…so…how’s it going folks?

Let’s check in on the platform formerly known as Twitter shall we? Let’s have a gander at how it’s doing since Elon Musk, the world’s cleverest man, decided to set its extremely valuable brand equity on fire and rename it “X”.

Huh, what do you know, it looks like it’s doing X-tremely poorly. Usage in the US has dropped by more than a fifth since Musk took the platform over in late 2022, a recent analysis found. This week Musk, who once named himself “Chief Twit”, also chaotically reversed his policy of making people pay for “verified status” and started forcing blue ticks on the site’s most-followed accounts – to the dismay of many users.

…so…the way they used to do it…only now it’s sort of useless because the paid sort have tainted the mark?

X might not be at the top of its game right now but, to be fair, Musk has plenty of other companies. So how’s Tesla doing? Not so great either, apparently. Inventory is piling up and the company is resorting to big discounts in order to shift cars. Meanwhile the Biden administration recently criticized SpaceX (another Musk company) for how heavily its operations are subsidized by the public.

…uh huh…what’s the “surprised” version of lip-service…because this stuff isn’t surprising-suprising

Last year Musk, who likes to refer to himself as a “free speech absolutist”, grandly announced that he would help pay the legal bills for people who felt they were “unfairly treated” for posting on Twitter. Musk was inundated with people asking for help and, last week, X officially announced that it was funding a lawsuit filed by Chloe Happe against her former employer Block – the financial technology company set up by Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter. While it’s not clear why Block terminated Happe, the lawsuit alleges it was because of her behaviour on Twitter.

[…]

So what were those brave views that X is defending? Well, there are two key tweets (both of which Happe subsequently deleted) that are at the center of the lawsuit. One, described in the court filing as the “Restroom Post” said: “Looking fear in the eyes today as I’m using the ADA gender neutral restroom in the office and a retarded tranny in a wheelchair knocks on the door.”

The other tweet is described as the “Refugee Post”. In this one, posted soon after 7 October 2023, Happe pretended to be a “citizen” of Kurdistan (which is a region, not a country) and joked about refugees from Gaza coming to the area. Happe regularly uses this particular pseudonymous account to pretend to be a woman in Kurdistan with a sheep-herding husband and tweet “witticisms” like: “beautiful big tittie kurdish women just don’t fall out of the sky you know.”

Regardless of what you think about Happe’s comments, this seems like a bizarre case to throw your weight behind. I mean, let’s be very clear here: one of the richest and most influential men in the world has decided to invest his considerable resources in fighting for a woman’s right to say “tranny” and “retarded” online.

…so…again…no great surprise…he doesn’t mean universal free speech…his absolute is that “we” should get to say anything “we” want to…when “we” say shit he wants to that people have clearly told him “you can’t say”

Despite the fact that he styles himself as a free speech warrior, Musk has also made it very clear that he’s not keen on certain forms of free speech. He will defend someone’s right to use transphobic and ableist language online to the very end but God forbid anyone should exercise their freedom of speech to say anything bad about him! The thin-skinned billionaire has forced employees to sign restrictive non-disparagement agreements and Twitter has been accused of suspending the accounts of journalists who have covered the platform. There are also claims that the platform has censored Palestinian public figures and suspended accounts which have been critical of Israel’s war on Gaza.

…god forbid we interpret that as truth being a defense

“Sometimes it is unclear what is driving a litigation …” wrote Charles Breyer, the US district judge, in the ruling. “Other times, a complaint is so unabashedly and vociferously about one thing that there can be no mistaking that purpose … This case is about punishing the defendants … X Corp has brought this case in order to punish CCDH for CCDH publications that criticized X Corp – and perhaps in order to dissuade others who might wish to engage in such criticism.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/06/elon-musk-free-speech-lawsuits

…sounds about right…I mean…he’s hardly what evelyn beatrice hall had in mind when she paraphrased voltaire as a man who might disagree with what you say but defend to the death your right to say it…but…funny thing…mostly folks think of that as a thing voltaire said for himself…which…he might have…or might have meant…but…didn’t write it down in any of the stuff we have of his…&…well…that sort of thing can hide a multitude of sins

He’s on the campaign trail less these days than he was in previous cycles – and less than you’d expect from a guy with dedicated superfans who brags about the size of his crowds every chance he gets. But when he has held rallies, he speaks in dark, dehumanizing terms about migrants, promising to vanquish people crossing the border. He rails about the legal battles he faces and how they’re a sign he’s winning, actually. He tells lies and invents fictions. He calls his opponent a threat to democracy and claims this election could be the last one.

Trump’s tone, as many have noted, is decidedly more vengeful this time around, as he seeks to reclaim the White House after a bruising loss that he insists was a steal. This alone is a cause for concern, foreshadowing what the Trump presidency redux could look like. But he’s also, quite frequently, rambling and incoherent, running off on tangents that would grab headlines for their oddness should any other candidate say them.

Journalists rightly chose not to broadcast Trump’s entire speeches after 2016, believing that the free coverage helped boost the former president and spread lies unchecked. But now there’s the possibility that stories about his speeches often make his ideas appear more cogent than they are – making the case that, this time around, people should hear the full speeches to understand how Trump would govern again.

…catch-22 rides again?

Curiously, Trump tucks the most tangible policy implications in at the end. His speeches often finish with a rundown of what his second term in office could bring, in a meditation-like recitation the New York Times recently compared to a sermon. Since these policies could become reality, here’s a few of those ideas:

• Instituting the death penalty for drug dealers.
• Creating the “Trump Reciprocal Trade Act”: “If China or any other country makes us pay 100% or 200% tariff, which they do, we will make them pay a reciprocal tariff of 100% or 200%. In other words, you screw us and we’ll screw you.”
• Indemnifying all police officers and law enforcement officials.
• Rebuilding cities and taking over Washington DC, where, he said in a recent speech, there are “beautiful columns” put together “through force of will” because there were no “Caterpillar tractors” and now those columns have graffiti on them.
• Issuing an executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content.
• Moving to one-day voting with paper ballots and voter ID.

…thing is…that semi-intelligible coda…isn’t exactly representative of how cogent the man seems…not that he ever really did…but…these days?

[…]  these campaign trail antics shed light on Trump’s mental acuity, even if people tend to characterize them differently than Joe Biden’s. While Biden’s gaffes elicit serious scrutiny, as writers in the New Yorker and the New York Times recently noted, we’ve seemingly become inured to Trump’s brand of speaking, either skimming over it or giving him leeway because this has always been his shtick.

Trump, like Biden, has confused names of world leaders (but then claims it’s on purpose). He has also stumbled and slurred his words. But beyond that, Trump’s can take a different turn. Trump has described using an “iron dome” missile defense system as “ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. They’ve only got 17 seconds to figure this whole thing out. Boom. OK. Missile launch. Whoosh. Boom.”

These tangents can be part of a tirade, or they can be what one can only describe as complete nonsense.

During this week’s Wisconsin speech, which was more coherent than usual, Trump pulled out a few frequent refrains: comparing himself, incorrectly, to Al Capone, saying he was indicted more than the notorious gangster; making fun of the Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis’s first name (“It’s spelled fanny like your ass, right? Fanny. But when she became DA, she decided to add a little French, a little fancy”).

…while we’re at it…how about we put a little english on it?

These half-cocked remarks aren’t new; they are a feature of who Trump is and how he communicates that to the public, and that’s key to understanding how he is as a leader.

The New York Times opinion writer Jamelle Bouie described it as “something akin to the soft bigotry of low expectations”, whereby no one expected him to behave in an orderly fashion or communicate well.

…& I know ronnie ray-gun is like…the sainted aunt or whatever…but even rambling ron made more sense with less run-on sentences…even after spitting image did that “ya do ron ron” number…try this for a transcript

“Somebody said he looks great in a bathing suit, right? And you know, when he was in the sand and he was having a hard time lifting his feet through the sand, because you know sand is heavy, they figured three solid ounces per foot, but sand is a little heavy, and he’s sitting in a bathing suit. Look, at 81, do you remember Cary Grant? How good was Cary Grant, right? I don’t think Cary Grant, he was good. I don’t know what happened to movie stars today. We used to have Cary Grant and Clark Gable and all these people. Today we have, I won’t say names, because I don’t need enemies. I don’t need enemies. I got enough enemies. But Cary Grant was, like – Michael Jackson once told me, ‘The most handsome man, Trump, in the world.’ ‘Who?’ ‘Cary Grant.’ Well, we don’t have that any more, but Cary Grant at 81 or 82, going on 100. This guy, he’s 81, going on 100. Cary Grant wouldn’t look too good in a bathing suit, either. And he was pretty good-looking, right?”

…now…if a tidy desk is the sign of a tidy mind…I may not know what a tidy mind would be like to have…but…I tend to claim that it’s not a mess…it’s a deceptively complex 4-dimensional topographic filing system

…yes…I know that sounds like bollocks…but…left the way they accrued I can find what I’m looking for in that strata pretty reliably…if someone swoops in & tried to helpfully “tidy things”…well…now it’s just piles of who the fuck knows, isn’t it?

“It’s a magnificent love story, like Gone With the Wind. You know Gone With the Wind, you’re not allowed to watch it any more. You know that, right? It’s politically incorrect to watch Gone With the Wind. They have a list. What were the greatest movies ever made? Well, Gone With the Wind is usually number one or two or three. And then they have another list you’re not allowed to watch any more, Gone With the Wind. You tell me, is our country screwed up?”

…what?

…there’s a list?

…I’m not allowed to watch stuff on a list…is it…in one of the tubes the internet is made of…because mine never got delivered…whereas these delightful packets of dung seem to be delivered so often I swear they back up like clogged sewers

His comments especially toward migrants have grown more dehumanizing. He has said they are “poisoning the blood” of the US – a nod at Great Replacement Theory, the far-right conspiracy that the left is orchestrating migration to replace white people. Trump claimed the people coming in were “prisoners, murderers, drug dealers, mental patients and terrorists, the worst they have”. He has repeatedly called migrants “animals”.

“Democrats said please don’t call them ‘animals’. I said, no, they’re not humans, they’re animals,” he said during a speech in Michigan this week.

“In some cases they’re not people, in my opinion,” he said during his March appearance in Ohio. “But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say. “These are animals, OK, and we have to stop it,” he said.

…calling people animals only upsets the radical left? …like…that’s the part that qualifies as radical…let alone left wing?

…it’s not a fundamental category error that betrays a sociopathic absence of empathy & has a long & miserable history of presaging acts of wanton depravity that make people like larkin say stuff like “man hands on misery to man / it deepens like a coastal shelf”

It’s tempting to find a coherent line of attack in Trump speeches to try to distill the meaning of a rambling story. And it’s sometimes hard to even figure out the full context of what he’s saying, either in text or subtext and perhaps by design, like the “bloodbath” comment or him saying there wouldn’t be another election if he doesn’t win this one.

But it’s only in seeing the full breadth of the 2024 Trump speech that one can truly understand what kind of president he could become if he won the election.

“It’s easiest to understand the threat that Trump poses to American democracy most clearly when you see it for yourself,” Susan B Glasser wrote in the New Yorker. “Small clips of his craziness can be too easily dismissed as the background noise of our times.”

……it’s not background noise…it’s fucking tinnitus

“The fake news will say, ‘Oh, he goes from subject to subject.’ No, you have to be very smart to do that. You got to be very smart. You know what it is? It’s called spot-checking. You’re thinking about something when you’re talking about something else, and then you get back to the original. And they go, ‘Holy shit. Did you see what he did?’ It’s called intelligence.”

Trump’s bizarre, vindictive incoherence has to be heard in full to be believed

Trump’s bizarre, vindictive incoherence has to be heard in full to be believed [Guardian]

…not to go drawing sickening parallels…by veering from subject to subject…in a way I flatter myself I could demonstrate a slew of distinctions with differences about when held against both what that guy claims he’s doing & what it actually sounds like he’s doing…but…while his boys are out there pissing like racehorses & telling anyone who’ll listen how good they can rain dance

For Donald Trump, he is “my envoy”, the man apparently anointed as the former US president’s roving ambassador while he plots a return to the White House.

To critics, he is seen as “an online pest” and “a national disgrace” – and most importantly, the dark embodiment of what foreign policy in a second Trump administration would look like.

…the man thought he could hash out a trade agreement with nigel farage while neither of them were in office…so the envoy thing is for the birds in some senses…but…true enough in others

Meet Richard Grenell, vocal tribune of Trump’s America First credo on the international stage and the man hotly tipped to become secretary of state if the presumed Republican nominee beats Joe Biden in November’s presidential election.

[…]

Grenell – who served as a rambunctious ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term – has carved a niche as the articulator-in-chief of a Maga approach to global affairs that appears to echo his political master’s voice.

[…]

He attempted to broker a meeting between Trump and Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at last year’s United Nations general assembly in New York at a time when the Turkish leader was blocking Sweden’s bid to join Nato, although the proposal was subsequently rejected amid security concerns.

[…]

“Grenell’s very cunning and effective. Having penetrated both the intelligence and the policy world, he knows who can be seduced, intimidated and destroyed,” [Fulton] Armstrong, a former senior analyst at the CIA, told the Guardian.

[…]

“Weak people at the state department are scared to piss off the right wing because they want to be ambassadors and fear for their careers, which makes them vulnerable. Someone like Grenell knows how this can be used for issues favoring Trump.”

[…]

Addressing the influential CPAC gathering of conservatives in February, he said US foreign policy cried out for an “SOB diplomat”, a role he apparently envisions for himself.

[…]

Grenell has become a strident advocate of abandoning negotiations in decades-old territorial disputes in the Middle East and the Balkans in favor of trade and economic agreements that he hails as sidestepping political problems through creating jobs.

“The success that Donald Trump had was that he avoided politics and concentrated on the economy,” he told CPAC. “Young people leave the region because they don’t have help and they don’t have a job. So part of our foreign policy, if we want to solve problems, is to avoid the political talk and figure out ways to do greater trade.”

For detractors, such talk is code for a transactional foreign policy tailored to Trump’s personal and business interests at the expense of America’s traditional democratic alliances – as well as a signal that Ukraine would be pressured to surrender territory to end its war with Russia.

…that’s what it is to adherents, too…only they think that’s a good thing…&…all due respect to voltaire…but…I ain’t defending that shite to even mild discomfort let alone the fucking death

“There are many aspects to what Grenell is doing,” said Joe Cirincione, a veteran Washington foreign policy and arms control specialist. “One is grift, looking for business deals, particularly in Serbia, where Trump has longstanding business interests and Trump seems to be helping him pursue this.

“Another is more sinister. It looks as though Grenell is trying to build up a developing authoritarian network of rightwing leaders to form this authoritarian axis that Trump might govern by – ranging from Putin to [Viktor] Orbán [prime minister of Hungary] to Erdoğan.

“All these are anti-democratic forces and use the simple playbook of using democracy to overthrow democracy.”

[…]

He also ruffled German feathers by telling Breitbart that part of his ambassadorial role was “to empower other conservatives throughout Europe”, a comment seen by some as a tacit olive branch to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AFD) party.

For figures like Cirincione, such rhetoric is a harbinger of worse to come.

“If Trump were president and Grenell secretary of state, it would set back American interests by decades, collapse the development of the democratic west and assist the rise of the global right wing, no questions about it,” he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/05/richard-grenell-trump-far-right-foreign-policy

…well…yeah…that’s not the confusing part…the confusing part is why he doesn’t get at the very least a shoe in the face anytime he ventures out from under his rock, surely?

The great powers compete, coexist or confront one another across the region but none, least of all at the UN, is able to impose its version of order any longer. “Forget talk of unipolarity or multipolarity,” the journalist Gregg Carlstrom recently wrote in Foreign Affairs. “The Middle East is nonpolar. No one is in charge.”

Wars are supposed to be the father of all things, according to Heraclitus, and many still predict that this war will define everything in the future and prove a turning point to their advantage. Iran believes the US is closer to being forced out of Iraq than at any point in the last two decades and its president, Ebrahim Raisi, has said the war in Gaza will lead to a “transformation in the unjust order that rules the world”. Iran’s ally, the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, whose group has traded fire with Israel across the Lebanese border, has claimed “the onset of a new historical phase” for the entire Middle East and that Israel will be unable to withstand the “al-Aqsa flood”.

…& we know bibi is clinging to power with the buttress of the occupationist far-right component of his national apparatus by engaging in serially crossing lines the instantiation of his state was supposed to be a bright shining commitment to never forgetting why nobody can cross them & remain on the side of the angels…hence how swimmingly everything’s going in that part of the world

Six months on, no one believes they have yet lost. And amid these conflicting assessments, China and Russia are not quite bystanders but do not lift a finger to ease US discomfort. Ever an opportunist, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, blamed American handling of relations between Israel and the Palestinians for the mess. “It was Washington’s policy of monopolising mediation and undermining the international legal framework for a settlement that resulted in the current escalation,” he said.

US support for Israel in the Gaza war was also seized upon as a golden chance for Russia’s rehabilitation after Ukraine. In language designed to appeal to the global south, Lavrov denounced America’s “incredible duplicity and double standards”.

Among emerging powers, the lesson of Gaza has been that it is time for new voices to join the top table. “This war is hideous but speaks to a bigger problem: the lack of reform of global governance institutions, including and primarily the UN security council,” said Filipe Nasser, a senior adviser at the Brazilian foreign ministry. “This is the point of convergence across the global south. They feel the international order is profoundly asymmetric and detrimental to their interests. The three US vetoes show how the rules are bent.”

…quite honestly…this doesn’t seem new any more than the aid convoy getting targeted seemed like a departure from bibi’s rules of engagement…but…similarly…some people seem to have picked it as a tipping point in the rhetoric

Among western-based intellectuals, there is a sense that something deep is afoot. “The disaster in Gaza has completely disabused a large segment of liberals and professionals in the Arab world about western claims of upholding and caring about values in the conduct of foreign policy,” said Emile Hokayem, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “They look at the western debacle over Gaza and feel betrayed – or, for those who were always cynical about the west, vindicated. For example, some who sympathised with Ukraine have now switched their position. Senior western officials and diplomats are mostly clueless about this dynamic.”

…& where there’s one fucked up dynamic…well…birds of a feather

Bronwen Maddox, the director of the UK-based thinktank Chatham House, has warned of wide repercussions. “The charge is the west writes the rules to suit itself. If countries which support Ukraine and are working for peace in the Middle East do not realise how powerful this charge has become, they will fail to help solve either conflict.”

Faced by this barrage, US diplomacy has not enjoyed its finest hour, as every day it seems its inability to control events becomes more apparent. It is locked in a war it had not foreseen, in a region it was seeking to leave behind, in defence of an ally that refuses to do as it asks.

…if you’re used to “I say jump, you say ‘how high?'” & all of a sudden you say jump & they turn around with “are you fucking high?”…it’s gonna bring your stride up short, I’m guessing

…so…what’s the not-joe option sound like?

Trump urges Netanyahu to ‘get it over with,’ questions Israel’s approach to war in Gaza [WaPo]

…uh huh

Polls show Trump winning key swing states. That’s partly a failure of the press [Guardian]

…uh huh

Israel’s rules of engagement seem looser than ever – if they are followed at all [Guardian]

…thing is…I know I read about what set of rules were determining their target selection a while back…but just this last week that part seems to have come into focus for some people to whom it’s apparently news

The Israeli military’s bombing campaign in Gaza used a previously undisclosed AI-powered database that at one stage identified 37,000 potential targets based on their apparent links to Hamas, according to intelligence sources involved in the war.

In addition to talking about their use of the AI system, called Lavender, the intelligence sources claim that Israeli military officials permitted large numbers of Palestinian civilians to be killed, particularly during the early weeks and months of the conflict.

Their unusually candid testimony provides a rare glimpse into the first-hand experiences of Israeli intelligence officials who have been using machine-learning systems to help identify targets during the six-month war.

‘The machine did it coldly’: Israel used AI to identify 37,000 Hamas targets [Guardian]

…&…you know how they say the devil is in the details?

The identity of the commander of Israel’s Unit 8200 is a closely guarded secret. He occupies one of the most sensitive roles in the military, leading one of the world’s most powerful surveillance agencies, comparable to the US National Security Agency.

Yet after spending more than two decades operating in the shadows, the Guardian can reveal how the controversial spy chief – whose name is Yossi Sariel – has left his identity exposed online.

The embarrassing security lapse is linked to a book he published on Amazon, which left a digital trail to a private Google account created in his name, along with his unique ID and links to the account’s maps and calendar profiles.

The Guardian has confirmed with multiple sources that Sariel is the secret author of The Human Machine Team, a book in which he offers a radical vision for how artificial intelligence can transform the relationship between military personnel and machines.

Published in 2021 using a pen name composed of his initials, Brigadier General YS, it provides a blueprint for the advanced AI-powered systems that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been pioneering during the six-month war in Gaza.

An electronic version of the book included an anonymous email address that can easily be traced to Sariel’s name and Google account. Contacted by the Guardian, an IDF spokesperson said the email address was not Sariel’s personal one, but “dedicated specifically for issues to do with the book itself”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/05/top-israeli-spy-chief-exposes-his-true-identity-in-online-security-lapse

…so…if that’s geopolitics in these interesting times of ours…are we sure “prompt engineer” is a new job?

…because there’s a few things I’d like to engineer, myself…but the only prompts that come to mind seem to be the sort of “in kind” that…well…isn’t very kind…& I’d dearly love to believe we’re better than that kind of kind…so…I guess for now I’ll quit while I’m behind…& go see what I find behind the musical door