…so…sometimes it’s safer to just STFU
It has been an annual ritual of Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia: The president holds a wide-ranging, marathon news conference in December, making a somewhat choreographed show of openness to questioning and demonstrating his command of an array of topics.
But after a series of military setbacks in his war in Ukraine, with Russia’s casualties mounting and its economy faltering under sanctions, Mr. Putin has decided to skip the tradition. Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, did not offer a reason when he told reporters during a daily briefing on Monday that the event would not take place this month; he held out the possibility that it might be rescheduled for the new year.
…even when you aren’t exactly obligated to say anything you don’t want to
Often stretching to four hours or more, the December news conference has been one of the few times during the year when reporters outside the Kremlin pool, including foreign correspondents, get the chance to directly question Mr. Putin — if they are called on. But the Kremlin has also asked reporters ahead of time what they might be inclined to ask Mr. Putin.
The ranks of journalists in Russia who are not subservient to the government are thinner than at any time since the fall of the Soviet Union, and this year the government criminalized criticism of the war or the military. Independent Russian news media have all either shut down or moved abroad, and many foreign news outlets have been forced out of the country as well.
…but…it’s hard not to feel like there’s an inclination to avoid something, there
European Union foreign ministers held a separate meeting on Monday and agreed to increase a fund reimbursing countries for war matériel provided to Ukraine to 5.5 billion euros (nearly $5.8 billion) from 3.5 billion euros.
[…]
Military analysts say the increasingly harsh weather could also allow the warring armies to return to more intense frontline combat. The autumn rains reduced dirt roads and fields to bogs, slowing military movement, but the ground is freezing solid again.
[…]
Mr. Putin has tried to present life in Russia as business as usual for most people, an image that has become harder to maintain. Thousands of troops have been killed or wounded, which generally goes unmentioned in state media. A mismanaged call-up of about 300,000 military conscripts this fall prompted demonstrations and spurred thousands of men to flee the country; Ukrainian officials predict that another Russian draft is coming soon.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/world/europe/putin-skips-news-conference.html
…mind you…soon is…a relative term
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the only ruler many protesters have known, seems to be facing a version of the dictator’s dilemma: If he doesn’t offer his people the prospect of change, the protests will continue, but if he does, he risks appearing weak and emboldening protesters.
[…] Although Iranian opposition to the regime is unarmed, unorganized and leaderless, the protests continue despite a violent crackdown by the regime. More than 18,000 protesters have been arrested, more than 475 have been killed, and 11 people have been sentenced to death so far. On Thursday, a 23-year-old man, Mohsen Shekari, who was arrested during the protests, was hanged.
[…]
The rigidity of Iran’s hard-liners is driven not only by ideological conviction but also by a keen understanding of the interplay between the rulers and the ruled. As Alexis de Tocqueville put it, “The most perilous moment for a bad government is one when it seeks to mend its ways.”
Mr. Khamenei understands that rescinding compulsory hijab will be a gateway to freedom and will be interpreted by many Iranians as an act of vulnerability, not magnanimity. That Iranians will not be placated merely with the freedom of dress but will be emboldened to demand all the freedoms denied to them in a theocracy — including the freedom to drink, eat, read, love, watch, listen and, above all, say what they want.
[…]
The Iranian regime’s repressive capacity — at least on paper — remains formidable. Ayatollah Khamenei is commander in chief of 190,000 armed members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who oversee tens of thousands of Basij militants tasked with instilling public fear and morality. Iran’s nonideological conscription army, whose active forces are an estimated 350,000, is unlikely to take part in mass repression, but hopes from protesters that they will join the opposition have so far been in vain.
[…]
The internal deliberations of Iran’s security services remain a black box. But it is likely that, like the Tunisian and Egyptian militaries in 2011, some of them have begun to contemplate whether cutting loose the dictator might preserve their own interests.
…at the risk of being flippant…when you discount the impossible…whatever remains…however improbable…might be…well…it’s complicated
The sociologist Charles Kurzman wrote in his seminal book, “The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran,” that the paradox of revolutionary movements is that they are not viable until they attract a critical mass of supporters but that to attract a critical mass of supporters, they must be perceived as viable.
The protest movement has not yet reached that tipping point, but there are ample signs that a critical mass of Iranian society has doubts about the regime’s continued viability. “What the people want is regime change and no return to the past,” said Nasrin Sotoudeh, a renowned human rights attorney and political prisoner who had long called for reform instead of revolution. “And what we can see from the current protests and strikes that are now being initiated is a very real possibility of regime change.”
…generally…we aren’t great at recognizing this stuff ahead of time…or…if you read a lot of spy novels…it’s important to not let on if we do…either way
Senior American and Israeli intelligence officials recently stated they don’t believe Iran’s protests constitute a serious threat to the regime. But history has repeatedly illustrated that no intelligence service, political science theory or algorithm can accurately predict the timing and outcome of popular uprisings: The C.I.A. assessed in August 1978, less than six months before the toppling of Iran’s monarchy, that Iran wasn’t even in a “prerevolutionary situation.”
…but…you don’t get a column in the NYT for concluding it’s a crapshoot…well…generally, at least
Four decades of the Islamic Republic’s hard power will ultimately be defeated by two millenniums of Iranian cultural soft power. The question is no longer about whether this will happen but when. History has taught us that there is an inverse relationship between the courage of an opposition and the resolve of a regime, and authoritarian collapse often goes from inconceivable to inevitable in days.
The Question Is No Longer Whether Iranians Will Topple the Ayatollah [NYT]
…&…it’s not like I’m in a position to say he’s wrong…but…sometimes it does seem like a thing is snowballing
…&
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/13/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-charged-sec-crypto-exchange
…you kind of want to root for the avalanche?
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/12/elon-musk-is-no-longer-the-richest-person-in-the-world.html
…they do say it’s important to pick your battles
Elon Musk got into a Twitter spat with former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly on Sunday after the billionaire entrepreneur appeared to take another high-profile swipe at the LGBTQ community’s use of gender pronouns.
[…]
One of those replies came from Kelly, who has commanded the International Space Station on three expeditions. The retired astronaut, who is also the twin brother of Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., scolded Musk for his flippant remark.
Musk, who in addition to being at the helm of Twitter is also the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, doubled down in his response Kelly.
…well…it sure as shit ain’t IMHO…I’m not even sure the dude knows what that H stands for…let alone has the ability…but…this is how he spends his time…despite any number of reasons you’d think he’d have better shit to do
Sunday’s Twitter spat was not the first time Musk, who has a transgender daughter, has commented on LGBTQ issues and drawn criticism, particularly regarding the use of pronouns that do not align with an individual’s sex assigned at birth.
https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/elon-musk-astronaut-scott-kelly-spar-twitter-pronoun-use
…it’s like there’s always another reason to loathe some assholes…even when you hardly need the ones you had to begin with…but…damn, son…you’re gonna go with the “they’re shouting boo-urns” defense?
[…so…fun fact…back on kinja a lot of trolls used to nuke threads that went badly for them to preserve the illusion that they’d carried the day…&…well…the tweet I was referring to…no longer loads…just sayin’]
Commenting on Twitter on Monday morning, Musk wrote, “Technically, it was 90% cheers & 10% boos (except during quiet periods), but, still, that’s a lot of boos, which is a first for me in real life (frequent on Twitter). It’s almost as if I’ve offended SF’s unhinged leftists … but nahhh.” This contrasts with a viral tweet from a person in the audience who estimated, “A good 80% of the stadium boos.”
…pics or it didn’t happen?
Cameras weren’t permitted at the show, and Twitter is already removing the small amount of footage that got out, but Gizmodo‘s Matt Novak has archived some of the clips on YouTube. It makes for awkward viewing:
Both men seemed unprepared for Musk’s reception, suggesting that Musk is still unused to experiencing direct criticism despite his recent fall from grace. In addition to singlehandedly tanking Twitter’s reputation after taking over the company last month, Musk has courted controversy by acting erratically on the platform itself—most recently by criticizing Covid-19 lockdowns, tweeting weird transphobic dogwhistles, and baselessly suggesting that Twitter’s former head of trust and safety was in favor of giving children access to adult content.
https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/dave-chappelle-elon-musk-boo/
…trust & safety, you say?
…hmmm
Elon Musk’s Twitter abruptly dissolved its Trust and Safety Council on Monday night, just moments before it was scheduled to meet with company representatives.
…dude used to people fawning over him in charge of a thing that by all appearances is crashing & burning on an epic scale cancels routine meeting that might come with a side order of being told he’s showing his ass…that…sounds familiar for some reason…particularly the part where that guy is responsible for others having real threats to run away from
The news appeared to deepen the turmoil that has beset the company following Musk’s takeover. Also on Monday, it was reported that Twitter’s former top safety official, Yoel Roth, was forced to flee his home amid escalating personal attacks, including from Musk himself.
Outlets including the Washington Post and CNN reported on Monday that Roth and his family fled after Musk’s tweets misrepresented Roth’s academic writing about sexual activity and children.
As head of trust and safety at Twitter, Roth was involved in many of the platform’s decisions about what posts to remove and what accounts to suspend. His communications with other Twitter officials have been posted in recent days as part of what Musk has dubbed “the Twitter files,” a series of internal documents that Musk has shared and disseminated on the platform via journalists including Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/12/twitter-safety-council-dissolved-before-meeting
…dude ain’t got time for that…he’s still trying to hunt down & expunge all the tweets of his getting his feelings hurt live on stage…which isn’t the only kind of telling behavior on display here
…including an implausible level of…well
…to the point that I’m beginning to think he genuinely thinks that repeated blunt-force trauma to the cranium is the thing he has in common with “his people”
The documents — shared by journalist Bari Weiss as the latest installment of the so-called Twitter Files — appear to show that there was at least some debate among various employees about whether Trump’s final tweets violated the social network’s policies prohibiting inciting violence. But they stop short of showing that Twitter ignored its own rules in implementing the ban.
Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, cheered and promoted the release of the internal company documents on Monday and attempted to paint the former Twitter leadership’s decision as politically motivated. In a tweet, he suggested that the former president “didn’t violate the rules” and that the decision was made at the behest of “activist employees.”
…can a reply-guy reach a critical mass of “well, actually…”?
Twitter ultimately said at the time of Trump’s ban that his tweet about American patriots suggested that “he plans to continue to support, empower, and shield those who believe he won the election,” and that the tweet concerning the inauguration could be viewed as a further statement that the election was not legitimate or that the inauguration would be a “safe” target for violence because he would not be attending.
On January 6, Twitter had also warned Trump that additional violations of its rules could result in a permanent ban, something Weiss’ Monday tweet thread did not mention. The thread also does not mention that other, major social platforms, including Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat, also decided to suspend Trump from their platforms in the days following the Capitol attack, and have yet to restore his account.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/12/tech/elon-musk-trump-twitter-rules/index.html
…because…that cup is runneth the fuck over…with gasoline…that’s on fire…& they’re out there backing up the truck with the hose
Members and staff of the Jan. 6 committee are actively preparing for a multi-pronged Republican revenge campaign when the GOP takes the House next month, anticipating an all-out effort to discredit the panel’s work and punish its workers, according to current and former staff, as well as other sources briefed on the situation.
[…]
Anticipating GOP attacks, some current and former staff have asked their supervisors if they should preemptively retain lawyers, or at least look into potential attorneys. Earlier this year, various committee staffers were advised to purchase professional liability insurance in anticipation of a coming GOP counter-investigation, according to two sources familiar with the committee’s work. Both sources say they bought it. When asked by Rolling Stone why they decided to purchase the insurance earlier this year, one of them simply said: “Because I’m not a moron.”
Republicans have been overt about their plans to go after the panel. According to a source with direct knowledge of the matter, Donald Trump spoke to House Republican allies earlier this year about potential plans for tearing through the Jan. 6 committee’s undisclosed records and communications, aiming to uncover dirt or unflattering details. Trump even, the source said, privately suggested possible routes of inquiry, including investigating whether committee members leaked details to the press or divulged embarrassing material about the former president and his loyalists. And House Speaker hopeful Kevin McCarthy has publicly indicated plans to investigate the investigators, part of the party’s ongoing quest to insulate Donald Trump from the consequences of Jan. 6. In a letter dated Nov. 30, McCarthy told the committee to preserve its voluminous records.
The committee was already required to preserve its records, with or without McCarthy’s letter. And committee personnel viewed it as a glorified press release. One of the sources familiar with the committee’s work adds that one irony that’s been discussed among certain staff is that the “bad-faith arguments used by Trump and his allies, including Republican House members, to obstruct the select committee’s investigation could come back to haunt them, if used by targets of the incoming majority’s investigations.”
Jan. 6 Staffers Prepare for All-Out Republican Assault [Rolling Stone]
…it’s…well…it’s a lot like being all-in on missing the damn point
Public spaces are rooted in the communities and contexts in which they exist. This is true, too, for Twitter, which is less a singular entity than a digital multiverse. What Twitter is for activists in Zimbabwe is not what it is for gamers in Britain.
[…] town squares are public spaces, governed in some way by the public. That is what makes them a town square rather than a square in a town. They are not the playthings of whimsical billionaires. They do not exist, as Twitter did for so long, to provide returns to shareholders. (And as wild as Musk’s reign has already been, remember that he tried to back out of this deal, and Twitter’s leadership, knowing he neither wanted the service nor would treat it or its employees with care, forced it through to ensure that executives and shareholders got their payout.) A town square controlled by one man isn’t a town square. It’s a storefront, an art project or possibly a game preserve.
[…] Town squares can host debates. They can host craft fairs. They can host brawls. They can host lynchings. Civilization does not depend on a place to gather. It depends on what happens when people gather.
So much genius and trickery and money have gone into a mistaken metaphor. The competition to create and own the digital square may be good business, but it has led to terrible politics. Think of the hopeful imaginings that accompanied the early days of social media: We would know one another across time and space; we would share with one another across cultures and generations; we would inform one another across borders and factions. Billions of people use these services. Their scale is truly civilizational. And what have they wrought? Is the world more democratic? Is G.D.P. growth higher? Is innovation faster? Do we seem wiser? Do we seem kinder? Are we happier? Shouldn’t something, anything, have gotten noticeably better in the short decades since these services fought their way into our lives?
[…]
In a recent paper, Benjamin Farrer, a political scientist at Knox College in Illinois, argues that we have mistaken the key resource upon which democracy, and perhaps civilization, depends. That resource is attention. But not your attention or my attention. Our attention. Attention, in this sense, is a collective resource; it is the depth of thought and consideration a society can bring to bear on its most pressing problems. And as with so many collective resources, from fresh air to clean water, it can be polluted or exhausted.
Borrowing an approach from Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to win the Nobel in economic science, Farrer argues that attention is subject to a problem known as the tragedy of the commons. A classic example of a tragedy of the commons is an open pasture that any shepherd can use for his flock. Without wise governance, every shepherd will send his flock to graze, because if he doesn’t, the other shepherds will do so first. Soon enough, the pasture is bare, and the resource is depleted.
Farrer argues that our collective attention is like a public pasture: It is valuable, it is limited, and it is being depleted. Everyone from advertisers to politicians to newspapers to social media giants wants our attention. The competition is fierce, and it has led to more sensationalism, more outrageous or infuriating content, more algorithmic tricks, more of anything that might give a brand or a platform or a politician an edge, even as it leaves us harried, irritable and distracted.
One telling study recruited participants across 17 countries and six continents and measured skin conductivity — a signal of emotional response — when participants saw positive, negative and neutral news. Negative news was, consistently, the most engaging. If you’ve ever wondered why the news is so focused on tragedy and conflict or why social media furnishes more outrage than inspiration, that’s the reason. Negativity captures our attention better than positivity or neutrality.
This is not a new dynamic, and it is by no means unique to Twitter. “The mission of the press is to spread culture while destroying the attention span,” Karl Kraus, the Austrian satirist, wrote in the early 1900s. But it is worse now. The tools available to those who would command our attention are far more powerful than in past eras.
Twitter’s problems did not begin and will not end with Musk. They are woven into the fabric of the platform. Twitter makes it easy to discuss hard topics poorly. And it does that by putting its participants in the worst state of mind for a discussion.
[…]
Twitter has real strengths, many of which are the flip side of its weaknesses. It is as flat a medium as any that has existed. It is as fast a medium as has ever existed; that can be maddening, but it can also draw attention to something that is happening and has to change right now. It is an unusually confrontational medium, and that has permitted movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo to flower and for socialists to get a new hearing in American politics — and it has also, of course, given new succor and life to the racist right. Put simply, Twitter’s value is how easy it makes it to talk. Its cost is how hard it makes it to listen.
[…]
Democracy is not and will not be one long Quaker meeting. But there is wisdom here worth mulling. We do not make our best decisions, as individuals or as a collective, when our minds are most active and fretful. And yet “active and fretful” is about as precise a description as I can imagine of the Twitter mind. And having put us in an active, fretful mental state, Twitter then encourages us to fire off declarative statements on the most divisive possible issues, always with one eye to how quickly they will rack up likes and retweets and thus viral power. It’s insane.
And it will get so much worse from here. OpenAI recently released ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence system that can be given requests in plain language (“Write me an argument for the benefits of single-payer health care, in the style of a Taylor Swift song”) and spit out remarkably passable results.
What ChatGPT can do is a marvel. We are at the dawn of a new technological era. But it is easy to see how it could turn dark — and quickly. A.I. systems like this make the production and manipulation of text (and code and images and eventually audio and video) functionally costless. They will be deployed to produce whatever makes us most likely to click. But these systems do not and cannot know what they are producing. The cost of creating and optimizing content that grabs our attention is plummeting, but the cost of producing valuable and truthful work isn’t.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/11/opinion/what-twitter-can-learn-from-quakers.html
…so…there you have it folks…got to respect those market forces, I suppose…but…if-you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em can go more than one way
For one weird year, I was the human who stepped in to make sure a property chatbot didn’t blow its cover – I was a person pretending to be a computer pretending to be a person
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/13/becoming-a-chatbot-my-life-as-a-real-estate-ais-human-backup
…though…sometimes…the-beginning-of-the-end can be a good thing?
There are three bills floating through Congress right now that could not only save lives and money but also help to finally dismantle the nation’s failed war on drugs. The Medicaid Re-entry Act, EQUAL (Eliminating a Quantifiably Unjust Application of the Law) Act and the MAT (Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment) Act all have bipartisan support and could be passed during the lame duck session of Congress. Lawmakers should act on them without delay.
[…]
The nation’s five-decade war on drugs has been a dismal failure. Overdose deaths have reached — and then surpassed — extreme levels in recent years, and the number of people who are still in prison for drug offenses remains stubbornly and egregiously high. Still, it is hard to agree on what comes next. What has been shown to work is not always politically feasible, and what’s politically popular often doesn’t make for sound public health. MAT, EQUAL and the Medicaid Re-entry Acts meet both requirements. Congress should pass all three now.
What Comes Next for the War on Drugs? The Beginning of the End. [NYT]
…with all due respect to musk…& actual respect to actual aerospace engineers…it’s not fucking rocket science
The Marshall Project spoke to more than 20 people struggling with addictions in federal prison, and they described the dire consequences of being unable to safely access a treatment that Congress has instructed prisons to provide.
Some have overdosed. Many have gotten involved in dangerous and illicit money-making schemes to pay for Suboxone, which costs about $20 for a small fraction of a daily dose on the illegal market, several prisoners said. Many, like York, have lost phone or visiting privileges or been sent to solitary confinement because they were caught taking the medication. Last year, the Bureau of Prisons disciplined more than 500 people for using Suboxone without a prescription, according to data obtained from the agency by The Marshall Project through a public records request.
“Believe me, 100% I recognize the irony there,” said a bureau administrator familiar with the agency’s addiction treatment programs, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press. “It’s maddening.”
Congress passed the First Step Act four years ago, requiring, among other things, that the Bureau of Prisons offer more prisoners addiction medications, the most common of which is Suboxone. The medications can quiet opioid cravings and reduce the risk of relapse and overdose.
[…]
For years, the Bureau of Prisons fought in court to prevent people entering the system from staying on the addiction medications they were prescribed by doctors in the community. That began to change in 2018, when the First Step Act was passed and prisons and jails across the country began losing lawsuits from prisoners who argued it was cruel and unusual to deny them the addiction medicine they’d been taking before they were incarcerated.
[…]
Federal law treats use of any narcotics without a prescription in federal prison — including Suboxone — as a “greatest severity level prohibited act,” allowing officials to punish prisoners by delaying their release date, confiscating their property, taking away their visiting or phone privileges and holding them for up to six months in solitary confinement — which human rights groups have described as torture. Experts say even a few days in solitary can exacerbate the mental illness that is often the cause of, or closely linked to, drug addiction.
The lack of Suboxone treatment comes amid a rise in drug-related deaths behind bars. A variety of substances are routinely smuggled into prisons and jails through mail, drone drops, visitors or corrections officers and other staff. In the last two decades, federal data shows that fatal overdoses increased by more than 600% inside prisons and more than 200% inside jails.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/federal-prison-suboxone-addiction-medication
…but…& our man @lemmykilmister would be in a better position to say…so…this would just be imho & all…I don’t know as I’d be comfortable calling it an art?
One thing that the Guardian article about Yoel Roth didn’t mention, and it really shouldn’t matter but in this case it does, is that Yoel Roth is gay, and there’s a not-small frisson of homophobia surrounding the discussions of what he did while at his post at Twitter. The trope of gay people sexualizing children might be where these latest attacks are coming from, on top of the “HE CENSORED FREE SPEECH!!!11!!” criticisms.
Interestingly, he wrote his senior thesis at UPenn on Grindr, and I wonder if that was how he got the Twitter job. It must have been loaded with all sorts of insights about social media companies, or at least the one in particular that caters to gay men.
…that’s a good point…& one I confess I was largely unaware of…insofar as I’m largely (& for the most part blissfully) unaware of the orientation of most people I read about…if sadly not the tropes & tendencies of the bad-faith-factory that seems like a different sort of tragedy of the commons
…& I absolutely had no idea about the thesis thing…which I suspect might be pretty fascinating just in its own right?
I suppose it depends on how lenient his thesis advisor was and how into the project Roth was. But he seems like a very industrious sort so I bet it’s worth reading. All his personal data seems to have been scrubbed from the Internet so I’m not sure how old he is. I think I read something like 35. If that’s the case, and I’m remembering correctly, Grindr would have been fairly new when he was writing that thesis. I’ve never used it or any other dating app for that matter but I remember someone showing me how it works and I think that was about a dozen years ago.
I will leave it to savvier people to explain why Jeremy Peters thought it made sense to issue that idiotic whitewashing of Musk a few days ago.
https://presswatchers.org/2022/12/just-like-elon-musk-the-new-york-times-cant-stop-trolling-the-libs/
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/12/elon-musk-twitter-far-right-activist/672436/
It’s the classic example of contrarian brain, which cherry picks random factoids to try to argue for the exact opposite of what’s completely obvious. It’s the equivalent of someone who points to birds and hot air balloons to argue against the existence of gravity, instead of just admitting what is true and showing how the apparent exceptions actually reinforce the truth.
…I don’t know about savvier…but the folks over at the daily beast have an idea
https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musk-is-a-right-wing-culture-warrior-above-all-else
…something, something…fellow travellers?
Oops.
Elon Musk is no longer the world’s richest person—and the amount he’s lost this year is enough to land 4th place on the list
Weird phrasing on the headline, but Elmo’s actually number two now.
Quote: At the beginning of the year, Forbes valued Musk’s net worth at $304.2 billion—meaning his fortune has plummeted by $122.9 billion, an amount that exceeds the wealth of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who sits in fourth place on Forbes’ ranking.
They’re saying the amount he’s lost this year would qualify for its own place on the list. Really strange take, but whatever. The important thing here is that Elmo needs us to all buy Teslas and send him $8 (or $11 if you are a heathen using an iPhone and you know who you are) for Twitter. So his business “model” is now strikingly similar to that of The Pillow Guy.
…it’s strange how many people seem to be along for the ride…or at least bizarre that there isn’t more screaming involved?
[ETA: …fun fact…embedding tweets mean they display but don’t come with ads…so…in their tiny little way…those cost him…hardly in a way he’s liable to notice…but it makes me feel better about doing it?]
Those tweets are blaring out the obvious — with competitors like Hyundai, Ford and GM coming online in solar and a ton of massive competitors ramping up in EVs, there is no way Tesla will get the revenue growth they need to keep up the stock price, even at its sharply reduced level.
I think the best explanation for why it hasn’t cratered even more is big investors are trying to time the market and are busy hedging their current positions. Which means when the missed targets come, it’s probably going to really crater.
It’s currently at a scale where even dark money infusions from places like the Saudi sovereign wealth fund won’t float it the way they did the Twitter purchase. And if any of them are backing Musk now and they throw up their hands and walk, Tesla craters even faster.
…she’s from mother jones, I think…so…blaring might be fair…but I thought of it more as collating, I guess…plus the .ph version of that WSJ piece seemed handy?
…despite which the headline says it’s still a bad bet
…things don’t look great for tesla…& more specifically musk…in china…or in general…& as he picks a fight with the regulatory authorities in the US & the EU where twitter is concerned…space X’s viability is more or less explicitly tied to government money
…all in all…the phrase cruisin’ for a bruisin’ rather springs to mind…& for a guy like elon…I’d be prepared to forego the whole “don’t kick a man when he’s down” thing?
There’s also this:
Elon Musk is about to learn that liberals—not his new deplorable pals—buy Teslas
The article looks at the sales data and geographic locations of dealerships. Surprise! There are none in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, etc.
Yep and I am loving it! In the next year several of the best competitors for Tesla are releasing their cars, a few are in production as we speak. I bet Tesla stock drops at least 50% in the next few months from where it is now and will never be that high again unless they purge him quickly. I saw a lady in a Tesla the other day with a bumper sticker that said “I hate Elon Musk but I love my Tesla”.
…best laid plans & all that…but…I really did mean to eventually get around to this
How Dutch farmers became the center of a global right-wing culture war [NBC]
…not least on account of wondering what light @farscythe might be able to shed on it
i mean…shed light on might be a stretch…the farmers protests started out as just that… farmers protesting against new climate laws that in many cases would force them out of business
somewhere along the line someone came up with the theory that the gubment wants the farmers land to build more houses..and it got lumped in with the protest coverage
and then the gubment decided to make the wildly unpopular move of giving asylum seeker that got granted the right to live here priority on affordable houses for a couple months
and whammo the gubments fucking over the farmers to steal their land to build houses for asylum seekers and replace us all is suddenly a thing
these are the same people that think our gubment is artificially keeping our energy prices sky high to force us all to go green in a more of a hurry as ordered by the WEF
some of the things they say almost make sense if you dont think about it too hard
but umm yeah….basically…what started out as pretty reasonable and understandable protest movement got piled on by near as i can tell…every far right/nationalist/conspiracy nut movement thats holding a grudge against the gubment….
kinda hard to tell where the farmers protest end and the rest of the shit starts
tho….doesnt help there seems to be a significant overlap in the whole farmers/far right/nationalist venn diagram here
Having grown up poor & rural–except in the US, as opposed to the Netherlands, what @Farsythe said about the original intents of the farmers’ protests–and then the glomming-on & twisting of it all, by interested-but-originally-unrelated grifting parties, making it aalllll a GIANT hot mess, makes tons of sense!
This is the Wellstone book I’ve mentioned a few times, ’round here & GT over the years, about what happened when I was a very wee-Emmer:
https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/powerline
And this interview is between two late greats–Studs Terkel *and* (Pre-Senate!) College Professor Paul Wellstone, talking about those protests 40+ years ago;
https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/programs/paul-wellstone-reads-and-discusses-his-book-powerline
Ironically? Nowadays, that solar & wind stuff mentioned is fiiiiinally getting installed ALL over up home–which IS pretty great to see, because for the few small-time farmers who still *do* own their family’s land–they now get significant revenues off the leases to rent that land for solar & wind–unlike what happened, where the land was simply USED without revenue (or ongoing revenues, anyway!) for the farmers impacted–when the powerline came through.
Like the farmers by Farscy, lots of the farmers “up home” have gotten twisted by the grifters & “carpet baggers with interests” (usually right-wingers), and the folks up there LARGELY vote as if they’re “temporarily disenfranchised 1%’ers” rather than the semi-poor/ “land rich, but *paper* poor” folks they REALLY are…
Like the Dutch Farmers, MANY of them are easily convinced that “replacement theory (BS) is *real*!!!” And they’re hurtling themselves directly into the right-wing propaganda machines, as fast as they can run🙃🥴😱😱😱😱
…appreciate you trying to make sense of it, either way
…but I guess the part I was having trouble with was that article mentioned that agricultural exports were second only to the US…from an area 0.42% of the size…& the nitrogen-related policy was going to nix a lot of that
…which…like you say about the other thing…sort of makes sense…except if it’s to combat climate change for the good of everyone, more or less…but we need the food…doesn’t that just mean somewhere else has to pick up the slack…& if they can’t get the scale of productivity the dutch do…potentially that’s a net increase rather than reduction…that still fucks the climate up in the netherlands same as everywhere else what with it being in at least some senses the same climate?
…if, say, they axe a slew of pig farms but somewhere in china they build another tenement block & pack thousands of pigs in it the way they already have somewhere…don’t we just get worse effects for worse bacon & a bunch of destitute dutch farmers?
…what’s the plan, there…where’s the upside & how is the hole it pokes in the GDP supposed to get filled?
actually the nitrogen laws make a lot less sense to me than most of the protesters do
buuut….. i also get bored soon as i try to dig in to them….and then wander off
we produce a ridiculous amount of food here…. but because we are the size of a stamp that means we only get to put out a stam sized amount of nitrogen
and because germany is much larger they get to put out a lot more nitrogen…coz its not like that shits airborne or anything and as such….its perfectly fine to move your farm there
far as i can tell…..its just spreading the problem more evenly and not actually fixing anything
but again….i havent made the effort to properly understand the nitrogen laws
@SplinterRip,
This point you EXCELLENTLY brought up;
“except if it’s to combat climate change for the good of everyone, more or less…but we need the food…doesn’t that just mean somewhere else has to pick up the slack…& if they can’t get the scale of productivity the dutch do…potentially that’s a net increase rather than reduction…that still fucks the climate up in the netherlands same as everywhere else…”
Is EXACTLY one of the things that gets talked about–although NOT as loudly as it SHOULD be–here too.🙃
Norman Borlaug talked about it, decades ago, and it’s tied into why he won that Nobel Prize…
But farming can get MESSY, *real fast,* annnnnd most folks 1. either don’t really want to have the hard conversations about what “using less inputs” means (either we DO need to raise the prices at the end of the lines, 2. and(/or**?)poor folks get priced out of being able to buy the goods, 3. *OR* poor folks don’t get access to the stuff produced (see India, 1943–OR Ukraine/Russia’s war on Ukraine *right now* causing havoc in not *only* Ukraine, but poor African & Asian countries alike…
4. We absolutely DO need to get a handle on the excessive use of Nitrogen–and especially phosphorus, cuz we’re literally KILLING stuff downstream…
BUT, the thing–at least here in the US, which is NEVER spoken about enough, are the simple facts that 1. We over-apply certain things (like Anhydrous Ammonia!), because 2. We use too much damn monoculture & no longer ROTATE fields often/regularly anymore (alllll those goddamned acres in *JUST* Dent-Corn & Soybeans!!!🙃), so we need more additives, since the soul’s nutrients are STRIPPED now… 3. We use too much Roundup & harsh stuff *because* of that monoculture farming–AND now have “bumped up yields & efficiency!” by ripping out all the windbreaks (AND have farmers plowing & planting their fields *literally* edge-to-edge, rather than leaving *some* grass/shrubbery/trees, to help with erosion & keep the dirt from blowing away to the Atlantic Ocean… annnnd 4. We don’t talk about, and we especially aren’t subsidizing the capture of *most* of the Methane & other “off-gassing” compounds from their biggest production-spot in farming, the manure lagoons/manure pits;
https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/the-dangers-of-manure-gas-and-strategies-for-mitigation
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/20/manure-natural-gas-pipeline-factory-farms-greenwashing
https://www.sierraclub.org/michigan/why-are-cafos-bad
https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp.8839
https://www.epa.gov/agstar/practices-reduce-methane-emissions-livestock-manure-management
it’s NOT an easy thing, it’s DEFINITELYnot cheap, and it is a WHOLE giant mess–that a LOT of wealthy foolk lose money from, should we ACTUALLY try to fix it.
And, as Borlaug said so many years back, (Paraphrasing, here!) “We NEED the fertilizers & modern practice, if we want to keep the *most* possible people alive in the future–we CAN’T possibly produce enough to keep them alive, WITHOUT those fertilizers.” (AND some types of genetic modification, etc)…
Borlaug WAS a great man… buuuut in some ways, it feels like what he was *trying* to do–in particular the development of new plants to *add* to rotations–got used to do the exact opposite of what he’d hoped–and instead, those crop seeds have been bought up, hybridized, & patented into the hands of the few & uber-elite/uber-rich, to be used in monoculture farming worldwide, *exacerbating* the original problems he was working so hard to solve🙃
Then, you compoundthe issue, by developing “seemingly nonsensical rules,” that folks like the Dutch Farmers will have to follow… annnnd all the grifters trying to profit off them & their fears…
And it’s ALL a whole giant mess…
Much like the *other* messes that have the rich telling middle-class folks that poor immigrants are coming to take “their” singular cookie–while the rich guys hold pallets of cookies🙃
**Poor folks WILL get priced out, as end-prices & even input costs go up, UNLESS we subsidize the poor folks ability to pay those costs!
It’s COMPLETELY possible AND acceptable that we CAN subsidize for them–BUT, too often, we *instead* subsidize (and make RICH!) the middle-men and groups *in-between* the farmers & poor customers, leaving those farmers & poor folks screwed over & over & over🙃
And Rip?
That article you linked, about the Hog-farm High-rise in China?
😳😬🤯😵😱💀☠☠☠☠☠☠
Horrifying on SO many levels my friend–thanks for sharing it, but ZOMG that place is fucking TERRIFYING!😬😬😬
They mention the disease aspect, and the hell it’s gonna be for employees…
But the SMELL!!! The utter STENCH of that place–AND the water use *plus* potential for water-supply contamination?!?!???
And then there’s gonna be the stench *wherever* the plant for BUTCHERING all those hogs–and it’s water usage *and potential to contaminate the source!😳😳😳
Baaaaaad, BAD news & TERRIBLE idea–any way you look at it, thinking long-term!🙃
@emmerdoesnotrepresentme
i am so jealous of you for being the wordy kind of adhd….
im the 3 sentences and its not fucking worth it kind
sometimes i think it would be nice to have the gab
One of the easiest things that most people don’t to talk about in the US is that if we just ate less pork and beef we’d free up a lot of farm land for actual food crops for human consumption. I was told in college that something like 35% of all corn grown in the US is just to be hog feed.
But you can’t get a decent salad or vegetarian entree on the dollar menu, so here we are.
Better than Hunter’s laptop, Mark’s cell phone…
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/feature/mark-meadows-exchanged-texts-with-34-members-of-congress-about-plans-to-overturn-the-2020-election
Sprots! I won’t speak ill of the dead but if you look up some of his history, this Trump lover was NOT a nice guy…
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mike-leach-dead-mississippi-state-university_n_63988739e4b0169d76dab45f
Maybe that old fable is true?
Yep, Leach was a horrible person, but no point in celebrating his death. I do wonder if his “pneumonia” was Covid, but that’s all I’m going to wonder.
They say heart attack but my first thoughts also went to Covid. I am sure his family wouldn’t want that to get out.
That was a rough looking 61
The article i caught a little bit ago said he’d been an organ donor, so *hopefully* (and presumably?) it wouldn’t have been a *currrent* Covid-caused death?
That’s *not* to say that the previous bout of pneumonia *wasn’t* Covid!–just that there may have been damage to his heart, if it was, but that it’s ENTIRELY possible he’d *previously* had covid-related pneumonia, but was no longer actively infected when he died.
Inflation in the US keeps moderating, with the latest figures announced today more encouraging than expected.
We’re already seeing the pundits trying explain how to spin this, because they’re baked into an almost religious perspective about mumblemumble Biden Democrats mumblemumble.
What they don’t want to admit is the degree to which inflation has been driven by profit taking, and the latest figures are driven higher by rising housing rental costs, which are masking more softening on the retail level. And they’re ignoring how the spike in energy prices has returned to earth.
This is happening even as unemployment stays at very low levels historically in the US, which pundits have often blamed for inflation, and they’re just pretending the trendlines aren’t working out the way they pray.
…it’s not just the media doing it…in the UK the government is, for example…they’re very keen on the fiscal model that says if they…say…award pay rises in the public sector that keep up with inflation…so nurses & teachers trying to do their austerity-tastic best to do provide more & better services with less & less resources…that would bake in inflation
[…it seems a long time ago…but they also argued much the same rationale for why it would be a bad idea to take a rake on the massive profits of energy companies while people toss up between heating their home & feeding their family]
…robert reich would like people to know it’s a reason to (write for &) read the guardian, though
…some might call that a distinction without a difference…but I know a few who wouldn’t…still…he does ask a decent question or two?
…I’d maybe argue that there’s a place for reading-but-not-necessarily-trusting, though…if you know the how part you can still get things from reporting that it might prefer you not to, even?
It’s “inexplicable” when it doesn’t fit their narrative or “unrelated to any policy from the current administration”.
…speaking of something “unrelated to any policy” that’s arguably “inexplicable”…& somewhat in fairness to the NYT…if otherwise à propos of nothing in particular…they also ran a piece that references a couple of articles by Sarah Haan (a professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law)…one in the Stanford Law Review & one that hasn’t come out yet for the Southern California Law Review (it linked to an abstract but presumably they’d seen a review copy or talked to her about it or maybe both?) that makes an interesting point about shareholders & corporate governance
…& another one about perverse incentives in the arena of crime & punishment
…both of which struck me as doing a decent enough job on the framing thing?
Another journalist in Qatar died.
Is this a common thing during the World Cup?
…another sports journalist? …from foreign climes?
…hate to ask…but…did they publicly support something…umm…at odds with *checks notes* an extremist heteronormative theocratic orthodoxy?
…because that seems like a totally normal & not-at-all threatening coincidence around the time they’re sacking an EU VP for taking bribes from the powers that be over there?
…seems like it was a guy working for ITV…so a brit, I think?
…also…he’s the second foreign journalist to die in qatar during the world cup…but there was also a qatari photojournalist guy who also died recently?
…it’s not, like, mexico levels of unhealthy for journalists but three seems high for coincidence?