@Jelaniya my friend was the director of security and integrity at Twitter before he got unceremoniously fired. Along with about 10 other mates of mine. So this does not surprise me one bit.
#ClimateScam: denialism claims flooding Twitter have scientists worried
there was a “renewed energy” coursing through the effort to spread baseless claims about the climate crisis on Twitter, particularly by high-profile accounts that fold the issue into other major clashes, such as over abortion or LGBTQ+ rights.
I've been over on the other site reviewing the "big reveal" that Musk promised tonight, and... if you're not reading it, suffice to say, you've missed nothing.
The revelations so far... confirmed everything Twitter has said earlier, denied that there was any gov't pressure to remove the laptop story, highlighted the challenges of content moderation... and involved Matt Taibbi stupidly revealing personal email addresses of famous people.
Back in 2013 when it looked like Steve Cohen (a hedge fund guy worth ~$8b) might actually suffer consequences for insider trading, I asked one of his peers why he'd do it.
I couldn't understand it. I said it would be a blow to my ego to cheat, a tacit admission to myself that I could no longer beat the street honestly.
My friend replied, "Maybe it got too easy to beat the street. Maybe the bigger challenge was seeing if he could beat the SEC."
I think about that a lot.
As we watch Elon Musk slide into rightwing radicalization in real time, I’m reminded of this 1941 piece by Dorothy Thompson.
“Who goes Nazi?”
In short: it is the people who love money and status and power that are at risk.
Those who resist the urge are the people who have a solid family life; a job they love for the work, not the money; a moral framework based on pluralism and equal access to opportunity.
Worth a read. #nazi #Twitter #liberal
I spent 5+ years as a billionaire's wordsmith, which meant knowing him intimately enough to write in his voice.
I think the thread running through most of them is not a belief in their own basic goodness but rather contempt for everyone else, including and especially their peers. Expressing that contempt with plausible deniability was part of my (usually) unspoken mandate.
Contempt and duper's delight. Those were the last thrills once $$ reached a point of diminishing returns.
Musk’s people are indistinguishable from Trump’s people. They LOVE sticking it to the rest of us by elevating rich, cocky assholes to the top of the food chain.
Oh, and Matt Taibbi used to be a dyed-in-the-wool lefty, but he became a Trumper by default once he decided that his mortal enemy was the mainstream media, with their apparently unconscionable deference to the political party with most of the facts on their side (aka the Democrats).
The Holocaust did not begin with killing; it began with words.
Genocides do not start with mass murder. That's where they end up.
Genocides & other mass atrocity crimes begin with words - specifically, with powerful people dehumanizing a minority.
Once they are seen as less than human, anything is possible, even mass murder.
👉 You can speak out loudly today for the rights of others, or you can stay silent & wait for tomorrow, when your rights will be taken away too.
My theory of Musk at this point:
-- he fired all his PR people several years ago after he got some negative press and blogged through it to Tesla customers
-- this deprived him of basic reality checks on how media work
-- he started believing right wing propaganda about social media companies
-- he bought a social media company
-- he wildly botches basic PR for releasing the emails he bought when he bought the social media company
Russia is spying on Telegram chats in occupied Ukrainian regions.
Here's how.
https://www.pwnallthethings.com/p/russia-is-spying-on-telegram-chats
Mathematics Ph.D. Likes hanging out with almost everyone regardless of political views or anything else.
Akkoma: @ML2