By now you have heard of Musk’s antics this week re: twitter, in this case the rate limiting:
Elon Musk’s Twitter has put a temporary limit on the number of tweets that users can see each day, a move that has sparked some backlash and could undermine the social network’s efforts to attract advertisers.
The limit, imposed to “address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation”, is the latest change by Twitter, which was last year acquired by Musk for $44 billion.
At this point you have to assume that anything that comes out of dimestore de Klerk’s mouth is nonsense on stilts, and I have heard several theories. One is that he didn’t pay his google bill and calls to google servers are being unanswered (and that is as layman as I can get with that description), other theories are that google is straight up throttling twitter, and others involve code being removed setting up perpetual calls for data that can no longer be answered (again, that is as layman as I can get it- basically a piece of code is reaching out to a server with another piece of code, not getting a response, and instead of fucking off, getting stuck in a loop repeatedly making the same call with no response). Someone smarter than me can explain in the comments in more detail or tell everyone I am a fucking idiot who doesn’t have the first clue, which I will note are not mutually exclusive responses.
At any rate, whatever. It’s a free service I use and will until it either pisses me off or becomes useless to me. What I want to focus on is that all of this is kind of inevitable if you realize who fucking Elon Musk is.
Elon Musk is basically a gamergate douchebag. A 4-chan edgelord. A maladjusted socially unwell twat who, like all these fucking twats, thinks he knows everything, doesn’t, and then when shown he is clueless just tries to destroy shit. He’s the white male nerd rage personified. He has enough money that someone will still fuck him, so he’s not a full on incel, but if he was just some douchebag who didn’t inherit billions and worked a dead end job somewhere before going home and shouting the n-word on Call of Duty live streams, he would be. It’s just who he is. He’s one of Steve Bannon’s troll farm army fuckers:
Before Steve Bannon oversaw the conservative Breitbart News Network and, subsequently, joined then-candidate Donald Trump’s campaign, the chief political strategist became a player in Hollywood and … World of Warcraft.
***In 2005, Bannon secured $60 million in funding from Goldman Sachs and other investors for Internet Gaming Entertainment, a Hong Kong-based company. IGE did not make games, but instead employed “low-wage Chinese workers” to play online multiplayer game World of Warcraft and earn in-game gold that could be traded for virtual goods, which in turn could be resold to players of the hugely popular PC game for real money, Green writes. At the time, the game published by Blizzard Entertainment, had about 10 million subscribers.
Some players fancied the idea of paying for goods that would take hours of grinding through the game to earn. But other players “considered it a form of cheating,” Green writes, and many posted “anti-Chinese vitriol” on bulletin boards.
Eventually, Blizzard shut down accounts used by virtual “gold farmers” and IGE became the target of a class-action suit by a player who said the company’s practices were “substantially impairing” players’ enjoyment of the game.
***Even though the business plan was a flop, Bannon became intrigued by the game’s online community dynamics. In describing gamers, Bannon said, “These guys, these rootless white males, had monster power. … It was the pre-reddit. It’s the same guys on (one of a trio of online message boards owned by IGE) Thottbot who were [later] on reddit” and other online message boards where the alt-right flourished, Bannon said.
Green postulates that Bannon’s time at IGE was “one that introduced him to a hidden world, burrowed deep into his psyche, and provided a kind of conceptual framework that he would later draw on to build up the audience for Breitbart News, and then to help marshal the online armies of trolls and activists that overran national politicians and helped give rise to Donald Trump,” Green writes.
Again, this is Musk’s people. They’re all about crypto, blockchain, conspiracy theories, racist memes, lunacy about lizard people., etc. And these dickfer’s have always existed. Hell, half the lingo you all use on a regular basis were created by folks like this in the old usenet days. it’s just now there are a lot more of them, it’s more widely “accepted” to be like this, and instead of posting fanfic to alt.sex.stories.cuckold they’re buying twitter or thing pounding their puds to hentai (not judging- you do you, mate).
But what these guys love the most is to destroy shit. Video games, people, the country (see Donald Trump), anything in pop culture that they can not control and other people they just unworthy are enjoying. Again, it’s one and the same with the Gamergate fuckers and the idiots screaming anti-asian memes at Star Wars actors.
Elon can not control twitter or make it better, so he will destroy it. The end.
War for Ukraine Day 496: Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant Under Threat
Mike in NC
“Dimestore DeKlerk” is brilliant, as the Brits say. We’ve had some of the most severe thunderstorms here in a very long time. Power went out five times in half an hour.
NotMax
Speaking of douchecanoes, Stephen Miller is at it again.
Rulings of “Case dismissed with prejudice. All costs assigned to the plaintiff” shall resound throughout the land.
eclare
@Mike in NC:
I don’t want my power to go out, but I would welcome some rain. Maybe that would cut down on the fireworks.
Steeplejack
@eclare:
I have heard only a few fireworks here at Sighthound Hall tonight, none close. It is a quiet, upscale neighborhood with an infill of McMansions among the older houses. I’m close enough to the Potomac that perhaps I’m hearing fireworks from D.C., but I haven’t heard the sustained sounds I would expect from a show. All to the good. Chip the non-sighthound has remained calm.
Mart
I used to love watching two young men atheists with a podcast (precursor?) dismantling Bannon’s God awful God movies; including the ones with the old man duck caller. Would guess about ten years ago. Googled searched a few months back and couldn’t find them.
Hunter Gathers
A whole army of these Incel/Groyper types are working for Meatball Ron’s quixotic quest to prove to his wife that she did not make a mistake in marrying a short man.
Ken
@eclare: I’m just glad we got a good rain on Sunday and some cloudbursts today. Everything’s much less flammable than it was this time last week.
SpaceUnit
My theory is that Musk is a dick.
Suzanne
They’re also listening to Joe Rogan and Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson. They are a danger to women and LGBT people, also.
eclare
@Ken:
That is what I worry about too, fire.
different-church-lady
I just had to see that again.
different-church-lady
@Hunter Gathers: She didn’t make a mistake marrying a short man. She made a mistake marrying Ron DeSantis.
BeautifulPlumage
@Steeplejack: we had the first M80-type boom at 7 fucking 13 this morning. Then random booms, just enough apart for kitty to finally come out and try to eat then running back under the bed. Grrrr.
different-church-lady
@Mike in NC: Seconded.
SiubhanDuinne
Fireworks have been going on here (I mean literally in front of my house and various neighbours’ lawns) since 7-fucking-30 p.m. Three and a half hours so far tonight, and still going strong. This is every night since Friday, so far. It is crazy loud, I am thoroughly grumpy, and I feel so sorry for the little clowder of feral cats that lives under my back deck. I’ll give them extra treats for breakfast tomorrow to make up for it.
Maxim
@Mart:
Do you mean the Duckmen movies?
Suzanne
@Steeplejack: Spawn the Elder has a new kitten, and he just texted that the poor thing is absolutely freaking out. And therefore he is freaking out on the kitty’s behalf.
I don’t mind fireworks at planned civic displays set off by experts, but I think they’re terrible distributed to the public.
persistentillusion
@eclare: Nah, in CO we’ve had three bands of rain, two of hail, and the pyrotechassholes are still hard it. Dog has been under the bed all day.
And now, the Broadmoor is shooting off for the Texas aholes. sigh.
Maxim
@Suzanne: I used to like fireworks, but now that I understand how many animals and people they traumatize, I can’t enjoy them. If they were all silent, and done safely (not by the general public), they’d still be fun to watch, but as it is, blech.
azlib
If Twitter is actually talking to Google, a response from Google should be a hard fail if the request is invalid, etc. The request should not be retried unless it is a temporary failure as happens with unreachable email servers. Eventually, of course, after so many retries, the request should hard fail. It is poor coding technique if a request goes into an infinite loop, especially if the retry timer is very short.
Twitter being an advertising platform really should be encouraging as many request as possible to get those ads read by eyeballs. Something else must be going on to limit page views. Of course I would not be surprised if Twitter is not being actively spammed or dossed these days. Given all the layoffs, I am not surprised since Twitter likely does not have enough peorsnnel to actively monitor the system properly.
Roberto el oso
@eclare: Yes, for sure! We’ve been lucky here in Houston the last few years since we’ve consistently gotten rain 24 hours or less before each fireworks event. A friend owns a house which is about 3 houses away from a large park that is extremely popular for groups of people setting off fireworks, and one of our “favorite” fireworks stories was when one of these groups turned out to be pals with her next door neighbor … the cops had come by earlier and encouraged them to move along and so they came back up the street bitching about all the rockets they hadn’t had a chance to set off … about 20 minutes later I guess they had the bright idea of trying to set several huge ones off from their front porch only something went awry and instead of going up they shot back into the house. Every window in the place lit up and then went black and there was maybe 2 minutes of absolute silence. We assumed they’d manage to kill themselves and were about to dial 911 but then heard a plaintive voice asking whether any of the kegs had been hit. They were moderately well-behaved for the rest of the night. Fucking idjits.
Tazj
@BeautifulPlumage: People are still carrying on in my neighborhood. It hasn’t been this bad in years. The pop, pop, pop ones aren’t that bad but those ones that sound like a bomb might have gone off are awful and wish people had the good sense to stop those after 11pm.
Signed your friendly neighborhood old crank.
RaflW
So, I’m looking at PurpleAir this evening, and I think one can figure out places where a lot of fireworks are happening?
When the dread Canada smoke rolls in, there’s some variation in levels, but it maps relatively consistently in a metro area with lots of sensors. But this evening, cities are posting ‘green’ levels within a mile of red & purple ‘hazard’ levels, And they’ve all gone up in the past hour or two. Wow.
Suzanne
@Tazj: My neighborhood, too. I have to work tomorrow. Ughhhhhhh.
persistentillusion
@eclare: Nope, in CO, we’ve had three bands of rain, fireworks since 4.
Another Scott
@Roberto el oso: Humans are stupid with fireworks.
My stupid fireworks story is being in a car in the back seat with a glass Coke bottle (yes, it was a long time ago) and some bottle rockets and getting the brilliant idea to shoot one off while driving down the highway.
Roll down the window, put rocket in bottle, light fuse, point it out the window, and … ACK! What’s this?!? Why is the fuse burning so much faster in the wind??! Why did the rocket fall down into the bottle neck??!!1 Ack!! Why won’t it fly away!!11ONE What happens when it explodes! CRAP! I’m going to die or be blinded, aren’t I!!??!!
It exploded, but somehow didn’t break the bottle.
I never liked personal fireworks after that.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
Musk did not inherit billions. He has created some successful companies and ruined others. He has also been lucky. But the one thing you can say about him is that he often wants to be CEO even though he is utterly incapable of being a good CEO and often has been fired when he didn’t have total control.
In Silicon Valley some of the most successful innovators and entrepreneurs have been among the most racist and sexist people as the losers who are ruining things. You cannot simplistically separate the good guys from the bad guys.
Also, since Musk lowered the price on his electric vehicles, Tesla sales have soared. Other EV companies are signing agreements to make his car chargers the universal standard. And he is still an asshole.
persistentillusion
@SiubhanDuinne: Started at 7:30 am in my neighborhood. Hopefully, the dog will become deaf soon, as she’s terrified at all of it. Rescue, from a breeding op.
Another Scott
@RaflW: Zooks! Alexandria was “Good” at 49 or so PM2.5 earlier this evening. Now it’s at 316!!.
There are still neighbors setting stuff off. I’ll stay inside, thanks very much. :-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Sister Golden Bear
Earlier it was quiet in my neighborhood. Too quiet….
So of course WWIII just started a few minutes ago.
Ivan X
Do dog earplugs exist?
Steeplejack
@BeautifulPlumage:
Bummer. Condolences.
Grumpy Old Railroader
Ya know, maybe some immigrants should be sent back . . . to the Union of South Africa
pacem appellant
Minor correction:
Twitter is already dead. What you’re experiencing is the feeding frenzy on a rotting corpse.
Craig
@SiubhanDuinne: yeah, here in Wild West Oakland it’s been M-100s in dumpsters and mortars all day for days. It’s just getting dark here, so shits about to go crazy. I’d go outside and watch, but every once in a while I go, ‘oh, that wasn’t fireworks’, and I don’t want to the the guy that gets hit by a falling slug of 9mm lead. Some dumbasses don’t care about gravity.
persistentillusion
@Ivan X: I wish. I’ve gotten her CBD, which she mistrusts, so it’s a challenge to het her to eat it so she can mellow out.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
People like that are so sad. And I don’t only mean pitiful sad—though they are indeed that. But more than that, I mean unhappy sad. They’re all so miserable, even the ones who, by any normal person’s standards, has been lucky beyond belief. Musk is just a deeply unhappy person, and he’s always going to be. There’s no hope for somebody like him. Same with Former Guy.
You’d think that what they have, all the breaks they’ve gotten, that would be enough to make them reasonably content. Only it isn’t. It isn’t, and whatever else they get, whatever they long for, lust over and eventually and inevitably get, it’ll never be enough.
It’s shit like that that makes me suspect there’s somebody or something out there, somewhere, who put all this together, and laid down a few rules to ensure some kind of rudimentary justice.
Fuck, I know people in Honduras who have nothing, and they’re basically happy. They need more, they struggle, they don’t get things they need—and yet somehow, they make it through life remarkably happy about things. And then you have people who get shit handed to them on a plate their whole fucking lives, and they’re as wretched and sad and morose and pitiful as anybody you’ve ever seen. It makes me think there might be some kind of cosmic justice after all.
Alison Rose
Another reason to be glad that in my MMORPG days, I never let myself get sucked into WoW and stayed in my nerdier corner, and on the role-playing server, too. Not that there weren’t any dickbags, but far fewer.
Steeplejack
@Suzanne:
Agreed.
Threadkill Lane also gets very little fireworks noise. I consider myself lucky.
pacem appellant
I like this particular graphic of the how Musk screwed Twitter.
https://mastodon.social/@desarmada/110642162521503063
Old School
Since no one else has done it, I’ll be the straight man.
What’s a dickfer?
Steeplejack
@azlib:
No, supposedly the problem is one part of Twitter code trying to talk to another part of Twitter code. It was discussed in a thread a few days ago that I am too lazy to look up right now.
Chetan Murthy
@pacem appellant: This tracks with what my well-connected techie friend tells me.
SFAW
@Old School:
I don’t know, but I think it attaches to the updock.
Steeplejack
@Another Scott:
Shnikeys! Just checked the Sighthound Hall area on AirNow.gov. It was 40-50 a few hours ago, and now it has shot up to 316—”hazardous.”
ETA: The closest Purple Air sensor says 139, though.
BeautifulPlumage
I’m new to this neighborhood and thought it might be worse than it is. At 9:20 it’s still low key. And the lead up wasn’t as bad as some of you’ve had. Sorry to hear of the multi-day audio assaults!
Chetan Murthy
@Steeplejack: I hadn’t thought of that. In addition to the fire hazard, the injury hazard, and all the damn noise, it’s ruining the air quality. Sigh. Maybe I’m gettin’ old.
Cathie from Canada
And it will always be someone else’s fault.
Ruckus
@Steeplejack:
The amount of fireworks and more than that, the sound around here in SoCal has never been this constant, or this everywhere. Sounds more like, dare I say it, a war zone. I walked across the street from the place and up to the top/3rd story transit parking garage and a constant 360 barrage of fireworks. I’ve never seen it at this level before. The actual legal stuff is likely at most 3 places within 4 or 5 miles in any direction. This really not all that fun for someone of my age/gender because of the draft, Vietnam and all the memories of people I used to see in a military hospital I was in for 2 months during it or many of the people I see at the VA hospital now. IOW this does not sound like fireworks. Not when it’s constant and coming from every direction.
Ruckus
@SpaceUnit:
Well, duh…
Chetan Murthy
@Ruckus:
Do you remember a few years ago (maybe during covid?) when SoCal erupted on an Independence Day? I remember watching clips on YT: it seemed like every damn block was just erupting in serious explosions. It was a clip filmed from a helicopter and I gotta say, I wondered if they were flying too low for safety, there was so much rocketry coming up at them.
VFX Lurker
@Chetan Murthy: It was 2020. Some wag married the footage of Los Angeles to the haunting soundtrack for Blade Runner.
BR
As much as I wish it were the case that Google shut off Twitter from what I know he actually paid the Google bill at the last moment so Google didn’t do it.
What seems like the most likely cause was his “you must be logged in” requirement. That’s what triggered the endless reloading due to no access by websites, apps, scrapers, etc. That then caused him to freak out, put limits in place in a system that was never quite designed for it, and that created more weird problems. Add in a holiday weekend and things fell apart.
Meanwhile I was happily watching it in real time on Mastodon, and thanks to the fact that it’s decentralized only a couple of the biggest servers got a bit slow but not the one I’m on.
Which, btw, I had suggested the hilarious weirdos at beige.party to Baud the other day as a good server for the hilarious weirdos here, and I thought I’d mention it again here.
Ruckus
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.):
And then you have people who get shit handed to them on a plate their whole fucking lives, and they’re as wretched and sad and morose and pitiful as anybody you’ve ever seen.
They never really had to work for anything, you know, real, actual, honest labor. They’ve never created anything, they had money or mom and dad to buy it. They might even shit in a gold plated toilet. And it becomes the norm, the average. They are used to money and position because of the money and mostly getting their way, none of which is real life for most people. Sure we can be comfortable without being RICH, but it takes a person that understands that money really, really isn’t everything. There is more to life than money and that’s good because too much money very/most often makes people, in the back of their minds wonder why life isn’t perfect, they have more than enough money, why does their life actually suck. Because while money is nice, the race to have too much of it is debilitating because it raises expectations that just money cannot purchase. I’ve met quite a few people who had far more money than me, working in professional sports. And most of them, the vast majority were rather unhappy because all the money in the world couldn’t buy them what they wanted. Money does not equal humanity, not in any way, shape or form. It can make your life easier, it can’t buy you the one thing that makes life better, actual fucking humanity.
Mai Naem mobileI
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.): Dimestore DeKlerk probably has daddy issues. I read somewhere his dad’s supposed to be a genuinely smart guy but he also had kids with his way younger stepdaughter from his second marriage which is just ewwww and not something I want to know anything more about. It’s just got to mess up your head when your half brother is the son of your stepsister.
SoupCatcher
19 tons of fireworks were found and confiscated recently in San Jose after a three-alarm fire at a storage company.
But, based on last night’s and tonight’s sounds, that was only a drop in the bucket.
MobiusKlein
@Ruckus:
I view the crazy amount of fireworks as a sign we are not in recession, and folks feel patriotic and stuff. Spending money on transitory entertainment, rather than grimly watching a TV show of fireworks.
And yea, still going strong in SF at 10:15
Fair Economist
More home fireworks than usual in my part of SoCal too. I’ve kind of lost interest in fireworks lately – I used to love them – and just want to get to sleep. Fortunately my pet, a rabbit, is unperturbed by fireworks. He remains on his relentless quest for treats.
MobiusKlein
As for what happen with twitter? I would guess they are still on Google Cloud, but have dramatically reduced their machine provisioning to save costs. Doing whatever they can to reduce load, traffic, network bandwidth.
As for migrating off of a cloud platform – that is not a weekend emergency job. More like a 6 month minimum project, and maybe you can do it without downtime.
Geoduck
Hardly anything in my Pacific Northwest town. It might help that said town puts on a pretty spectacular official display every year, in a location that a lot of people can see it for free. (I personally have to stand in just the right place in the yard..)
Martin
Instagram Threads, their Twitter knock-off launches on the 6th. We’ll see how it’s received.
Martin
So far here in NorCal we’ve heard a single firework go off in the last 4 days. People taking this seriously.
Martin
@Chetan Murthy: Yeah, that was 2020. It was absurd.
ColoradoGuy
Here in Erie, CO the longest, and loudest, fireworks were last night. It kept going for more than two hours, and individual exhibitions you’d expect to ten or fifteen minutes went on for an hour. The forecast for today, July 4th, was thunderstorms in the afternoon and evening, so people went bonkers last night. But, surprise, there must have been some kept in reserve, because between the thunderstorms and steady drizzle, there was plenty tonight, too.
My guess this is pent-up relief over a period of normalcy after years and years of terror and insanity. People have money, there isn’t a madman in the White House tweeting random Chyrons from FoxNews, and there isn’t an unseen virus stalking us all.
I mean, it’s still there, and I got whacked by it last week, but at least it didn’t kick me in to the hospital. The Paxlovid did its magic, and me and Ms Colorado are doing better. But I don’t think anyone will ever forget just how horrible 2020 was, and how long it has taken to crawl back to something like normalcy.
brendancalling
@eclare: Camden NJ, just across the river from Philly, got hammered with rain tonight and we got mostly nothing. We need rain too, but I’m worried about a repeat of 2021.
Ruckus
It’s 11:30 here in SoCal and I can still hear fireworks. Calmed down a tad.
That word tad is doing a lot of work…
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Ruckus: Same here in Glendale.
bjacques
Here in NL (and Belgium and Germany), New Year’s Eve is the big fireworks holiday. People go nuts. I had my fun as well over the years, but several mayors including of Amsterdam used the COVID ban on outdoor gatherings 2020/2021 to permanently ban fireworks within the city limits. Didn’t really work, but it was enough for me to stop since I’d been hosting fireworks parties at my place. 2004-2018 was a good run without injuries or damage.
Mai Naem mobileI
They started here with the occasional firework at 7PM which makes no sense here since it doesn’t get dark till closer to eight. Pretty heavy between 830-1030P. Leveled off. Occasional ones still going off and will probably keep going off till 2 AM. I don’t mind fireworks but it’s turned into an all night multi day affair. We had fireworks going off on Sat, Sun and Mon. The really big fireworks are supposed to be illegal for use by non professionals but people buy them in NM and wherever and bring them here.
rikyrah
@different-church-lady:
😂😂😂😂😂
frosty
@different-church-lady: Thank you for that!
opiejeanne
@Chetan Murthy: The fireworks have been relatively quiet tonight, but our older cat jumps every time one of those “bombs” goes off.
I just checked our air quality on my iPhone and it’s suddenly at 50, which I realize isn’t terrible but it’s been right at 26 yesterday and the day before.
ACK! I just realized we didn’t bring in the flag and it’s half past midnight.
sab
We are trying to rescue a stray cat in our neighborhood. Very skinny, very sweet orange striped critter. We put food out. He is becoming friendly. Lets us pet him. Husband wants to try to move him in NOW. I think that could go very badly very fast so want to wait until autumn, make sure we have a suitable space for him inside etc etc. so he can move in before winter sets in. Once it is cold he won’t feel the call of the wild, but I don’t want him freaked out by our other cats and our dog inside. Maybe the new next door neighbors with kids will take him if we can get him to trust people. Their kids like him.
Meanwhile my biggest problem is remembering to take the food in at night so that we don’t end up with ” friendly” raccoons and skunks.
Bethanyanne
I got two kitties from the shelter about 9 years ago. The boy, Louie, is solid black and his sister, Clio, is a dilute tortoiseshell. Moved in with Mom to care for her, and she totally seduced Louie into becoming a lap cat. He helps her read every day while she rubs his belly. Sometimes I can’t believe how loving both of them have become.
NotMax
@brendancalling
Ancient joke used to go:
“Why is Philadelphia considered so dull?’
“Because it’s just across the river from exciting Camden, New Jersey.”
:)
TriassicSands
Anne, please, seek counseling. This sounds suspiciously like an addiction/dependence problem. I don’t want to insult you, because you’ve done so much for this site, but Musk and Twitter suck. You’re too good for either of them.
i appreciated your posts far more before they became essentially one tweet after another. Now, I just glance at them and move on.
If Twitter dies, something will replace it. As long as it exists, it will continue to serve its master.
TriassicSands
@opiejeanne:
Fireworks. Here’s the plan:
Hey, let’s buy a bunch of fireworks, get really drunk, scare the hell out of lots of innocent critters, blow some fingers off, maybe lose and eye, and with luck, start a wild fire that might even take out an entire town. Freedumb!
Just innocent fun.
mrmoshpotato
@SpaceUnit:
Nominated!
PBK
@Bethanyanne: I smiled just picturing sweet Louie helping your mom read! Hope you are taking care of yourself also.
Baud
@TriassicSands:
This seems suspiciously like a reading comprehension problem.
satby
@TriassicSands: This post is by the blogfather, not AL.
satby
@Baud: Great minds…. g’morning!
NotMax
@satby
11:45 p.m. here. Good evening.
;)
satby
Last night, actually every night since last Thursday, people have been setting off fireworks here. Something must not have gone up, because one of the booms shook my brick house. The house, not just rattled windows, which mercifully didn’t break. Never had that happen before.
satby
@NotMax: Good evening to you, booms still going on over dere by youse?
oh and the AQI is at 165
Baud
@satby:
Good morning.
NotMax
@satby
Significantly less boomage than in any year can remember since moved in here in 1983.
Not that that’s a bad thing. Still there was an acrid odor wafting in for several hours. Also means less clean-up of bits of paper, cardboard, sticks, and other detritus littering the yard tomorrow.
satby
@NotMax: Good! The sun is just coming up here (where I can tell, anyway) and I’ll have do a survey of the yard to see if the house-shaker was because it hit the house. I assume not, but two story brick houses seldom shake like that from mere fireworks.
lowtechcyclist
@different-church-lady:
Her real failing (‘mistake’ is probably the wrong word) is being the sort of person she is, rather than being a decent, caring human being.
Same is true for Meatball Ron. Ditto practically everyone on the right side of the political spectrum nowadays, of course. As Buttigieg asked the other day, what are they doing to try and make things better for anyone?
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Truth.
charon
@TriassicSands:
Actually, if you have any interest in feeds coming out of Ukraine it is still pretty useful.
Examples:
https://twitter.com/Stanovaya
https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko
https://twitter.com/wartranslate
Several others I check often, also.
charon
@charon:
https://twitter.com/wartranslated
Fixed
The Thin Black Duke
I don’t understand the people who are so negative about Twitter. If it’s not your thing, that’s fine, but it’s not cool to be dismissive of the people who enjoyed it and found value in the services that it provided. Thanks to Elmo, it’s on life support now anyway.
Shalimar
@The Thin Black Duke: I don’t think they understand advertising. The 10 cents Musk makes from my following an occasional link to a tweet to see the replies is not keeping Elon out of bankruptcy.
Realworldrj
@Mike in NC: “dimestore deklerk” classic!
Ken
Nice analogy, especially since twitter’s Fail Whale is just one letter from a whale fall.
Matt McIrvin
OT: oh boy, this “Biden won’t acknowledge Hunter’s daughter as his granddaughter” story that’s all over the right-wing noise sphere has really set off a person I know on social media. Going on and on and on about how Biden is a creep and everyone who defends him is a creep just because he’s on our side. (This person’s previous thing was getting really upset about people joking about the submarine disaster.)
I have no frickin’ idea about the substance of this story. But do we have to be this easy to manipulate?
Dorothy A. Winsor
That we can’t stop talking about twitter is a sign of how central it was to a lot of activities. Its destruction is a loss. If walking away is easy for you, you’re lucky.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Who is “we”?
ETA: To be clear, there are people who are easy to manipulate, and not all of them are right wingers.
Frankensteinbeck
Absolutely 100% accurate. I have never heard it put so well.
@Alison Rose:
I have never encountered a friendlier and more noble-hearted community than on the RP dedicated and PvP allowed Everquest server… on the evil side. There were whole guilds dedicated to patrolling and killing off griefers and bandits, and a random high level player was likely to stop you at any time and give you whatever spare equipment your level he picked up, to arm the next generation of the army of darkness.
The good side was a Hell of griefers who would stand outside the gates of the biggest city and murder every newbie they saw.
Admittedly the evil side was also ruthless in their concept. They would organize raids to kill good NPCs deep in enemy territory.
Two other games were close. The City of Heroes community was universally nice and wholesome. The fast travel system originally sucked, so there was a ‘taxi’ guild dedicated to using teleport powers to help people cross the dangerous areas. And the RPers always welcomed a new RPer.
Earth and Beyond had the distinction of the best crafting system in any game. Player made was always better than vendor or loot. There were always higher level crafters happy to give low level players the best stuff very cheap or for free.
I was one of those, admittedly with a twist. I loved to give away for free whole sets of, not the absolute best, but the weirdest equipment. Dung missile launchers and junk-a-pults and solar sails…
charon
@TriassicSands:
People who do not use Twitter are maybe not super reliable as to whether the site is useful or not.
Baud
@charon:
Next you’ll be saying that old Republican men aren’t the best people to decide what pregnant people do with their bodies.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
More on the Elmo twitter mess
Management being utterly incapable of communicating anything along with a lack of impulse control seems to be the gestalt of the post pandemic era. Anyway, I am assuming the “bad actors” are are twitter post that are mocking Musk.
Ken
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: He must mean bad actors like syndication.twitter.com, which let you view posts for a couple days but is now shut down. Or twitter’s TweetDeck, which was one cause of the “twitter DDOS-ing itself” reports — I read that it is being eliminated in favor of a version that only works for subscribers.
Geminid
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson will visit the White House today. Among other matters, he and President Biden will discuss Sweden’s pending NATO membership application.
There will be a more consequential meeting tomorrow in Brussels, where the Foreign Ministers of Sweden, Finland and Turkiye will hold talks on the question. Reports are that the three countries’ intelligence and national security chiefs will attend as well.
There is a lot of pressure on Turkiye to sign off on Swedish accession, but Turkish FM Hakan Fidan said yesterday in Amman, Jordan that Turkiye will not be swayed by pressure on this matter.
My guess is that Turkiye will agree to Sweden’s membership, but probably not before the NATO summit next week in Vilnius, Latvia.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I’m remembering back to the Tara Reade story, too, where it seemed like there were a lot of liberals backed into this logical corner where their attitude was “yes, this story is incredibly sketchy, but because of my past statements about the need to prioritize believing women who have sexual abuse stories, I feel morally obligated to discard my suspicions and take it seriously”.
High-profile political campaigns create these special conditions where any heuristic for evaluating information that would be reasonable in most other situations can become a mechanism that can be gamed.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Well, the accusation made by Reade was at least a serious one that, if it happened to be true, would have disqualified Biden in our eyes. Based on what you wrote above, the accusation here sounds like a personal family matter, which should have no effect on anyone who doesn’t want an excuse to support fascists.
Soprano2
@Ruckus: Can echo this, 100%. I’ve read that once you reach a threshold – used to be $75,000, probably more like $100,000 in most places now – all of your basic needs are met, and more is just more. Up until that point, though, more money does make people’s lives measurably better. ETA – lots and lots more, when you aren’t ready for it and have no idea how to manage it, can make your life measurably worse. I’ve read about guys like the ones you knew who ended up broke and in bankruptcy, probably because they tried to help everyone who asked and/or trusted the wrong people. All of the major leagues should have mandatory classes for athletes to learn about this stuff, to make it harder for unscrupulous people to take advantage of them.
Anyway
@Baud:
I must be ensconced in some big ole liberal bubble — had no idea about this until MattM’s post above. Missing out on the ravings of the RW nutosphere is a win…
Almost dead thread here but I am heartsick about the shooting Monday night in Philly (Kensington area) that ended in 5 fatalities – ages 15 – 59. What a devastating loss for the families. RIP. I think the shooter was caught (alive) and is said to be mentally disturbed — had body armor and walked about shooting people on the street.
Soprano2
@ColoradoGuy: We watched “A Capitol Fourth” on PBS, then turned over to NBC to watch the last half of the Macy’s 4th of July program. It was kind of cool to see the New York skyline after just having been there. It was nice to see the crowds of people again, having a good time and just being normal. After the past 3 years, I think you’re right that it’s partly happiness at a return to normal for most people. I’m like you, I got Covid but it was pretty mild. Hubby’s has been mild too, at this point I’m not sure Paxlovid would even help him. He had just the occasional cough yesterday, and it’s been 5 days since his symptoms started.
Matt McIrvin
@Anyway: It was the first I heard about it too.
Anyway
@Matt McIrvin:
it’s good to have a mole .
Geminid
@Anyway: I think McIrvin is talking about a smaller “progressive left” bubble that contains people sceptical of, if not outright hostile, to the Democratic party and its leadership.
I encounter these soreheads through Twitter accounts of other people on the left like Michael Paulauski who push back on them.
evodevo
@Ruckus:
Plus, the age-old problem that when you have that much money, you are never sure if the people around you are there because of you….or the money….so relationships are fragile and transactional…
Soprano2
@TriassicSands: Heard a story on Monday about a 19-year-old kid here who was trying to make some kind of “sparkler bomb”. Basically blew both of his hands off, and blew a big hole in his midsection, which damaged his stomach so much he might die. It’s one thing to set off fireworks you buy – they’re still dangerous, but if you follow the instructions and are careful you’ll probably be OK. It’s the people who try to make their own crap who are the most dangerous ones, to themselves and others.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: I wondered what that was about, I saw some notification on my phone about how the White House only acknowledges 6 of Biden’s 7 grandchildren. I figured it was bogus crap. That doesn’t sound like Biden at all, has to be more to it.
evodevo
@sab: Yes…this. City people don’t understand this. A city friend cat-person moved to the country and had food bowls out for the barn cats…ended up feeding every racoon and skunk for miles, and had a skunk dig a den under her porch. Good times!
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: Well, there are those people, but there are also liberals who are just not as inherently suspicious of buzz in the aether as we are but also highly value not being a mindless partisan cheerleader. So they’re really susceptible to “someone on our side is really a bad guy” stories.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: I think it’s an attempt to twist the ongoing Hunter Biden scandal hunt into a negative story about Biden’s character. They figured out that Biden continuing to love his fuckup son actually makes him look good, so they found an angle that maybe could make him look bad–he won’t love his granddaughter! All I can say is I smell a rat.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Yes, there are people generally supportive of the D party who seem to like to play footsie with the anti-Democratic party left. I won’t name the people or media outlets, but you know who I’m talking about. I think the some of people who do this want to maintain credibility with former allies.
The war on Ukraine has cast a harsh light on the positions of the reflexively critical “Left” soreheads, many of whom have gone over to the dark side. Some of them are calling environmental activist Greta Thunberg a “War Pig” because of her support for Ukraine. An interesting dynamic.
Alison Rose
@Frankensteinbeck: I played Everquest II for a bit, and yeah, everyone there seemed super chill and fun. My main game was Dark Age of Camelot, and mostly we played with our own guildmembers, most of whom were my then-boyfriend’s IRL friends, but even when we’d group up with others, generally people were cool. You gotta be so nerdy to want to play on a specifically RP server and be in character the whole time, and not to say there weren’t any assholes at all, but a much lower percentage of them.
OGLiberal
@Matt McIrvin: Are we wondering if Biden has a 7th grandchild or that directions were given staff/aides to not recognize this grandchild. I’m pretty certain Hunter has a kid with a woman who is currently suing him and that DNA proved he’s the father. The story about orders to not acknowledge this grandchild sounds like BS.
Jim
One of the best exegeses of Musk’s behavior re: Twitter I’ve seen is that it’s not that he’s one of those guys – it’s even sadder than that; he thinks those are the cool kids, and he wants them to like him. But he doesn’t buy into this shit; he’s actually a much sadder and more nihilistic person than to have a worldview of his own.
pacem appellant
@Ken:
Ty. The rotting corpse analogy is perfect for Twitter. It helps explain in a grotesque and visual way why it hasn’t gone away yet despite being largely useless.
Ruckus
@Chetan Murthy:
Only the professionally fired ones go all that high, the rest didn’t even go as high as I was, standing on the 3rd level of the parking garage.
Ruckus
@Soprano2:
This. We don’t need to be rich like elon. He was supposedly the wealthiest person in the US but most of that was in stock. When he bought twit for $44 billion in cash, he didn’t have that. He had to do a quick stock sale at a loss of some value so as to not be sued, to get the money. We talk about how smart it is to have a lot of money but really that didn’t help the supposedly wealthiest/smartest man in the US. Who bought twit for twice the asking price, which he didn’t really have at hand. Maybe he’s just not the smartest.
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
All I can say is I smell a rat.
Those are rat droppings. Real rat droppings come out of rat’s poop chutes, human rat droppings come out of their mouths.
Avalune
I’m on “Threads” because I still use Insta to look at art and dogs and I guess I wanted to make sure Zuck had more of my data to scrape.
So far it’s ok – very much Twitter clone without the newsworthy content but also without so much vitriol. I’m sure that will come in time. h.l.Barnwell if some of you end up slumming it over there.