn’t exist, but safer? Lots of places right now.
a friend of mine made preparations to move in 2016 and now lives in Australia. For what it’s worth, they wake up every morning grateful they made the decision they did. Regardless of what happens 10, 20 years from now, they don’t have to deal with being in the US right now. They can go to the hospital and get treated for free. They can live somewhere where 80% of people are vaccinated for COVID. They can get a decent coffee, like, anywhere.
Unlike seceding, getting the F out of somewhere you don’t feel safe has a pretty long track record of effectiveness. If it’s temporary – well so is everything, in the long term. Better to live on one’s feet than die on one’s knees, as Rincewind said.
cain
@Omnes Omnibus: well not to be pedantic but you’d have seen it on tiktok. :-)
I mean, eventually that stuff will come to mastodon – I reckon.
Omnes Omnibus
@cain:
You are wrong. I would not have seen it on TicTok. I am not on TicTok.
Martin
@Bill Arnold: My city is expectedly quite low on the list with greed being the only thing higher ranked than our population would indicate. Which checks out.
Check out NYC with greed at 119. And Missouri gets the 1 and 2 slot in hatred and anger. Clam down there MO-folk.
J R in WV
@Kay:
Elon grew up in Apartheiit South Africa, where politics was inherently racist. No wonder he has a lot of trouble understanding politics here in America, where Jim Crow was put down by LBJ and the Democratic party a very long time ago. Long before I, an old person, could even dream about voting.
Gin & Tonic
@Kay: Yeah, you skipped the part where Ames and Taibbi wrote about ass-fucking 15-year-old girls.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I’m almost as far west as you can get (coastal Oregon) and the locals in my little town aren’t talking about any kind of secession. We do have the Free Staters/Jefferson State nutjobs plus a few other varieties, but they are few and far between here.
@Roger Moore: “It would be easier if I had been able to get on one of the Mastodon servers, but they mostly seem to be overwhelmed and having trouble with new users.”
Try https://mas.to to join that one. I was able to immediately sign up four days ago, no delays.
@[email protected] is my account.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: His point was that it’s a TikTok video, so yeah, if you were on TikTok you would have seen it there. But you can link to TikTok videos anywhere, even here on the front page of BJ.
You said you would not have seen it anywhere else. I mean, that’s sort of tautological, isn’t it? You can’t see it anywhere you’re not at. I mean, I didn’t see that video on Twitter, I saw it in the BJ comments. So yeah, you can see it somewhere else, but you have to choose to be in that somewhere else. In fact, you were vastly more likely to see that video on TikTok, given that it’s a TikTok video and not actual Twitter content.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Ruckus:
I call them “Pretty Boy Trucks”. The jacked up ones with lacy-looking wheels and low profile off-road tires have me rolling with laughter. We have more than a few here in our rural town and the chucklefuck morons drive them like assholes in oversized sports cars.
Regarding trucks, our ton is flooded with people who own trucks that do nothing but haul their owners asses around to get groceries, all the while hopping curbs on turns and parking crooked in parking spots. The lifted trucks in the handicapped parking spots really kill me…lol!
J R in WV
@Miss Bianca:
When I worked for my dad’s AM newspaper as a vacation relief back in… 1969… I covered county board meetings. Was excruciatingly slow and boring.
But I got a front page story out of that horrible 3 hours sitting in the courtroom where their meeting was held. And once the BS was over, they actually did things worth reporting.
So don’t put local board meetings down, they’re important, and can be interesting. No doubt you qualify!!
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin:
Well, I guess you showed me.
Martin
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, there are wide variations. We really do latinos a grave disservice when we lump them altogether as a single voting interest group. The strongest anti-immigration views I’ve seen locally were from latinos whose families were in California centuries ago. They typically have *very* different christian religious views than white christians.
What I worry about a bit is that the GOP has successfully incorporated Cuban and Central American christians into their white christian nationalism movement there in Florida. I don’t know that will carry into places like Texas, but that could create a problem for Dems. I don’t see that really taking off here in CA which seems to have a quite distinct latino culture to the rest of the US (check out the Punjabi-Mexican community in the northern Central Valley). Northeast Puerto Rican/Cuban dominated latino culture doesn’t seem to have turned right either.
I think Florida simply has its own thing going on, in much the same way that California simply has its own thing going on. I don’t think you can extrapolate either one onto the other at all.
Sure has put Disney in a bit of a vice though, hasn’t it?
J R in WV
@NotMax:
A BMW automobile. High end German transportation.
different-church-lady
How can you have fun owning the libs when the libs aten’t there to own?
PJ
@Slightly_peeved:
They can live in a country that is even more racist than the US. Throw another shrimp on the barbie!
kindness
@Slightly_peeved: Coffee in Australia isn’t like ours here. They go with something that is like 1/2 strength espresso and they put either cream or milk in it. There is no such thing as 1/2 & 1/2. I drank the stuff when I was there but I wouldn’t call any of it a decent cup of joe.
PaulB
And I regard people who hold such an opinion to be rather foolish. Harsh, but reasonable.
Slightly_peeved
@kindness:
The espresso is full strength here; it’s just we don’t roast the beans as much. I brought US-roasted beans along to my work coffee club once. Exact same grinding and espresso process, and they tasted burnt as all get out.
@PJ:
See, it’s responses like this that make me think the opposition to leaving the US is knee-jerk resistance to the idea that anywhere in the world could be better to live than the US.
We’ve got lots of racism, definitely, but we’ve done a lot better job of getting rid of lynching and indentured servitude than you guys, so saying we’re worse is a bit of a big call.
Also, if you like living in the US, just make the positive argument for that rather than arguing the rest of the world is less safe, or only free because the US allows it. Because the rest of the world may have something to say about that.
Slightly_peeved
@J R in WV:
I think owning an electric BMW would be a distinctly liberal move at this point. Good for the environment, made by unionised labour, and not ran by a right-wing con artist.
kindness
@Slightly_peeved: I am a Peets drinker so many would think I prefer over roasted beans.
Slightly_peeved
@kindness:
well espresso machines in Australia work the same way as anywhere else; it’s not like the steam spins in the opposite direction or anything. So I don’t think that would be the issue. The use of cream would be distinguishing, as cream doesn’t get put in any drink here (except whipped cream on top if you’re being fancy).
kindness
@Slightly_peeved: I have blood family in Brisbane. Lighten up. All I said was Australian coffee tasted like espresso that has been watered down and for what ever reason Australia does not have Half & Half for those of us who like a bit in their coffee. Other than that I love the place. New Zealand too. Would go back again any time I can.
Chris T.
@kindness:
Secede? Succeed at seceding?
Hmm: “If at first you don’t succeed, secede”?