Ah sorry guys I had higher hopes to throw something a little more organized together today. Alas, I’ve been spending 75% of the day worrying about my cat, who is being boarded and not adjusting well and 25% trying to have fun with my friends and relax.
Anyhow, hopefully by the time you read this I’ll have heard from the boarder and will feel slightly better.
Thanks for filling us in on the rest of what is going on!
I’ll go first, with the very mundane.
This morning will be the last visit from the now-beloved French dog walker. Then Better Half will take over, and we’ll have to wait until the next time he goes away to have her over. Which will come actually later this month, so not too long to wait for the Faithful Hound to see his new best human friend.
Better Half assures me that he has many good Fire Island stories to share. They’d better be G-rated, at least the ones he’s involved in.
I, meanwhile, have been working away, and wondering why I didn’t join a consulting or VC firm, so that my hourly rate might be 10X what I scrape by on now.
Noted brain genius Elmo Musk is doing his damnedest to set all of his Twitter money on fire: https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/musks-twitter-rate-limits-could-undermine-new-ceo-ad-experts-say-2023-07-03/
Hopefully people will stop considering a man who cuts off service on an ad-based platform to be a genius but … not holding my breath.
In way more depressing news, Israel is bombing the Palestinians, showing that “Never Again” maybe has has some caveats.
Here’s a take for the ages from February:
“How Elon Musk fired Twitter staff and broke nothing” by Megan McArdle
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/02/19/elon-musk-twitter-layoffs-tech/
She has a long history of really, really bad takes like this.
https://theoutline.com/post/2303/megan-mcardle-has-a-lot-of-bad-ideas
That’s hilarious. But they really are shameless. God knows why Taylor Lorenz exists or how she’s employable (I mean, she went to Le Rosey, so that’s something) and she’s very combative and defensive when she gets called out on her nonsense.
Same with Mustache of Truth Tom Friedman, spouse of a shopping mall heiress. He’s not quite as combative. I doubt his many dedicated assistants at Times HQ forward any kind of negative email his way, so he probably thinks he’s doing a fine job and is just looking forward to the next Davos Conference.
The thing is, Lorenz is a completely ignorable nobody who you know about ONLY because the right-wing backlash against her is so vitriolic. She’s the living embodiment of the Streisand Effect and you most likely find her annoying because you read the New York Post and they desperately want you to hate her.
No, I only know about her because she came to prominence in the NYT and was supposed to be some kind of tech/social media savant, but she seemed a little nutso even then. Then WaPo hired her, and that’s when she really went off the rails, committing all sorts of journalistic crimes, or crimes they would have been in the 20th century, but now anything goes, apparently. Doxxing people, ignoring “off the record” requests and publishing source names, and then screaming and crying when people say things like “Ms. Lorenz was perhaps intemperate when she–” and complaining of “online harassment.” Another one I wouldn’t trust to walk my dog, let alone try to inform me of something.
She’s also not young. Wikipedia tells me she was born sometime between 1984 and 1987. Why is this not known? Does she know? Does she have a driver’s license or a passport that might give a date of birth? Was she born in a manger to itinerant Jews sometime between 1984 and 1987 and no one can remember?
If Ms. Lorenz wants to interview a cranky Luddite I’m always available. I’m sure my words would get twisted and misinterpreted, but I don’t know that anyone takes her seriously, so maybe my friends with Twitter accounts could generate a hashtag movement like #CousinMattieTruth or something.
Ha, I’m not the reading police; if you want to read the Post, read the Post. But I would just note that the “doxxing” and “journalistic ethics” you are concerned about on one hand is the spent fuel for the gossip pages you enjoy with the other hand.
I still have no idea why the right is so obsessed with her other than she was a young woman when she started.
And PS: Yes, of course I read the Post, everyone does. All my friends do. How else are we supposed to keep up with celebrity gossip and real estate deals and municipal malfeasance? And none of the content is behind a paywall. Who wants to pay money to the New York Times to read what Maggie Haberman (daughter of Clyde) has to say? Blecch. I don’t need to read 20,000 words on how global warming is worsening famine conditions somewhere. I know that. Instinctively, at least. No. What I need to know is the details surrounding the mysterious deaths of somewhat young people and various bus and subway attacks and what “Palace insiders” have to say about Chuck, Cammy, Wills, Katie, Hazza, and Megs.
Oh God, McArdle is awful. Not sure she’s ever been right.
It’s a take that’s only possible by deliberately refusing to learn anything, which seems to be the default method for a wide swath of the pundit class.
It sure seems like the message of these people is even worse than you don’t need to learn anything to be smart. The message is that you shouldn’t learn anything if you want to be smart.
Well, that approach certainly works for Trump.
Contrarian for the sake of being contrarian or just because she’s dumb?
Hard to tell because it could go either way.
Third possibility: She’s doing exactly what she gets paid to do. A quick scan of her headlines shows that she spends an inordinate amount of inches defending Elmo. Other idiocy typically seems to fall on the side of conservative, right-wing nonsense. That degree of consistency suggests to me that she’s earning a paycheck, whether from WaPo or under the table from other sources.
And no, please don’t tell me about ethics or that such things would never happen. The Supreme Court now takes Visa and MasterCard. A shitty “journalist” is not above snagging a payday.
Jamelle Bouie has used the term “professional gullible” to describe people like this. There’s a deliberate ignorance going on, so that they can truthfully wonder whether Twitter will be hurt by firing engineers, or if racism still exists, or if there’s a proven link between carbon dioxide and global warming. And then, when some advocate presents them with some factoid out of the blue, they can pretend like it’s a revelation.
I love that term, and would apply it to politicians, not just pundits.
Yep, more on both.
Twitter faces lawsuit over alleged non-payment for office services in four countries
Israel attacks Jenin in biggest West Bank incursion in 20 years
And this seems important.
How does extreme heat affect the body and what can you do about it?
Let us know how his cat majesty is doing, please…
Oh, but I got sidetracked. Have you ever heard of this?
Depersonalization. I may have to do more research into this, but I don’t like to delve too deeply into mental illness, except to hope that it does afflict me at some point.
Uh…yup. It’s something that I’ve dealt with ever since I was a wee lad. Not fun, but sometimes necessary.
ETA: Except to hope that it does NOT afflict me.