andi’s right, we should send hungry bears to twitter HQ https://t.co/rBoVLX2igM
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) November 11, 2022
EVEN BETTER IDEA!
Interior, Twitter HQ. Elon swaggers in, to be met by Twitter's leadership team, one of whom carries a large plastic bin wrapped in duct tape.
Elon: Sup, 'fuckers.
Twitter exec: Congratulations on your purchase of this bin of squirrels. Some of them are rabid.
— Allison Hantschel (@Athenae) November 11, 2022
Twitter exec: I really don’t recommend you do that.
Elon: Before I open this, cut a hole in the top and give the squirrels cocaine.
Twitter exec: Even the rabid ones?
Elon: Especially the rabid ones. It’s not like you can tell the difference.
Twitter exec: *sighs* Maybe we start with one non-rabid squirrel and give it just a little cocaine?
Elon: *stabs bin, pours metric fuckton of blow into hole*
Squirrels: *begin to scream*
Twitter execs: *back away slowly*
Elon: Nobody can work from home anymore.
Elon: Verify all the squirrels.
Twitter exec: I ask again whether perhaps we might verify just one squirrel, see how it goes.
The FTC …Elon: You’re fired. You, verify all the squirrels.
Custodian: Um, today’s my first day, sir …
Squirrels: *ominous chittering*
Elon: See, they’re already chillaxing. Are they verified yet?
Custodian: I don’t … know where that room even is, sir?
Elon: Fuck it. *pushes giant red button* All squirrels are now former President George W. Bush. *rips bin open*
Squirrels: *pour out, ragefully rejoicing*…
—–Enter Elizabeth Warren with a bazooka labeled CONSENT DECREE. Several squirrels escape through the door before it closes.
Offscreen: Brakes squeal, glass breaking, human screams, squirrel screams.
Elon: No one who works here can have tattoos.
Squirrels: *skitter industriously*
Warren: What are they … doing?
Elon: It appears they’ve made a tower of human body parts, what’s the big deal?
Warren: Are those … your advertisers?
Elon: Yeah, but we’ll get new ones.
Squirrels: *worship noises, gurgling*
Warren, into a burner phone: Protocol Zebra, NOW.
Elon, addressing squirrels: Guys, you gotta climb back in this bin and stop taking cocaine. Pretty please? …
Click over to read the whole thing!
All you beautiful idiots in my mentions arguing about the line of presidential succession for the squirrels would have done GREAT on Usenet in the 90s.
— Allison Hantschel (@Athenae) November 11, 2022
Since this wasn’t labeled “parody”, I have no choice but to assume this is verbatim fact from a citizen journalist, rather than the media elite. Thank you for bringing these events to our attention.
— Lizard (@LizardSF) November 11, 2022
Addendum: Warren is calling Katie Porter, who wrote Protocol Zebra in bullet list form on a whiteboard. https://t.co/F7kOPaRpdf
— Misty Gedlinske (@MistyGedlinske) November 11, 2022
— Conscience Collective (@ConscienceColl) November 11, 2022
Jerzy Russian
Dope is for dopes, Elon.
Anonymous At Work
Came on late to rejoice at the Kherson news and found this. 5 minutes of wheezing, tear-induced laughing later, I am making this comment. Sweet Christmas, that was great.
Poe Larity
All this distraction is going to delay his move to Mars.
Mike in NC
Saw our first Tesla dealership in Arlington VA a couple days ago. About three miles from National Airport.
Ken
Bloomberg reported today that Elon Musk’s lawyer has told Twitter employees that they won’t go to jail if the company is found to be violating the FTC consent decree it’s operating under. I’m not sure whether that means Elon Musk’s personal lawyer, or a lawyer representing Twitter — the original is paywalled so I’m going from the summaries. In either case, many have noted that the lawyer is not representing the employees so the advice is worthless.
Poe Larity
@Ken: Given our new era of Judicial Hactivism, I don’t think we can rely on decrees anymore.
kalakal
@Ken: If I were working for a company that felt the need to tell me “Don’t worry, you won’t go to jail” because they’re in regularity shit I’d quit so fast they wouldn’t see me for dust
Anoniminous
Musk’s latest brain waves:
1. Increase Twitter’s user base by 1 billion
2. Turn Twitter into a financial institution by tacking on PayPal functions
The guy is a buffoon
Poe Larity
More than $600 million in crypto left bankrupt crypto company FTX’s wallets late Friday, with little clear explanation as to why.
Soon afterwards, FTX stated in its official Telegram channel that it had been hacked, instructing users not to install any new upgrades and to delete all FTX apps.
“FTX has been hacked. FTX apps are malware. Delete them. Chat is open. Don't go on FTX site as it might download Trojans,” wrote an account administrator in the FTX Support Telegram chat. The message was pinned by FTX General Counsel Ryne Miller.
It’s squirrels all the way down.
kalakal
@Poe Larity: I think his brains already there. He’s certainly not operating in this reality
Darkrose
@Mike in NC: I had a job interview in Vallejo a few months ago. The hotel I stayed at was across the street from a Tesla dealership. I flipped it off a lot.
FlyingToaster (Tablet)
@kalakal: I suspect that by Monday the only employees left will be H1B serfs.
Benw
At least the bin wasn’t full of geese. Those fuckers are scary
Ken
@Poe Larity: This may be a “rug pull”, where the founders of a crypto company walk off with the funds. There have been plenty of other examples in the crypto world.
Mike in NC
@Darkrose: Good to know. I was stationed in Vallejo (Mare Island) back in 1981. Wished I had more time to see the sights, like Alcatraz.
NotMax
@Poe Larity
The FTX dumpster inferno is phenomenal.
“We never anticipated people might want access to their money.”
Martin
@Poe Larity: This was so easy to see coming.
Why did FTX blow up when it did? SBF running a $30B crypto exchange by basically eyeballing the books.
In case you’re wondering how a couple of 30 year olds wound up running a $30B crypto fund and its associated market maker (Alameda). SBFs parents are professors at Stanford Law, and Alameda’s CEOs dad is chair of the Econ program at MIT. So yeah, the offspring of America’s elite law and econ minds leading the way.
Chetan Murthy
@Ken: Ha! I’m reminded of the end of _The Sting_.
Martin
@Ken: Too big to be a rug pull. SBF is too high profile by his own making. He can’t just disappear into the night. And you don’t rug pull big VC firms like this. The FBI may not give a shit about some rando cryptobro, but VC firms have legal contracts. We’re talking govt recognized fraud if it’s a rug pull.
Darkrose
@Mike in NC: I was interviewing at Cal Maritime. Sadly didn’t get the job–it would have been nice to work right on the water.
Chetan Murthy
@Martin: Wasn’t there some lady who made off with $1B from some cryptocurrency she’d founded ?
MobiusKlein
@kalakal:
In my company training yearly, they make a point of noting that individuals can be criminally liable for various things, like ignoring money laundering / sanctions violations at work.
If you see something sketchy, you have a duty to report it.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Hey all! I was away for a few days. I had to unplug. Really happy to see Dems did really well pretty much across the board, when the media narrative was we weren’t. I have to say, I did feel a sense of dread on election night
It’s so important we managed to win SOS offices in important states like Michigan, Arizona, etc to protect democracy.
And holy shit, Michigan Dems won the trifecta alone with enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution! And it wasn’t even close! Like the Kansas vote. Yay! The Mich state legislature had been controlled by Rs for awhile hadn’t it?
Ohio fucking sucks tho, I hate this place
Looking forward to writing postcards for Warnock. I’m so proud to have been apart of this tremendous effort!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@MobiusKlein:
At work, I’m trained on Western Union services. We’re told the same thing. If we suspect fraud, we have the right and duty to refuse a transaction as well as report it. AML/sanctions are serious business
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Hey, welcome back! And I’m glad you unplugged. I was pretty depressed, too. I. Mean. Really. Depressed. I’d pretty much given up on the American electorate: expected them to vote Teh Fash in, and then it’d be all over except for the wait for 2024.
It’s a great, great thing, to have underestimated the American people. A great thing to be wrong in this way.
Martin
@Chetan Murthy: Yeah. I’m not saying rug pulls don’t happen, but they happen to small investors, not to well established corporations. FTX was somewhat notable by who had funded it – not a bunch of randos but big VCs.
No, this just random crypto true believer bullshit, believing that everything could go up, that there was always a scheme to make it go. Usual double counting asset bullshit – FTX puts customer money in Alameda, Alameda uses that to buy FTX coin under Alamedas account, etc. Simple scams that would get caught by any financial regulator.
lgerard
@Chetan Murthy:
You mean the One Coin Lady
yeah they’re still looking for her
eclare
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Good to have you back!
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): welcome back!
kalakal
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Very wise of you to unplug. The abortion rights votes were great! Kentucky!!!
jnfr
That squirrel thing was really weird.
glc
Libeartarians < Libertarians?
I don’t think so.
Tehanu
Love the rabid squirrels!
Splitting Image
@glc:
Anecdata, but Yogi was smarter than the average bear, so it is unlikely he was a libertarian. You never heard him or Boo-Boo concern themselves with “property rights” when a pic-a-nic basket was to be had.
Top Cat, on the other hand, was definitely a libertarian.
Major Major Major Major
@Splitting Image:
So they’re an-coms.
Frankensteinbeck
All this because Elon is an internet troll who got addicted to the absolutely bizarre, obsessed weirdos who think he can do no wrong. Twitter put slight restrictions on his trolling, and he just had to punish them and give himself complete freedom to be a petty, arrogant shithead.
Now he’s more restricted than before, and buying his own hype is hurting him badly. If it pops the Tesla stock bubble, it may destroy him.
All because he’s the same kind of dumbass who is right now going “I drink your liberal tears!” as we comment on how stupid Elon is.
Steeplejack
@Ken:
different-church-lady
Here’s a repeat of something I said a handful of threads down:
The thing everyone is missing about Twitter is nobody fuckin’ asked for it in the first place. It just happened, and until it happened it wasn’t at all necessary. But once it happened everyone thought it was indispensable, even though it was only ubiquitous, which is not at all the sane thing.
And The Next Big Thing will also be some other shit nobody asked for. And everyone will also come to think it’s indispensable. And it will probably be even worse.
(Also: that Twitter thread had me laughing like a lunatic in a coffee shop yesterday. Had to cover my mouth I was giggling so hard…)
different-church-lady
@Martin:
I had no awareness of SBF until a couple of months ago, when I saw a lousy photo of him (are there any good photos of him?) on a bus billboard for his exchange. And my reaction was, “Who is this dweeb and why is just the sight of his face supposed to make me trust crypto?” The damn thing just stank of cult-of-personality. It was one of several significant things that was putting me in a mood of simmering rage lately, like the entire goddamned world had just lost its mind and there was nothing left in the entire universe but con men and willing dupes. And I was sniffing all this out from just one fuckin’ billboard.
So the fall of this particular golden calf feels quite satisfying. And I have no sympathy for those conned by him. Because one of these days those idiots will take us all down with them.
The Thin Black Duke
@different-church-lady: I’ll miss Black Twitter.
Jinchi
It’s amazing that the room didn’t quit en-masse before he completed the sentence. I wonder how many of them are chained to this sinking ship by H-1b visas.
And yes that was his personal lawyer. He apparently fired the corporate one.
Jinchi
Is the mayor of New York still asking for his salary in bitcoin?
Tony G
@Poe Larity: Mars is uninhabitable to human life. Elon should do fine there.
Miss Bianca
@Frankensteinbeck:
*rubs tiny paws together*…Good, good…
Anonymous At Work
@Poe Larity: “squirrels all the way down” should be a tag line or motto. Pure poetry.
Scout211
Nice article from The 19th News this morning celebrating Tina Kotek and Maura Healy.
ETA: You won’t believe how autocorrect changed Kotek’s name. (x for the k). Yikes! All you lucky Oregonians, be sure to proofread before posting her name in your comments!
BruceFromOhio
This whole thing is an artwork, but this put me on the floor.
BruceFromOhio
@Martin: This reads like a transcript of a very boring LSD trip.
glc
@Splitting Image:
>
would make a good deal more sense.