Pedo guy megalomaniacal manchild officially owns Twitter

[Guest]

I’m thankful to Musk for bricking third party Twitter apps as it broke my usage of Twitter down to like once a week since I find the website and native app so awful.

[ThreePi]

My Twitter usage has certainly dropped about 75% since Musk took over. I barely post anything, and only check my feed maybe couple of times a week.

[Jason]

2 minutes ago, ThreePi said:

My Twitter usage has certainly dropped about 75% since Musk took over. I barely post anything, and only check my feed maybe couple of times a week.

 

As I've said before I'm still on regularly for California housing and transit politics stuff because there really isn't anywhere else I could replicate that information feed. My timeline has definitely noticeably slowed down. It used to be extremely rapid-fire Monday-Friday because I also follow a lot of reporters.

 

I first noticed the slowdown during the holidays so thought maybe it was just that, but it's persisted well past the holidays. Based on what I'm seeing in my own circle, I think it's probably not just people abandoning the site but also a lot of people who I didn't follow but who would get retweeted into my feed taking their accounts private. That's going to be a big hit to site engagement too since chaining follows together is the easiest way to curate your feed. 

[Demut]

5 hours ago, legend said:

The reason it's a problem is because huge swaths of the population won't block him and they are not equipped to understand the delusional propaganda for what it is. 

Yikes, that sounds mighty patronizing. Right in line with the self-proclaimed intelligentsia that patted themselves on the back for "fortifying" the election, actually.

 

5 hours ago, legend said:

The problem is he's broadcasting his tweets to a huge population that's going to be taken in by his nonsense and me blocking him won't change that.

Huh, so the issue is that his "platform"/reach is too big? That's another bizarre take from where I'm standing, especially considering the point I raised earlier regarding Twitter's previous heads. It's not like the reach changed (unless Musk's claims about increased engagement number are true), just what is being spread. And it's not like they were all about neutral, factual information back then.

 

5 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

The only thing I want to see of Elon Musk is his dessicated corpse dangling from the end of a noose.

See, if this is even just half serious it just seems deranged to me. He's a cocky asshole who throws tantrums if he doesn't get what he wants (like the plane tracker) or someone shits on him (cf. the submarine thing) but to develop legit hatred over something so comparatively benign is crazy to me.

 

6 hours ago, CitizenVectron said:

I am curious to know Demut's stance on trans issues, but I also don't want to hear it. 

Well, remember, you have me blocked, dummy, so even if I were to answer it's not like you COULD hear it.

[Spork3245]

7 minutes ago, Demut said:

Well, remember, you have me blocked, dummy, so even if I were to answer it's not like you COULD hear it.

Unless he’s using text to speech he wouldn’t hear it anyway, though 

[Demut]

9 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

Unless he’s using text to speech he wouldn’t hear it anyway, though 

 

5 hours ago, stepee said:

honestly I feel in general right wing germans should probably be on time out for any political discussion for at least another 100 years 

Agreed when it comes to the far-right. However, honestly, so should left wing Germans given that their crimes are far more recent historically (cf. the GDR) and were never properly accounted for unlike with Nazis (like the Nuremberg Trials, denazification efforts and so on). The fucking SED continues to be in parliament to this fucking day, just under a different name. That'd be like having the actual NSDAP in parliament today after them just saying "Oops, we definitely screwed up ... partially. Here, to show our sincerity we'll slightly modify our name and keep only SOME of our positions in our political program. All good, right?".

 

5 hours ago, chakoo said:

As soon as someone brings up the Twitter files that should tell you everything about what they're bringing to the discussion. There is no intelligent discussion to be had.

What's wrong with bringing up the Twitter Files? Is it just the U.S. progressive mantra of "Lalalalala, nothing to see here, lalalala" or something more substantial? 'Cause I can tell you that at least outside of the idiotic partisan bubble that is American politics, people are taking note of the revelations published in them. Like how Twitter leadership shat their pants and removed Trump for reasons that they even internally acknowledged were harebrained but was fine with foreign heads of state using Twitter to literally call for GENOCIDE and not doing a fucking thing to them. Quite the double standard, that. Or how they kowtowed to the intelligence agencies and even regular politicians to arbitrarily remove users, tweets and entire subjects.

[Spork3245]

12 minutes ago, Demut said:

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

34 minutes ago, Demut said:

See, if this is even just half serious it just seems deranged to me. He's a cocky asshole who throws tantrums if he doesn't get what he wants (like the plane tracker) or someone shits on him (cf. the submarine thing) but to develop legit hatred over something so comparatively benign is crazy to me.

 

Allow me to assure you that there's nothing remotely "even just half serious" about it.  I am absolutely, 100% dead serious about it.  Why wouldn't I be?

 

It's a fate that should be shared by all billionaires!

[stepee]

my goodness 

[Demut]

12 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

 

11 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

It's a fate that should be shared by all billionaires!

Is my memory that bad or is this not a position that you had ~10 years ago? I thought you kinda LARP'd as the opposite previously. Or did I conjure up that whole tongue-in-cheek "your friendly neighborhood fascist" title from back in the day in a fever dream?

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

23 minutes ago, Demut said:

 

Is my memory that bad or is this not a position that you had ~10 years ago? I thought you kinda LARP'd as the opposite previously. Or did I conjure up that whole "your friendly neighborhood fascist" title from back in the day in a fever dream?

 

No, I've definitely moved further to the Left as I've grown older though I've always had the usual Catholic distrust of concentrations of private wealth.

 

Musk gets the noose.

Bezos gets the blade.

Gates gets the cross.

Buffett gets the stake.

Zuckerberg gets the chair.

Etc. Etc.

 

[Demut]

Is that a stereotypically Catholic thing? Seems kinda ironic given the Catholic Church. Not that evangelical mega churches for instance are any better ...

 

And interesting, it's been the opposite for me. At least socially.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

2 minutes ago, Demut said:

Is that a stereotypically Catholic thing? Seems kinda ironic given the Catholic Church.

 

Yes, in contrast to the Protestant heresy, traditional Catholicism views the accumulation of private wealth with suspicion.

[thewhyteboar]

26 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

Yes, in contrast to the Protestant heresy, traditional Catholicism views the accumulation of private wealth with suspicion.

I’ve had this saved for awhile. Finally a chance to use it: 

[Kal-El814]

2 hours ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

I mean it seems like any job where you have a login requires you to have 2FA Authenticator at some point. They’ve been around forever. 

 

This is certainly more common all the time, but again, I don't think it's reasonable for laypeople to conclude that the reason your job uses one is that they have control over Okta or whatever, and not your texts. "Normal people" just don't think about this because they don't have to. They'd think a password like ygHytb$1 is more secure than horseysurprise+Twitteraccount1 because it's "more random."

[Kal-El814]

1 hour ago, Demut said:

Is that a stereotypically Catholic thing? Seems kinda ironic given the Catholic Church. Not that evangelical mega churches for instance are any better ...

 

And interesting, it's been the opposite for me. At least socially.

 

Every single billionaire on god's green earth is a policy failure.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

9 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

Every single billionaire on god's green earth is a policy failure.

 

The very existence of billionaires unquestionably represent political, social, economic, and moral failures.

[Demut]

@thewhyteboar To be fair ... should they really ?

 

1 hour ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Yes, in contrast to the Protestant heresy, traditional Catholicism views the accumulation of private wealth with suspicion.

Weird. I've heard that the prosperity gospel is a protestant thing but I wasn't aware that wealth was viewed suspiciously in Catholicism. Who was doing the suspecting? Surely not the clergy and nobility, given their own riches. Also, biblically the case can be made either way. Jesus preaches poverty in some sense whereas throughout the Torah you find wealth as one of the blessings provided by God.

 

12 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

Every single billionaire on god's green earth is a policy failure.

What policy failure do you blame for billionaire musicians, writers, devs and other creatives? I get Marxist screeching when it comes to this topic to some extent where arguably exploitative industries are concerned. But there are people out there who are rich pretty much just because people love what they individually have done and decided to give them their money (often enough even when they could've gotten the product for free, e.g. via illegal downloads).

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

8 minutes ago, Demut said:

What policy failure do you blame for billionaire musicians, writers, devs and other creatives?

 

The identical policy failures that allowed for the existence of billionaire industrialists: the policies that allowed for the accumulation of that wealth, no matter the source.

[Guest]

Are there any billionaires who are such without any unrealized gains from equity they own in a business? I don’t think so, which is why I think the notion that there is a policy fix to the billionaire issue is not actually a well thought out position and mostly just a slogan.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

8 minutes ago, Demut said:

 

Weird. I've heard that the prosperity gospel is a protestant thing but I wasn't aware that wealth was viewed suspiciously in Catholicism. Who was doing the suspecting? Surely not the clergy and nobility, given their own riches. Also, biblically the case can be made either way. Jesus preaches poverty in some sense whereas throughout the Torah you find wealth as one of the blessings provided by God.

 

Why on Earth would Catholics pay any heed to what the Torah has to say anyway?!?

 

As for where the suspicion comes from, it involves the private accumulation of wealth for which no obligation exists to "share" that wealth whereas wealth accumulation by the Church ostensibly carries that obligation.

[Demut]

1 minute ago, sblfilms said:

Are there any billionaires who are such without any unrealized gains from equity they own in a business?

The ones I mentioned? J.K. Rowling for example.

 

11 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

The identical policy failures that allowed for the existence of billionaire industrialists: the policies that allowed for the accumulation of that wealth, no matter the source.

Where's the issue though? And where do you draw the line? Always seems arbitrary to me to say the cut-off is $1,000,000,000. And it reminds me of Bernie's shift from ranting about "millionaires and billionaires" to just "billionaires" after he himself officially became one

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

3 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

Are there any billionaires who are such without any unrealized gains from equity they own in a business? I don’t think so, which is why I think the notion that there is a policy fix to the billionaire issue is not actually a well thought out position and mostly just a slogan.

 

Nationalization of those holdings into a state sovereign wealth fund has got ya covered!

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Just now, Demut said:

The ones I mentioned? J.K. Rowling for example.

 

Where's the issue though? And where do you draw the line? Always seems arbitrary to me to say the cut-off is $1,000,000,000. And it reminds me of Bernie's shift from ranting about "millionaires and billionaires" to just "billionaires" after he himself officially became one

 

Personally for me, the limit would be a net worth of $10 million.  Hell, I'd even go all the way to $25 million if I was feeling generous.

[Demut]

Again, sounds pretty arbitrary. Who functions as investors and allocators of capital in that society of yours? Exclusively the state ?

 

7 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Why on Earth would Catholics pay any heed to what the Torah has to say anyway?!?

I'm guessing this is a joke? Anyway, regarding "private" accumulation of wealth, for the longest time there used to be a social expectation that it ought to be shared. Especially in the birthplace of Catholicism, that is, the Roman Empire. The rich there often fucked up their own finances because they were expected to fund public works and shit. I feel like it's only more recently that selfish hoarding became no longer regarded as fundamentally wrong. At least in Christianity it was always thought of as sinful. It's one of the seven deadly ones, even.

[TheShader]

8 minutes ago, Demut said:

The ones I mentioned? J.K. Rowling for example.

JK herself is an anomaly, and even then has not been able to continuously sustain billionaire status. 

[Guest]

Just now, Demut said:

The ones I mentioned? J.K. Rowling for example.

Rowling’s wealth is tied up in the value of the rights to all the Wizarding World stuff in exactly the same way that the various Walton kid’s wealth is tied up in Walmart stock.

 

4 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

Nationalization of those holdings into a state sovereign wealth fund has got ya covered!

 

You would tank the value of those holdings immediately. The consequences of that would be massive 😂

[Kal-El814]

24 minutes ago, Demut said:

 

What policy failure do you blame for billionaire musicians, writers, devs and other creatives? I get Marxist screeching when it comes to this topic to some extent where arguably exploitative industries are concerned. But there are people out there who are rich pretty much just because people love what they individually have done and decided to give them their money (often enough even when they could've gotten the product for free, e.g. via illegal downloads).

 

There are so few creatives who eventually become billionaires that it doesn't matter. Rihanna, Kanye at some point, Rowling? I don't think we're talking about many, it's not relevant.

 

11 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

Are there any billionaires who are such without any unrealized gains from equity they own in a business? I don’t think so, which is why I think the notion that there is a policy fix to the billionaire issue is not actually a well thought out position and mostly just a slogan.

 

Snatch that shit up too, om nom nom.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

6 minutes ago, Demut said:

I feel like it's only more recently that selfish greed became no longer regarded as fundamentally wrong. At least in Christianity it was always thought of as sinful.

 

You can thank the so-called "Protestant work ethic" for essentially legitimizing greed through its implicit stigmatization of the less-fortunate because they don't work "hard enough" and therefore aren't deserving of God's bounty.  This is part of the reason "free market" economics flourished in Protestant nations rather than Catholic ones.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

1 minute ago, sblfilms said:

You would tank the value of those holdings immediately. The consequences of that would be massive 😂

 

PROBLEM SOLVED!

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Kal-El814 said:

There are so few creatives who eventually become billionaires that it doesn't matter. Rihanna, Kanye at some point, Rowling? I don't think we're talking about many, it's not relevant.

As I noted, even those creatives are not billionaires because they have sold so many pieces of art, but because they create valuable brands based off that IP. 
 

You can see this also in things like sports teams. The average MLB team is worth around 1.5 billion dollars, but it’s not as though those clubs are all netting even 100m a year. 

[Demut]

7 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

Rowling’s wealth is tied up in the value of the rights to all the Wizarding World stuff in exactly the same way that the various Walton kid’s wealth is tied up in Walmart stock.

Source? If it was vague, wishy-washy guesswork like that I wouldn't call her a billionaire to begin with.

 

8 minutes ago, TheShader said:

JK herself is an anomaly, and even then has not been able to continuously sustain billionaire status. 

An anomaly how? Just because she's one of the top-selling authors? Duh. Were someone like Tolkien still alive he could probably be a billionaire, too. But fine, Take video game developers like Notch then or musicians like Paul McCartney.

 

6 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

You can thank the so-called "Protestant work ethic" for essentially legitimizing greed through its implicit stigmatization of the less-fortunate because they don't work "hard enough" and therefore aren't deserving of God's bounty.

Eh, that feels like a gross oversimplification.

 

2 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

As I noted, even those creatives are not billionaires because they have sold so many pieces of art, but because they create valuable brands based off that IP. 

Even if that were true, how does that make their wealth any more undeserved?

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

1 minute ago, Demut said:

Eh, that feels like a gross oversimplification.

 

Of course it's a "gross oversimplification", but it doesn't change the notion that "free market economics" found a more fertile ground in Protestant societies than Catholic ones owing to theological differences on how the accumulation of wealth was viewed.

[Guest]

Just now, Demut said:

Source? If it was vague, wishy-washy guesswork like that I wouldn't call her a billionaire to begin with.

Source for what? All net-worth numbers you see are exactly that kind of “wishy-washy guesswork”.

For example, even something more tangible like Elon Musk’s TSLA holdings aren’t actually worth the number of shares times the current stock price, because he can’t sell them all for that price. If he tried to cash out all of his TSLA shares, the price would fall off a cliff.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

6 minutes ago, Demut said:

Source? If it was vague, wishy-washy guesswork like that I wouldn't call her a billionaire to begin with.

 

There really is nothing vague about the valuation of IP rights - it's just as legitimate a measure of wealth as a stock portfolio.