elon: let’s allow porn
software engineer: um ok?
elon: *walking back into the room 5 minutes later* hey can everyone see likes?
— slate (@PleaseBeGneiss) June 12, 2024
That’s because you don’t like the kind of stuff Elon likes. https://t.co/HEQF0bYYMT
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) June 12, 2024
Of course this doesn’t matter to those of you who don’t read twitter (it doesn’t matter to me, because that’s not how *I* read twitter), but even The Incredible Shrinking Elon should’ve been able to figure out what kind of speculation this development would set off…
… That means what users like on the platform will be hidden by default, which is already an option for X’s Premium subscribers. Following the publication of this story, X owner Elon Musk reshared a screenshot of it, saying it’s “important to allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so!”
A few weeks ago, X’s director of engineering, Haofei Wang, said the upcoming change is meant to protect users’ public image — because “many people feel discouraged” to like “edgy” content. The Likes tab on user profiles will be gone. Users will still be able to see who liked their posts and the like count for all posts, but they will not see the people who liked someone else’s post, according to X senior software engineer Enrique Barragan…
Late last year, Musk told the platform’s engineers that he wanted to get rid of the tweet action buttons altogether and instead place a stronger emphasis on post views (also called “impressions”). Musk’s goal was to remove the section that contained the like and repost buttons entirely because Musk believed likes weren’t important, a source told me at the time.
“Social media in general is shifting away from like counts, so this makes sense,” the source said. “Part of me thinks [Musk] just wants to disassociate from Twitter more and more.”
To quote another (since deleted) tweet: “Elon is hiding likes because he assumes everyone is like him and wants to like Nazi shit without people seeing it. His first thought is always, how can I help my people, who love Nazi shit.”
Of course, the Nazi sex pest owner of this place just nuked the ability to see likes so you could size people up. https://t.co/LF73ASZ4Gm
— Clean Observer (@Hammbear2024) June 12, 2024
People like Musk don’t like getting judged for being big fans of bigots. It makes trolling easier. https://t.co/d6aux9zNXg
— Clean Observer (@Hammbear2024) June 12, 2024
We can’t see likes, but we can see 7,000 word tweets from Bill Ackman
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) June 12, 2024
I’m not sure where this showed up on my feed, but the account is supposed to have more than 49,000 followers…
how is 𝕏 going to make money? short post + answer
initially i was confused by many of the priorities shown with new X features. subscriptions are cool, but even the highest volume accounts make almost nothing from them.
my experience advertising on X has gone downhill since…
— near (@nearcyan) June 13, 2024
… initially i was confused by many of the priorities shown with new X features. subscriptions are cool, but even the highest volume accounts make almost nothing from them.
my experience advertising on X has gone downhill since the administrative changes and it seems to me that the staffing cut likely hit nontechnical roles in the primary revenue center area of the company pretty hard.
with that said, elon isn’t on good terms with many advertises and vice versa. from his point of view it is an inherently adversarial relationship: if the true customers of X are advertisers, they have implicit control over the platform. elon didn’t buy X for a quick buck, he bought it due to the long-term political ramifications, his self-professed love for freedom of speech, and probably also because he has bipolar II. thus in an ideal world, he wants to be entirely free from advertisers.
so, you want to run a large social network, but not rely on advertisements. this is really hard! for a reminder of just how much money advertisements bring in we can look at facebook which reports $274/year per monthly active user in revenue from advertising on the facebook product alone in the US (excluding instagram!): Link
ads are everywhere because it is much easier to show a user $20 worth of ads than to get them to pull out their credit card and subscribe for $20. this is true in almost every consumer market.
did you know X has a tipping feature? probably not because almost no one uses it (yet). i haven’t felt a desire to tip someone here, but i know of one industry where unprompted tips are really common!
as of June 2024, X likes have now been changed to ‘private by default’ for all users. interesting!
can you think of a lucrative consumer market where users have high spend, high retention, want the ability to subscribe to exclusive content, want an option to tip individual users they follow, and lastly would like to have a default expectation of privacy in their likes and browsing habits?
only one industry fits the bill: pornography.
X’s current revenue is private, but the last $TWTR SEC 10-Q filing showed an annual revenue of around $4.6B: Link. it was estimated by many outlets that X revenue could have dropped around 50% post-acquisition, although i can’t verify this number. If roughly accurate, X is now missing out on 2.3B of annual revenue!
In completely unrelated news, Onlyfans’s estimated annual revenue is ~2.4B. This is a rough metric as it is difficult to estimate given they are a private UK company, but it is certainly far above 1B.
Luckily for X, they don’t need to enact a new raucous policy change of allowing adult content on the platform, because it has already been allowed for a decade. in fact X actually has *a lot* of pornographic content, and several million users use it for this purpose daily. some of you will be very surprised reading that sentence, but a subset of you will nod your head and smirk: estimates of X’s NSFW content are ~15% of the entire platform. Regardless, the X ToS were updated to explicitly allow adult content one week ago: https://help.x.com/en/rules-and-policies/adult-content
There’s a few challenges left for X to solve. One of them is that if you’re going to have a service that knowingly lets users sell adult content of themselves, you have to be very, very certain that none of them are minors. In other news, X rolled out government identify verification as a new requirement this month for all monetized creators.
Secondly, X needs to ensure they can stay on the app store. Apple does not want adult apps on their app store, no! That would be immoral, unlike having a near-monopoly over what applications and hardware modifications consumers can run on their own devices.
Much to consider here; as the holder of the #1 ‘news’ app slot as well as the go-to live information dissemination platform in the US and many other countries, there’s a strong incentive for Apple to play much more conservative than their usual playbook entails. This is before including the aftermath of the epic games v apple case as well as the unique tenacity and affinity for litigation Elon would have against apple (as his recent tweets have made clear).
There’s a few other challenges to solve including long-term branding (X is already quite audacious here!), payment provider risk (partially grandfathered in, although elon’s desire for more control over payment rails may end up important here!), feature parity and separation for further nsfw use-cases, and a few other litigation risk categories which some parties will have a field day with (elon has a lot of enemies!), but at the end of the day I would bet that this at least partially works out.
I will be keeping this account SFW for the time being, but thanks for reading this far.
X dot com – the everything app.
He really meant everything!
Musk (envisioning doing to OnlyFans what Bezo did to independent booksellers) to his developers: Imagine Amazon, but for the fun stuff!!!
Salty Sam
I have NO idea what any of this means.
Trivia Man
The internet has pornography now? Maybe that’s why I haven’t found anything in the woods for years and years.
CaseyL
So… he’s going to turn X into Porn Central?
There is already so much porn available online, he’ll have to come up with something to make X particularly attractive to porn-watchers.
Something they can’t get most other places.
It’s going to be awful. Just… horrific.
SpaceUnit
@CaseyL:
Nazi porn.
Villago Delenda Est
X marks the massive pile of shit.
Villago Delenda Est
@SpaceUnit: Ilse, She-Wolf of the SS, 24/7/365.
Jackie
@Salty Sam: You’re not alone.
CaseyL
He’s gathering the worst people in the world together.
Destruction of everything, debasement of everything, for ego and money.
SpaceUnit
@Villago Delenda Est:
An underrated art film!
Ken
@SpaceUnit: That’s already out there*, but maybe Musk wants to make X the go-to site for it?
* I sometimes joke about a strong form of Rule 34, where the porn comes into existence when someone names it, complete with a history showing it’s been around for years.
Frankensteinbeck
Since day fucking one, when he unbanned Babylon Bee.
Gretchen
Comments are closed on the Florida post. I’ve never seen this here before. Why?
Edit: it was devolving into hopelessness. I agree – not helpful. And Florida has an abortion referendum on the ballot, which I think will help.
Salty Sam
I watched it in a nasty grind house theater in Houston when it came out. An edifying experience!
Jackie
Too funny! And completely not surprising:
Jackson was his name. Dr Ronny Jackson.
Soprano2
@Gretchen: I wondered the same thing, because I didn’t see an obvious reason for it.
Gretchen
Dr. Timothy Snyder, expert on authoritarianism, wrote the book On Tyranny. His first rule of resisting tyranny is « don’t obey in advance ». Seems to me like saying the odds are stacked against us, let’s not try, is obeying in advance.
I just read Joy Reid’s book, Medgar and Myrlie. Medgar Evers was working in an environment where things weren’t just gerrymandered, but that people were literally murdered for trying to vote. Yet he kept hoping and working, and eventually prevailed, though he didn’t live to see it.
I know it feels pretty hopeless in Missouri too, but we have a really good candidate, a veteran, Lucas Kunce, running against that worthless Josh Hawley, and Jess Piper and Blue Missouri are working hard to keep as few seats uncontested as possible. And there’s an abortion referendum on the ballot unless the legislature can figure out a way to block it.
CaseyL
@Gretchen:
The usual suspects showed up to explain how we’re all doomed, how Democrats are useless, and so on and so forth.
Jager
@SpaceUnit:
Ilsa She Wolf of the SS’ great-granddaughters?
Another Scott
@Jackie: AKA, “the Candyman”.
TexasTribune.org (from March):
[ womp, womp ]
RollingStone.com:
No wonder he and TCFFG get along so well. :-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Cheers,
Scott.
Chet Murthy
Gosh, X.com seems so ….. imprecise. It doesn’t … *evoke* the true nature of where Kums (a)Lone wants to take the company. But not to worry, there’s a new name that he can use right there! s3xy.com ! Yes! Yes! And it’s cross-branded with Tesla! Huzzah!
Another Scott
@Gretchen: +1
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Soprano2
@Jackie: More and more I think TCFG has real cognitive problems from something, whether dementia, drug use or long Covid. He doesn’t seem to understand that they don’t give that test routinely (IMHO they should starting around age 60), they only give it if they think there is a reason to be concerned (like when your patient’s wife says she has concerns about her husband’s memory and then you don’t ask why, fuck my husband’s previous doctor). If he took that test multiple times there’s a reason for that. My husband takes it every 6 months to see if his mental function has deteriorated more.
Soprano2
@Gretchen: I don’t think they can block it, but you can bet they’ll try to invalidate enough signatures to keep it off the ballot.
Soprano2
@CaseyL: I had to quit reading Dr. Doom’s posts because, although I think he makes valid points, he rarely has any ideas about how to fight back that don’t involve actual violence. He gives up in advance.
West of the Rockies
@Soprano2:
The last dozen or so comments on the
Florida thread were getting ugly fast.
CaseyL
@Soprano2: Yo tambien. Got tired of hearing how violence was inevitable, and anyone saying otherwise is an idiot. Plus, of course, the Biden-bashing.
Jackie
@Another Scott: And MAGA Mike promoted him to the House Intelligence Oversight Committee. Even against members of his GQP caucus wishes. 😡
Chet Murthy
@Soprano2: I certainly don’t want to start an argument about this, but I do think that for those who want to actually understand what might happen if TCFG retakes power, it might be worth reading histories of what happened before and after the Nazis came to power. William Sheridan Allen’s _The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town, 1922-1945_ is a monthly, sometimes even weekly, tick-tock of the years before and after the Nazis came to power in Germany. One can see the many parallels between Weimar, and our time. Also, the ways in which Weimar was in fact better-prepared than we are. And Allen’s “Conclusions” chapter merits reading with care.
I’m looking for other such histories, and hope I can find some e.g. of what happened in Latin American countries that entered dictatorship.
piratedan
@CaseyL: He’s Hedley Lamarr sans being in a Mel Brooks film.
Chet Murthy
@Jager: I think these days, that name refers to Laura Ingraham [spit]
eclare
@Gretchen:
Plus legalizing weed.
NotMax
Does the world need another Hitler cats site?
//
eclare
@Soprano2:
Agree.
scav
Once again, a solid number of the Free Speech! absolutists prove to really really be all about the Freedom from the Consequences of their Speech. “How dare you form an opinion of me based on my statements.” Hide the Likes! But then actually, isn’t that going to rather gut the low-rent troll economy? Their easy public stage built entirely of clicking other people’s content for the shock factor is being pulled from under them. They’re going to have to fucking type. Or, maybe chatbots will actually do it all for them: they’re certainly trained to deliver such content.
Soprano2
@Chet Murthy: Oh, I agree about that. I listened to Maddow’s “Ultra” podcast and couldn’t believe I had never heard any of that before. History textbooks have done a good job of hiding how much support Nazis had in the US in the 1930’s. What I object to is the attitude that nothing short of civil war makes any difference. There used to be one Democrat in the state legislature from my city; now there are three. Democrats in MO think they can break the R’s supermajority in the House this year. I think saying it’s useless to even try in Florida is a bridge too far.
Chet Murthy
@Soprano2:
Do you mean that you think that actions short of civil war can make a difference, if TCFG takes power?
Joey Maloney
@Villago Delenda Est: Ilse, She-Wolf of the SS, 24/7/365.
Time to dust off the Israeli stalag porn archives!
Chet Murthy
@Soprano2: Perhaps you mean that there are actions short of violence that we can take -before- TCFG retakes power, and that might -prevent- him retaking power. In that case, I … *vehemently agree* with you. Vehemently so. Sure, 20yr ago would have been better. So would 10yr, and 2016. But today is a great time to take actions to prevent him from taking power, and we can do that and succeed. *Can*, not *Will*. We *can* succeed.
P.S. I mean, if I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t bother donating more money than my rent, to Dem causes. If I didn’t believe that, I should spend that money on saving my ass (and that of my family).
Shalimar
@Chet Murthy: I think actions short of a civil war will make a difference, but it will take time. We only escaped depressions in 2008 and 2020 by electing Democrats. I don’t think it will take until the next election for the economy to collapse if Trump wins. And there will be a backlash against Republicans that won’t necessarily turn violent if they continue to allow elections.
Chet Murthy
@Shalimar: OK, I think you’re saying that *if* TCFG retakes power, then there are actions short of violence that can be effective in turning him back. I’m not going to try to argue you out of that, but I would suggest that you read Allen’s book.
Soprano2
@Chet Murthy: I do think this, although I don’t think it would be easy.
Chet Murthy
@Soprano2: All I can say is, if you read some histories, I think you’ll be disabused.
Gretchen
@Chet Murthy: Thank you for that.
Gretchen
@Shalimar: Bob Cesca keeps asking why it doesn’t get more play that every single Republican, back to Herbert Hoover, has presided over a recession or depression. Every single one. How did they get the reputation for being better for the economy, when it’s always a Democrat who hauls us out of their mess?
Chet Murthy
@Gretchen: FWIW, I don’t think Adam would disagree either. I went back and read the Florida thread, and he was limiting his assessment to Florida.
like a metaphor
Trollon Musk named his car models the S,3,X, Y. Because he is the world’s richest 12 year old. And now the Cybercuck.
Tony Jay
@Gretchen:
Republicans are better for individual rich people because they lower their tax burden and increase their reservoirs of disposable bribery/clout coin. Those rich people in turn spend money to popularise the myth that Republicans are better for the economy than Democrats, and ensure that more factually based opinions are denied widespread exposure.
That’s how it works over here with Tory vs Labour. We always go broken under Tories and cut the deficit under Labour, but say that on a TV News show and everyone from the presenter on down will treat you like you just called for compulsory dog-shit sandwiches at lunchtime.
People only know what they ‘know’. And it’s in the interests of the people profiting from misinformation to keep it that way.
Ken
@like a metaphor: I wonder if one reason for Elon’s erratic behavior at Tesla is that with the spelling of S3XY, he’s accomplished all his goals and can’t think of anything else.
NotMax
@like a metaphor
Soon to be unveiled, the models N, A , Z and I.
//
Betty Cracker
@Chet Murthy: It is difficult to hold out hope for democracy in Florida. Adam is right to call it an “illiberal managed democracy.”
Repubs here have achieved a Hungarian-style autocratic system that maintains the hollowed-out trappings of democracy while exerting total control. And about half the voters are okay with that!
That said, I think it’s important to challenge the autocrats in every election. Sometimes people wake up. Sometimes enemies fuck up. You have to be ready when that happens.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Chet Murthy: It’s like the saying about planting a tree: the best time to do it is 100 years ago, but the second-best time to do it is now.
Jay
@Tony Jay:
Ditto for the Tories, Cons, here, Federally and Provincially, (recession, depression), all the various nyms they call themselves to run away from their fiscal records and abomination laws they have tried/introduced. Here, they change their nym after every time they get kicked out of power.
“Oh, no, we arn’t Tories/Con’s, we have no relation to that other party even though we have 99.8% the same membership. We have only 79.6% of the same old Candidates”.
In BC, the Tories/Cons even rebranded as the “Liberal” Party, one time, because that went bankrupt and the “bought” the Nym. When the Liberal Party of BC finally imploded, half the party decided to be the BC Conservative Party, the other half, the real wingers, went with BC United. The only thing they hate and despise more than the residents of BC, the NDP and the Greens, is each other.
If they had gone back to their bare roots, and rebranded as the Socred Party, (Social Credit), they would get more votes, BUT, they would be expected to “get stuff done” and build the Province.
Sure, the Socreds were the most corrupt gang of thieves we ever had in this Province, but they got stuff done, while taking a tiny bit off the top.
Highways, Hydro, rural electrification, Universities, other Public Works, Welfare, UI, Medical Care,……….
satby
@Gretchen: I assume WG closed them to shut Adam up.
Baud
5049 state strategy!Baud
I can’t believe AL broke the blog.
satby
@Baud: Wy do you say that? Working fine for me.
Baud
@satby:
On mobile, there’s a couple of inks in the article that breaks the margins.
satby
Anyway, back to the subject, Elmo was thoroughly ridiculed for the hiding likes announcement; most notably by Mark Hamil, who manually typed LIKE into every tweet he liked, which spread throughout twitter even though you could still just click the heart. I think that @nearcyan is correct, Elmo torched his revenue stream and is casting about in his usual inept way to find a substitute. If he tries to monetize it with porn, he’ll vaporize a lot of what remains, because it’s still the primary site for news updates.
Baud
@satby:
My first thought is the reason to hide likes is to manipulate likes for propaganda purposes. But I don’t really know how it all works.
TBone
Another beautiful morning 🌄 It’s a good day for mockery.
😆🤣
https://substack.com/profile/696120-aaron-rupar/note/c-59169979
TBone
fElon has been trying to break his toy since he got it. Just because he can. Either spoiled child syndrome or a grudge against someone who mocked him (like Dotard and Obama). Or both.
TBone
Shero of the
DayYear (film review by Tom Sullivan)TBone
Don’t know why that broke the margin, ugh.
satby
@Baud: Makes it harder (a little) to evaluate and block bots or fascists if you can’t view their twitter trail of likes or reposts. But not significantly harder, unless they never post a comment of their own.
bk
@CaseyL: You misspelled “Adam”.
Baud
Some balm to soothe over bad feelings, which you should take for what it’s worth.
Tony Jay
@TBone:
Fake News! Johnson is
RonnieRonny Jackson’s White House nickname! President4Life Trump using it in conversation is evidence of his GREAT HUMANITY and RELATABILITY! Everyone (now) knows that and they’ll be all over the News saying so within the hour!TBone
@Tony Jay: and he’s gonna lose the debates on purpose, just like the election 😆
The PeeWee gambit: “I meant to do that!”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=urnRVr1P2bc
different-church-lady
WILL THIS SOCIAL TOXIN JUST FUCKING DIE ALREADY?
TBone
@different-church-lady: 🤣🤣🤣
Tony Jay
@TBone:
They can’t let Stench do debates. They just can’t. Sure, the Hench Party will stand and applaud no matter how badly he faceplants, but there’s no earthly way for all the forces of misinformation to spin the amount of glans-faced, unintelligible ranting that he’ll vomit forth once Smilin’ Joe has laughed in his face for the third time.
TBone
@Tony Jay: A lot of folks don’t believe he’ll show up. I cannot predict, but am very hopeful that he’ll be afraid of being seen as weak if he blows off the debates. I will be watching every second if he shows up!!!
I can’t wait to see President Biden laugh in his face!
Glans-faced 😆
TBone
@Tony Jay: on that note
https://crooksandliars.com/2024/06/brain-addled-trump-confuses-ratings-poll
Sid
It’s easy enough already to find pornography on the internet.
Elon being Elmo, I’m guessing his plan is to feature snuff content.
Sid
@Baud:
If Florida is close, it doesn’t make any sense at all that 2020 battleground states are. Someone’s fucking with us.
Chief Oshkosh
Between Elon fucking up Twitter and Jeff fucking up WaPo, I’m beginning to think that billionaires are highly overrated.
Adam L Silverman
@bk: That’s Dr Silverman to you.
And you’re banned.different-church-lady
@Adam L Silverman:
Oh. Darn. Another cat toy I missed.
different-church-lady
@Sid: Sid… everyone is fucking with us.
Adam L Silverman
@different-church-lady: No, I unbanned them and restored their comment.
Geminid
@Sid: Regarding polling in generaI, I agree with the proposition that someone is fucking with us. I’ve seen two polls showing Virginia tied between Trump and Biden, and I don’t believe them for a second.
But it makes sense to me that Florida could be close and the “battleground” states also be close. In 2020, Joe Biden lost Florida by over 360,000 votes, but that was out of slightly under 11 million votes cast: a margin of only 3.36 %. Biden won states like Georgia and Arizona by a couple tenths of a per cent, less than 4% better than Florida.
I could see Florida trending more Democratic even as Georgia remained a tossup. For one thing, while this is a federal election Florida has a lot of state level problems that Floridians can rightfully blame on Republican rule. If they’re mad enough, they will take their animus out on Trump, and Rick Scott also.
Plus, I think the Dobbs decision and the Abortion Rights referendum are refocusing people’s political views and reframing the Democrat vs. Republican debate. Up until 2022, straight-line trends showed Florida slowly but steadily shifting towards the Republican side. Now Florida politics may be in flux, so to speak.
Adam L Silverman
@bk: @CaseyL: @Soprano2: @CaseyL: @satby: If you have a problem with me, you may contact me directly. Talking about me behind my back in the comments of a post three posts later is trollish behavior. It is also unacceptable.
I trust we will not have to have this conversation again.
different-church-lady
@West of the Rockies:
I missed that in real time, but I just scanned it, and it looks pretty tame by comparison to past Balloon-Flame standards.
Another Scott
@Adam L Silverman: This isn’t a good look, Adam.
Cheers,
Scott.
Tony Jay
@TBone:
If he starts whining this week about how unfaiiiiir it is that Biden is going to pardon his criminal son while weaponising the broken Justice System against America’s flaxen haired favourite son, we’ll know he’s setting up an off ramp for the end of the week.
Sid
@Adam L Silverman:
I didn’t see that thread in real time, but had to go read it due to the drama (melodrama?) it seems to have inspired. It looked to this outsider like a not unhealthy exchange of differing opinions, and it’s possible that at least some of the people who are here ostensibly ‘talking behind your back’ were simply frustrated by the truncated thread. Of course, most things don’t happen in a vacuum, and it’s possible you/they have history I’m unaware of.
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott: I was wondering how long it would take for Pangloss to weigh in.
Adam L Silverman
@Sid: They are unhappy that I am injecting harsh, cruel reality, as well as factual explanations about how things actually work, into their normalcy biased days. That makes them upset.
Geminid
@Tony Jay: Donald Trump is the Man of a Thousand Excuses, and we’ll likely hear at least a dozen when he backs out of the debate. But they’ll all boil down to, “No one has ever been treated as unfairly as I have been.”
Sid
@Adam L Silverman: That I understand, and I’m more inclined toward your view of the reality in Florida and federally. At the same time, the recent turnarounds in Michigan (and to a lesser extent in Wisconsin) wouldn’t have happened if people simply surrendered to overwhelming odds.
scribbler
@Adam L Silverman: Someone wondered why the comments were closed in that thread, which is an uncommon occurrence here, to say the least. Pretty hard to give an explanation about that without referring to you. You’re out of line.
different-church-lady
Now, me, I’m a little tired of the “It’s not real if it’s not gloomy” point of view.
satby
@Adam L Silverman: I don’t have a problem with you, I have problems with censorship.
Another Scott
@different-church-lady:
A palate cleanser – (repost) – Jeremy Weber at warroom.armywarcollege.edu – Hope is not “a” strategy: it’s the only strategy
Cheers,
Scott.
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott: Let me tell you about the fraud that created that site. Hired directly out of getting a doctorate in business administration, he then showed up and his new (as in just took over) department chair realized he was incapable of performing his duties. He was ordered to sit in seminar every day and learn the curriculum. Instead he got bored, decided he was destined for greater things, and immediately applied to be the dean. When that failed – and the entire hiring committee was in stitches – he wrote a proposal for the Carlisle Scholars Program. Basically, a great books of the west for colonels and captains. All while befriending and brown nosing the worst group of faculty members – a bunch of colonels who had retired into their professorships and were convinced they should run the place. He also has a penchant for stealing other people’s work and ideas. He’s a religious extremist home schooling mediocrity with megalomania and a narcissist’s inherent belief in his own greatness. The 49th Commandant was wise to his grift and refused. When the 49th Commandant retired, his replacement approved a pilot because no one provided the context. This blog is part of that grift. That article is factually, conceptually, and doctrinally inaccurate, which is par for the course for what is published there.
The US Army War College is, unfortunately, not what it once was. People like this guy are one of the main reasons for that.
Another Scott
@Adam L Silverman: Yes, I remember your earlier comments.
As always, the work stands separate from the creator.
People can have different views. People can talk about their views. It’s allowed.
Cheers,
Scott.
Adam L Silverman
@different-church-lady: You are the person who freaked out and screamed in comments about why the news media, the front pagers here, and the commenters all lied to you about the fact that Trump would never be elected and then disappeared for weeks after the 2016 election. Leading several of us to try to check on you to see if you were okay. But now, when those of us trying to ensure that you’re not given false hope this time around, but, rather, the unpleasant reality you’re still upset.
Adam L Silverman
@satby: I’m not the one who locked the comments. I am the one that tries to keep the antisemites, homophobes, transphobes, racists, and bigots out of the comments and off the site so that the rest of the readers, commenters, and lurkers don’t have to put up with that garbage.
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott: We are not here to make the readers, commenters, and lurkers dumber and less well informed. Happy, pleasant inaccuracies are damaging and corrosive.
Another Scott
@Adam L Silverman: @Adam L Silverman:
You and John Cole seem to have different views of what this blog is for.
IMHO.
Cheers,
Scott.
Sid
@Another Scott:
John Cole’s goal is to make readers dumber and less well-informed?
Sid
@Adam L Silverman: Maybe whoever locked the comments should weigh in (with their reasons) so people can start sniping at them.
Another Scott
@Sid:
Heh.
Comment Policy
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Sid
@Another Scott: Thanks- I’ve never looked at that before now. It appears that Adam and John Cole are pretty much on the same page. Is Cole’s mission statement about keeping people dumber and uninformed somewhere else?
different-church-lady
@Adam L Silverman:
• I most certainly had a total freak-out election night 2016.
• I lashed out at a lot of things, but I don’t believe I screamed at the front pagers. Why would I? They’re not the ones who were wrong.
• My disappearance wasn’t exclusive to Balloon-Juice — I avoided the entirety of the internet and television for months. I apologize if my break caused distress.
• Trust me, I have zero false hope this loop. But I also don’t believe in false despair.
• I totally get that we’re all scarred by 2016 to varying extents, and are trying to manage our emotions in the best way we can. But it’s a fine line between preparing for the worst and believing the worst in inevitable. It’s not so fine a line between that and promoting the worst.
• I’m surprised you’re taking so much of this overall conversation this morning so personally.
(Might add more later upon further thought.)
different-church-lady
@Adam L Silverman:
And for that you deserve our admiration. I can only imagine what it’s like to deal with a flood of shit every single day. On my own (non-political) blog I don’t allow comments at all, for that kind of reason. Being bullied as a kid will make the modern internet seem… unsurprising, shall we say.
different-church-lady
@Another Scott:
I might suggest the addition of, “…but are discouraged nonetheless.”
different-church-lady
@different-church-lady:
Which I’m not directly accusing Adam of doing necessarily — I didn’t read the other thread carefully enough to know one way or the other. My jibe was more general.
Glidwrith
@Tony Jay: Oh, my GOD! Glans-faced! I know what that is! That insult is going into my playbook, right next to copraphage!
Tony Jay
@Glidwrith:
If I’ve brought anything to this mortal coil, I’d like to think it’s a pithy insult or three.
satby
@Adam L Silverman: it was very obvious who locked the comments, and I never assumed it was you.
TEL
@Adam L Silverman: Seriously? These are comments we all can see, including you, so they’re not hiding. Being so thin-skinned that you’re going to personally ban hammer anyone that says something about you you don’t like, when all they are doing is expressing disagreement with your own opinions is not cool. And not something that I’m ok with any of the front-pagers doing. I do hope you have a “get-a-grip” friend in your life who can get you to climb off your high horse and realize that 1. It’s ok for people to disagree with you; and 2. Lighten up man!
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@NotMax: you win the interwebs