Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

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

Cancel the cowardly WaPo and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Elections aren’t won by handwringing, cowering, and/or bashing your own candidates.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

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

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Washington Post’s Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Monday Evening Open Thread: Speaking of Blockbuster Summer Entertainment…

Monday Evening Open Thread: Speaking of Blockbuster Summer Entertainment…

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It’s all pretty shoddy, but on the other hand, tickets are cheep, you don’t have to put on (or take off) your pants to participate, and the shows run 24/7…


Reader Interactions

132Comments

  1. 1.

    H.E.Wolf

    …Lord, give me the confidence of a mediocre white man raised in apartheid South Africa….

  3. 3.

    lgerard

    It would be more appropriate to name it “Y“​
     

    I suppose comment are now known as Xcrenements

  4. 4.

    MisterDancer

    And this is how you know — KNOW — this is legit, this is all about Elon’s ego and obsession with certain shibboleths, like the “x” thing.

    He’s destroying Twitter’s value not because he wants to. He can’t accept there’s other ways to operate than whatever shit idea runs thru his head. For one: Just as he built Telsa to be so racist and sexist it’s getting sued to hell and back, he cannot believe that being good to people not on his level gets you strong, stable companies with powerful growth.

    What’s horrific is that too many asshats are buying into that, more and more, these days.

  5. 5.

    Roger Moore

    imagine getting a calendar invite to have your performance review in a room called “s3Xy”.

    The current Tesla models are the S, 3, X, and Y.  Complete coincidence, I’m sure.

  6. 6.

    Brachiator

    Just spoke to @mattdorsey, the SF Supervisor in the area, who happened to be near the building at lunch. He said he witnessed several self-driving cars become confused by the crane, which was in the street.

    Interesting variable affecting driverless cars.

    Ran across this fun video clip. Journalist in a self-driving Waymo car in San Francisco.

    It surprised me that during the segment filmed, no one was in the front seat. I have no idea how they would have handled an emergency. Still, in good conditions, even with some pedestrians, performance was flawless.

  7. 7.

    Yutsano

    @H.E.Wolf: ​

    …Lord, give me the confidence of a mediocre white manan entitled emerald mine scion

    raised in apartheid South Africa….

    Fixteth for thee.

  8. 8.

    Scout211

    I posted the link downstairs but the police were called because of a possible un-permitted street closure, yes. But the update was that they left without any charges and the old sign was then removed. They said it was not a police matter.

    The police being called went viral but the update did not. So now you know, it was a nothingburger.

  9. 9.

    Kelly

    Moved from downstairs

    Hilarious news, Microsoft and Meta have trademarks using X. Musk’s X maybe OK but lawyers are saying if those two want to fight it they could make a lot of trouble.

  10. 10.

    Roger Moore

    @MisterDancer:

    Twitter is a great example of what happens to a company where Musk is given free rein.  I don’t want to say he’s useless- I think he has been extremely effective at selling his vision of the companies’ to the public- but he clearly isn’t very good at managing the day-to-day decision making.  Where his companies have succeeded, it’s because the people around him have kept him in that evangelist role and away from the levers of power.  With Twitter, he’s finally gotten rid of anyone who could tell him no, or even distract him with a shiny object, and we’re seeing just how terrible he is at the nuts-and-bolts of running a company.

  15. 15.

    Scout211

    @Baud: It’s like when the Beatles played the rooftop concert.

    Um, yeah, sure. Just like that.

    If that was Elon’s last public performance, that would be exactly like it. If only.

  18. 18.

    Roger Moore

    @Tom Levenson:

    I will admit I didn’t put it together myself; someone else pointed it out to me.  It made me glad I sold my Tesla stock, even though I could have made an even bigger profit on it if I had held for another 6 months.

  19. 19.

    Mag

    Writing from my cave in #BalloonJuiceLurkerLandia, maybe now with the rebranding there could be less Twitter content on the blog? It always slows down page renders for me and they rarely, if ever, load correctly. How much less? How about zero Twitter embeds?

  20. 20.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Kelly:

    Hilarious news, Microsoft and Meta have trademarks using X. Musk’s X maybe OK but lawyers are saying if those two want to fight it they could make a lot of trouble.

    And then there’s Apple’s OS X…

  21. 21.

    Scout211

    @Another Scott: I though that was the letter “e.”

    From 2022 Link

    Ford announced a major restructuring on Wednesday, saying it will create two auto businesses: one focused on traditional combustion engines and another dedicated to the company’s burgeoning electric-vehicle efforts.

    The name Ford chose for the latter should ring a bell for Elon Musk.

    The gasoline division will be called Ford Blue, while its EV counterpart will be known as Ford Model e, a name the Detroit automaker stopped Tesla from using nearly a decade ago.

    After the release of Tesla’s Model S and Model X, Musk planned to name the company’s third major vehicle the Model E. (It spells “sex,” get it?)

    “A friend asked me at a party, ‘What are you going to name the third-generation car?’ Well, we have the S and the X, so we might as well make it the E,” Musk told CNN Money in 2014. But Ford called up Musk threatening to sue if Tesla pursued the Model E trademark, he told the outlet.

  23. 23.

    TS

    but @elonmusk didn’t get permit for the equipment on the street so @SFP  is shutting it down.

    Rules are only for the little people. The important ones don’t need permits they can do as they please.

  24. 24.

    Brachiator

    @Roger Moore:

    Twitter is a great example of what happens to a company where Musk is given free rein.  I don’t want to say he’s useless- I think he has been extremely effective at selling his vision of the companies’ to the public- but he clearly isn’t very good at managing the day-to-day decision making.

    Musk is hot to be the CEO, a position that he has failed at or been ousted from a number of times.

    His inability to learn from his mistakes is astounding. He could be very happy and very successful if he wasn’t so stubborn.

  25. 25.

    Sebastian

    @Another Scott:

    Elmo wanted “E” but Ford already owned it. Hence Model 3. Elmo wanted the letters to spell out SEXY but now it’s S3XY.

    Edit: Scout211 beat me to it.

  26. 26.

    OverTwistWillie

    Social media branding is like fast food –  keeping the bathrooms clean goes a long way in generating repeat visits.

  30. 30.

    Another Scott

    @Scout211: I would have bet cash money that he tried to get “T” too, but I can’t find anything.  My brain is a mysterious thing.

    Thanks for the link, and for saving me cash money!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  33. 33.

    eclare

    @Scout211:

    Just unbelievable.  The poop emoji, the “jokes” about 4/20, and now let’s name the car models to spell sex?  Elmu truly is Beavis.  Or Butthead.  I forget which.  But because he has money, instead of living in a basement and harassing some people online, we all have to put up with him.

    Truly beyond time for confiscatory tax rates.

    Note:  I have the TV on, and just saw an ad from another company that might object to x:  xfinity (previously Comcast) my cable/internet provider.  The ad started with an image of “x.”

  35. 35.

    TiredOfItAll

    I’m of the era when it will forever be the Tappan Zee Bridge and the Pan Am building.  X?  Well, I guess worked for ole Gordy Sumner.

  39. 39.

    mrmoshpotato

    @H.E.Wolf:

    …Lord, give me the confidence of a mediocre white man raised in apartheid South Africa strike this POS manbaby apartheid shitstain with several lightning bolts already …. 

    Fixed.

  42. 42.

    scav

    Please, tell me someone has already reworked the Monty Python dead parrot sketch with a little blue corpse.   This is an X-Parrot indeed!

  44. 44.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Kelly:

    Hilarious news, Microsoft and Meta have trademarks using X. Musk’s X maybe OK but lawyers are saying if those two want to fight it they could make a lot of trouble. 

    Bill Gates can watch the cage match between Fuckerberg and Bitchass Mush.

  45. 45.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    I am reminded at this point of a fellow I used to know
    Whose name was Henry
    Only to give you an idea of what an individualist he was
    He spelled it H-E-N-3-R-Y
    The 3 was silent, you see.

    We Will All Go Together When We Go
    Alas, the video doesn’t include the introductory patter.

  46. 46.

    UncleEbeneezer

    Much better X:

    X– The Ti West horror film from 2022.

    I just watched the origin story Pearl (it’s a horror trilogy) and it was also really good/fun and surprisingly artsy.

  50. 50.

    TiredOfItAll

    @NotMax: Um, I think it’s still called the Woolworth Building.  If it’s not, well, shee-it, I need to get out more.

  52. 52.

    Alison Rose

    This was a certain kind of entertainment for anyone nearby, I suppose: Apparently a mama bear and two cubs were spotted in a park in the city I grew up in (couple cities south of where I am now). The park was nearly adjacent to the neighborhood I lived in, and the specific area where officers found bear scat was right by where me and my friends used to get high. Good thing a bear never wandered by back then, that might have been a bit much after getting baked.

    Kind of weird though, because this park isn’t right on the edge of town. The bears might have come from the western side which is about a mile or so up a very busy road, but I’m trying to picture them just strolling down the sidewalk as traffic flies by. One of the “tips” the police department put out is that if you encounter a bear, “DO NOT LIE DOWN AND PLAY DEAD. Fight back if attacked” and I’m like…do I have time to make out my will first, because that is not a fight from which I would emerge victorious.

  58. 58.

    Miss Bianca

    That America’s Lounge Singer tweet sums it all up for me.

    (Which leads me to wonder whether the absolute destruction of Twitter as a media platform really was the point of pissing away $44 billion. Because no MOTU could *possibly* be as stupid as Musk looks right now, right? Right??!)

  60. 60.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kelly: Don’t forget Apple! Though I think they haven’t called Mac OS “Mac OS X” for a while, and it’s actually a Roman numeral “ten”.

  64. 64.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    In other news, “Only Fans” is rebranding to “XXX”

  65. 65.

    patrick II

    Maybe just because I am used to it, but the bird logo just seemed to work so well with the nomenclature.  Birds twitter (a group of or sequential tweets), and individual twitter is a tweet, you can retweet a tweet. The naming is unique, catchy and original. The idea of a flock of birds twittering is a pleasant sound.  Everyone knew what a tweet was and how the context made it different than a post or comment.  It was a self-advertising language and a great marketing advantage.

    What are Mastadon tweets called? Or other want to be replacements?  Anything as catchy as twitter and tweets?

  66. 66.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Alison Rose:

    Gates should get to referee the match. I mean, as far as I know, Musk and Zuck haven’t been namechecked in a song by one of the world’s biggest pop stars. 

    Agreed.

  67. 67.

    laura

    @Scout211: i have no doubt SFPD will have an identical no big whoop response when this occurs in the Mission by a non-billionaire.

  69. 69.

    Chris T.

    @Tom Levenson:

    Oh dear FSM. I hadn’t put that together. Yet one more reason in an overdetermined decision tree not to buy a Tesla.

    I understand that Musk wanted to call the “model 3” the “model E” but couldn’t get that name from Ford (who still own it) and hence went with the backwards-E. I have no original source for this claim though.

    ETA: found some sources, here’s one: https://www.carscoops.com/2022/03/how-ford-killed-teslas-sex-drive-taking-the-model-e-trademark/

    ETAA: beaten by several others to the same remarks…

  70. 70.

    Uncle Cosmo

    Zuck Fuckerberg. Muck Fusk. In a deathcage match, surrounded by heavily armed mercs ordered to metal-jacket-ventilate whichever one survives.

  73. 73.

    Urza

    @HumboldtBlue: Microsoft only owns it in relation to video games which is only a small part of Twitter.  Meta happens to own it for the social media version which makes it WAAAY funnier.

  80. 80.

    Jay

    @Alison Rose:

    CA has some Grizzlies, but they pretty much stick to the mountains.

    Black Bears are one of the few bear species that will have individuals that have learned to prey on humans. They also get habituated to humans from people feeding them or not gleaning suburban yards.

    With any bear, make yourself big, talk softly to them, and slowly back away, don’t lose sight of them, unless they take off. 99% of bears do not want any confrontation with humans.

    You can’t outrun a bear, and while you can out climb a Grizzly, you can’t outclimb a Black Bear.

  81. 81.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    Elon has changed Brand X from the shitty comparison product into a popular product…lol

    TFG pimps his own ass and Elon pimps Brand X.

  82. 82.

    Sure Lurkalot

    Mike Drucker@MikeDrucker
    brb gotta go give all of my banking information to the exploding car guy so I can buy things on the website he turned into 4chan for aging incels.

    Ha ha!

  83. 83.

    Tony G

    Jesus, what an idiot.  I remember, long ago when I was a kid in the sixties, seeing TV commercials in which the latest wonder-product was shown to be far superior to its crummy “Brand X” competitor.  “Brand X” stood for a lousy product.  So maybe he’s being accurate in renaming Twitter as “X”.

  87. 87.

    Chris T.

    @Jay:

    You can’t outrun a bear, and while you can out climb a Grizzly, you can’t outclimb a Black Bear.

    Hence the old joke about how to tell a black bear from a grizzly: climb a tree, and if the bear climbs up the tree after you and eats you, it’s a black bear. If, on the other hand, the bear casually knocks the tree down and eats you, it’s a grizzly.

  88. 88.

    OverTwistWillie

    @Odie Hugh Manatee:

    Current market cap for Playboy is $132 million. He could have had that, and paired it with a “make us an offer” startup app for $1.5 – 2 bills.

    The man is an imbecile.

  94. 94.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Elno is a lot like the PAB…can’t help but publicly beclown himself.

  95. 95.

    Jay

    @Alison Rose:

    Arms over your head, stand on your toes. Flare out your jacket.

    Most wild animals “puff themselves up” when taking a defensive posture, most minimize themselves when they are preparing to attack.

    It lets the bear know that you are not a threat, but will defend yourself.

    Most predators/omnivores have to balance a successful attack vs getting injured, (which can kill or cripple them over time).

  96. 96.

    CaseyL

    @BeautifulPlumage:

    One of my favorites is a bit of advice based on the fact that not all grizzlies are brown and not all black bears are black.

    Grizzles have humped shoulders, black bears do not.

    So this book – called “Bear Aware,’ and it’s an absolute masterpiece – says to look for the hump.

    To which I say, “So, when the bear is running towards me at 35 mph, am I supposed to ask her to turn sideways so I can see if she has a hump??”

  97. 97.

    Major Major Major Major

    A friend was telling me that part of Musk’s eternal vision is to make an Everything App a la WeChat–yes, we all know this–but what I didn’t know is that Musk sees it as a precursor for the Everything App that will be used ON MARS because of course he does.

  98. 98.

    Dan B

    @UncleEbeneezer:  We bought Bear Bells in Glacier National Park.  Everybody laughed at us.  I understand that bears don’t move away when they hear them.  Bear Spray?  Air horn??

  100. 100.

    Kelly

    Bears: Flapping your coat to get big is good. Yelling is good. I also throw rocks but not at the bear. I aim at boulders well to one side of and between me and the bear. Rocks hitting rocks makes a really loud crack.

  102. 102.

    Ken

    @CaseyL: Grizzles have humped shoulders, black bears do not.

    Still slightly better than the way to tell alligators from crocodiles, by closely examining the teeth.

  105. 105.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    I hiked with a co-worker-friend I met in Colorado a bunch of times over 2 years. She told me tales of living in Alaska and wearing a bell to ward off bears.  I was terrified of ever seeing a bear in the woods.

  106. 106.

    Jay

    @Dan B:

    Most fatal (for the human) bear interactions are when you surprise the bear at close range.

    In “touristy” areas, a bear coming out of hibernation isn’t going to move from trying to put back winter weight by eating sedge grass, just to accommodate the tourists. Same for berry season, or wild rose hips in fall.

    Where a bear bell or other noisemaker won’t help you is if you come towards a bears cache, so stick to the trails.

    I have fished wild remote salmon rivers in fall, and unlike the Lower Rainland salmon rivers, where people are stacked up like the ticket queue at concert, it was bears. Never had an issue. I could touch the bear on either side of me with my rod tip.

  108. 108.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    GoLikeHellMachine via Anne Laurie 2 Top:

    imagine getting a calendar invite to have your performance review in a room called “s3Xy”. imagine how absolutely embarassing this is…

    Even porn stars are embarrassed.

    Or so I hear. On the Internetz. One hears things like this on the Internetz. It doesn’t mean I, uh …

    Nevermind.

  110. 110.

    Splitting Image

    It’s a small thing, but discovering that Melon has owned the rights to x.com for over a decade, it occurs to me that he could have used it to build a nice little fan site for the X-Com series of games. Which would give me at least a little reason to think well of the guy. As it is, he’s just been squatting on the property, waiting to re-brand a product.

  112. 112.

    different-church-lady

    And yet the junk is just so fuckin’ pure that the entire post consists of almost nothing but the insane pusher’s product.

  113. 113.

    Scout211

    twitter X rival Mastodon has a massive child abuse material problem.

    Mastodon, the decentralized network viewed as a viable alternative to Twitter, is rife with child sexual abuse material (CSAM), according to a new study from Stanford’s Internet Observatory (via The Washington Post). In just two days, researchers found 112 instances of known CSAM across 325,000 posts on the platform — with the first instance showing up after just five minutes of searching.

    To conduct its research, the Internet Observatory scanned the 25 most popular Mastodon instances for CSAM. Researchers also employed Google’s SafeSearch API to identify explicit images, along with PhotoDNA, a tool that helps find flagged CSAM. During its search, the team found 554 pieces of content that matched hashtags or keywords often used by child sexual abuse groups online, all of which were identified as explicit in the “highest confidence” by Google SafeSearch.

    There were also 713 uses of the top 20 CSAM-related hashtags across the Fediverse on posts that contained media, as well as 1,217 text-only posts that pointed to “off-site CSAM trading or grooming of minors.” The study notes that the open posting of CSAM is “disturbingly prevalent.”

  114. 114.

    kalakal

    @Ken:

    Reminds me of “How to identify a Black Widow Spider & what to do having done so”

    1 Turn spider over

    2 Look closely. Does it have an hour glass shaped mark on its abdomen?

    3 If yes, congratulations! You have successfully identified a Black Widow spider!

    4 Be very careful and keep well away from it, Black Widow spiders are very poisonous. Don’t provoke it by doing something silly like turning it over

  115. 115.

    Ken

    @kalakal: That sounds like the way to identify poison ivy — rub a few leaves on your skin, and if a day later it’s a mass of painful itchy blisters, it was poison ivy.

  116. 116.

    mrmoshpotato

    @CaseyL:

    Grizzles have humped shoulders, black bears do not. 

    “Hey human.  You got some real sexy shoulders there!’

    Hump hump hump!

  121. 121.

    Another Scott

    @Scout211:

    AnarchoNinaWrites
    @[email protected]

    Folks, it’s a hit piece.

    Yeah, we KNOW about the child porn on “Mastodon” – they’re instances that literally NOBODY else federates with. Take it up with the government of Japan, the fediverse as you know it is absolutely NOT a fucking hub of CSAM. But yeah, I’m sure Bezo’s pet newspaper wouldn’t mind you feeling otherwise.

    Here’s the report they wouldn’t dare link you to, and you can see for yourself what’s being said:

    [PDF at Stanford.edu]

    All that stuff about primitive modding tools is valid, but WaPo didn’t write this story to talk about why instances need pDNA – they wrote it to tell muppets this place is riven with child porn; and you fucking KNOW that shit isn’t true. It’s an open source platform. Sickos can download a program too; nobody fucking federates with these people so you’re not going to see it.

    What exactly is anyone supposed to do about the fact that child porn fuckwads have computers too? Especially since literally ANY instance publishing that shit, gets sent to the negative zone immediately? The report criticizes the tools, and that’s fair. The WaPo story is pure hit piece brought to you by the kinda people who don’t have a fucking job if you keep going where there are no ads.

    Jul 24, 2023, 16:58 · Edited Jul 24, 17:00

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  122. 122.

    Cain

    @Scout211:

    Hmm.. they should identify these top 25 sites. Something doesn’t smell right.

    A lot of the big sites have very active mods. So I think they need to show their work and have it peer reviewed.

  124. 124.

    Ellenr

    @Jay: throw something at them.  It’s the only thing they can’t do.  Scares them.  Aim for nose, or feet if they’re moving.

  127. 127.

    Shalimar

    @Splitting Image: Even if you’re just squatting on x.com for a business later, how do you not loan it out to an X-Com fan friend for a game site?  There is a pretty big crossover between people with Elon’s 8th-grade sense of humor and gaming nuts.  If he had any real friends, you would think one of them has to adore X-Com.  He was 23 when the first game came out.

  128. 128.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @Shalimar: X-Com and its follow-ups don’t give you the option of shouting racist invective at a flesh-and-blood opponent as you’re shooting them on a virtual battlefield. Based on Elmo’s behavior on Twitter, that seems to be about his speed, not the careful tactical and strategic thinking that’s required to survive an X-Com scenario.

  129. 129.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: The creator of Mastodon wasn’t aware that “toot” was English language slang for “fart” when he took that suggestion, and later deprecated it in favor of “post”

    (which reminds me of the observation going around that French news reports apparently pronounce the name “ChatGPT” so that it sounds exactly like the sentence “Cat, I farted”.)

  130. 130.

    Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog

    @Matt McIrvin:

    French news reports apparently pronounce the name “ChatGPT” so that it sounds exactly like the sentence “Cat, I farted”.

    You just made my day.  (And very likely my cats’ day too.)

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