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General Category => Off the Record => Topic started by: garbon on July 15, 2018, 07:01:42 PM

Title: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on July 15, 2018, 07:01:42 PM
Maybe he should take a social media break.

QuoteElon Musk came under fire on Sunday after launching an extraordinary attack on a British diver who helped rescue the boys trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand, baselessly calling him a "pedo" on Twitter and then doubling down.

Twelve boys and their football coach were rescued from the Tham Luang cave complex by an international team and after a week of intense drama.

The chief executive of the tech giant Tesla offered to assist the rescue mission by providing a submarine. The request was turned down. Musk lashed out on Sunday, saying he would make a video proving that his "mini-sub" would have been successful and adding: "Sorry pedo guy, you really did ask for it."

The accusation, presented without evidence or context, was directed at Vern Unsworth, a British cave explorer who recently said Musk's attempt to help the rescue effort was a "PR stunt". No evidence has emerged to substantiate Musk's claim of pedophilia.

"It just had absolutely no chance of working," Unsworth said in a widely shared interview. "He had no conception of what the cave passage was like. The submarine, I believe, was about 5ft 6in long, rigid, so it wouldn't have gone round corners or round any obstacles."

Musk visited the cave system himself. Unsworth said the billionaire "was asked to leave very quickly". He also told CNN Musk could "stick his submarine where it hurts"

On Sunday, when a Twitter user pointed out that Musk was "calling the guy who found the children a pedo", the billionaire responded: "Bet ya a signed dollar it's true."

Intense criticism followed. Some Twitter users pointed out how "dangerous" and irresponsible it was to make such a serious allegation and to broadcast a potentially libelous insult to his 22 million followers.

Spokesmen for Musk and Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Later on Sunday, Musk deleted the "pedo" tweet and its follow-up.

Unsworth could not immediately be reached.

Some users  Musk's comments to Twitter, one saying he "shouldn't be allowed to use Twitter to unleash [his] followers on people like this".

Musk has repeatedly come under fire for his behavior on Twitter and for Tesla's PR strategy, under which it aggressively attacks critics and journalists. James Anderson, a partner at Baillie Gifford, Tesla's fourth-largest shareholder, said in a recent Bloomberg interview the company needed a period of "peace and execution", adding: "It would be good to just concentrate on the core task."

Asked about the "pedo" tweet, Anderson told the Guardian in an email: "I intend to convey my – predictable I trust – feelings to the company tomorrow." He declined to elaborate.

Musk had pledged to be less combative on social media, saying earlier this week: "I have made the mistaken assumption – and I will attempt to be better at this – of thinking that because somebody is on Twitter and is attacking me that it is open season. That is my mistake. I will correct it."

The billionaire attracted controversy for his approach to the Thai rescue after Narongsak Osatanakorn, head of the joint command center, said the mini-submarine would not have been practical.

Musk responded by saying Osatanakorn was "not the subject matter expert" and that he had been "inaccurately described as rescue chief" and should have been labeled the "former Thai provincial governor". Osatanakorn stepped down as Chiang Rai governor during the rescue, but was still acting as commander.

Musk's Sunday tweets came in response to a New York Times opinion piece entitled "What Elon Musk Should Learn From the Thailand Cave Rescue". The Tesla CEO appears to be committed to proving his design would have worked. He wrote: "We will make [a video] of the mini-sub/pod going all the way to Cave 5 no problemo."

He also responded to one critic who had called the submarine idea "absurd" a week earlier, writing: "Stay tuned jackass." That tweet too was deleted.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on July 15, 2018, 07:04:44 PM
Jesus, what a tool.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 15, 2018, 07:23:06 PM
While Musk has been a bit of a publicity seeking tool in this whole case, absent any other context I'm expecting that the "pedo" thing is probably a fat-finger typo rather than a deliberate accusation of pedophilia or a deliberate choice of using "pedo" a gratuitous insult.

That expectation is somewhat dampened by the fact that I can't think of suitable thing that Musk could have intended instead of pedo, but taken and face value the whole thing is too ludicrous IMO.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Monoriu on July 15, 2018, 07:52:05 PM
I think this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to turn the cave complex into a theme park.  There is no reason why Tesla's submarine can't feature as one of the rides. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 15, 2018, 07:57:55 PM
So long as he keeps advancing critical battery technology, I couldn't give fewer shits. I mean unless he commits some sort of felony.

Well ok maybe more time working on world changing technology and less on worthless social media garbage would suit him better.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on July 15, 2018, 09:06:56 PM
He is a huge narcissist and has a history of inflammatory tweets and personal public feuds.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 15, 2018, 11:08:37 PM
Quote from: Zanza on July 15, 2018, 09:06:56 PM
He is a huge narcissist and has a history of inflammatory tweets and personal public feuds.

... that does seem to fit, then.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on July 16, 2018, 01:51:53 AM
Adds Musk to the "list".

He's just under Boris Johnson, serves him right  :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on July 16, 2018, 02:40:11 AM
Quote from: Jacob on July 15, 2018, 11:08:37 PM
Quote from: Zanza on July 15, 2018, 09:06:56 PM
He is a huge narcissist and has a history of inflammatory tweets and personal public feuds.

... that does seem to fit, then.

QuoteOn Sunday, when a Twitter user pointed out that Musk was "calling the guy who found the children a pedo", the billionaire responded: "Bet ya a signed dollar it's true."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on July 16, 2018, 02:42:31 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on July 16, 2018, 01:51:53 AM
Adds Musk to the "list".

He's just under Boris Johnson, serves him right  :lol:

You have public figures you've never met on your list?  :ph34r:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on July 16, 2018, 02:48:17 AM
There is a stereotype of westerners in Thailand being paedos.
But you'd think someone as worldly as Musk would know better :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on July 18, 2018, 03:49:19 AM
Whatever happened to a simple apology. Love all the preamble setting the stage for why he inevitably lashed out...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/18/elon-musk-apologises-for-calling-thai-cave-rescue-diver-a-pedo

QuoteOn Wednesday, Musk issued an apology to Unsworth in a reply to another Twitter user. He said: "My words were spoken in anger after Mr Unsworth said several untruths & suggested I engage in a sexual act with the mini-sub, which had been built as an act of kindness & according to specifications from the dive team leader."

He added: "Nonetheless, his actions against me do not justify my actions against him, and for that I apologize to Mr Unsworth and to the companies I represent as leader. The fault is mine and mine alone."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on July 18, 2018, 06:14:11 AM
The apology that isn't really an apology is such a great thing.

Isn't Musk himself a pedophile btw? Glass houses.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on July 18, 2018, 08:44:43 AM
You're just saying that because he looks like one.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Caliga on July 18, 2018, 08:50:26 AM
I think I've mentioned before that I think Elon Musk is a piece of shit and a con artist. :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on July 18, 2018, 08:53:14 AM
Quote from: Caliga on July 18, 2018, 08:50:26 AM
I think I've mentioned before that I think Elon Musk is a piece of shit and a con artist. :hmm:

How is he a con artist? Non-rhetorical, I've never paid much attention to Musk.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on July 18, 2018, 09:01:13 AM
I don't think he is a pure con-artist, it's just that he is a legitimate innovator who crosses ethical lines to keep himself afloat.  If you make it, everyone remembers the rags to riches story while forgetting the con jobs requried to get there, but if you fail, you're a con-artist.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Maladict on July 18, 2018, 09:58:45 AM
Quote from: garbon on July 18, 2018, 03:49:19 AM
Whatever happened to a simple apology. Love all the preamble setting the stage for why he inevitably lashed out...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/18/elon-musk-apologises-for-calling-thai-cave-rescue-diver-a-pedo

QuoteOn Wednesday, Musk issued an apology to Unsworth in a reply to another Twitter user. He said: "My words were spoken in anger after Mr Unsworth said several untruths & suggested I engage in a sexual act with the mini-sub, which had been built as an act of kindness & according to specifications from the dive team leader."

He added: "Nonetheless, his actions against me do not justify my actions against him, and for that I apologize to Mr Unsworth and to the companies I represent as leader. The fault is mine and mine alone."

Nice 'apology' :lol:

The fault is mine and mine alone. HOWEVER, .....
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on July 18, 2018, 10:27:32 AM
Quote from: DGuller on July 18, 2018, 09:01:13 AM
I don't think he is a pure con-artist, it's just that he is a legitimate innovator who crosses ethical lines to keep himself afloat.  If you make it, everyone remembers the rags to riches story while forgetting the con jobs requried to get there, but if you fail, you're a con-artist.

Of course, it is the kind of setup that can make it worth it for people like the following - as if she had managed to parlay her freebies into money making (say monetized social media), she could have been seen as a society darling rather than a con-artist.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/anna-delvey-fraud-new-york-banks-money-socialite-party-a8376141.html

QuoteNo one noticed Anna Delvey was a fraud tricking them into believing she was a millionaire because they were so distracted by wads of cash

Anna Delvey might be in prison now, but for a few years she lived the kind of lavish lifestyle Instagram was made to record.

Even more impressive than the designer clothes, high end hotels and glamorous nights out she portrayed, however, was the way she paid for it all: in short, she didn't. Instead she conned banks, wrote bad cheques and eventually took money from her friends as the lies and debts caught up with her.

Her exploits have been a major talking point on social media over the past day or two, following a fascinating article in the Cut, which examines just how the ersatz socialite pulled the wool over the eyes of so many people for so long. To my mind, most of those she managed to scam bear at least some of the responsibility, so willing were they to be taken in because of all the lovely money involved. Or not, as it turned out.

The mere appearance of wealth was enough to draw dozens of New York scenesters into Delvey's web of fake names and false promises. What's even scarier is that her European society darling bit also worked on banks.

Delvey, whose real name turned out to be Anna Sorokin, presented herself as a wealthy heiress, and despite the fact that she actually seemed to be lacking in funds on several occasions, her family money story held more sway over acquaintances than any evidence to the contrary.

There are a few red flags throughout the story that really raise questions about how eager people are to suspend their disbelief when there might be a monetary value to turning a blind eye.

...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Maladict on August 28, 2018, 06:16:15 PM
 :rolleyes:

QuoteElon Musk is back to lashing out on Twitter.

Musk, responding to a Twitter user, on Tuesday revived an unfounded accusation he had previously made about a caver who helped rescue 12 boys and their soccer coach in Thailand.

Musk said it was "strange" that the caver had not sued him after Musk called him a "pedo," or pedophile, in a tweet in July. Musk had apologized for the tweet.

He also tweeted that he did not cry in an interview earlier this month with The New York Times, as the paper said he did.



    You don't think it's strange he hasn't sued me? He was offered free legal services. And you call yourself @yoda ...
    — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 28, 2018

A spokesperson for the Times said that the paper stands by its description of the telephone interview with Musk.

"Mr. Musk's emotion was audible. It is not true that his voice only cracked once," the spokesperson said.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on August 28, 2018, 06:43:56 PM
Social media addiction :D
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on August 28, 2018, 08:17:34 PM
Quote from: garbon on August 28, 2018, 06:43:56 PM
Social media addiction :D

https://store.steampowered.com/app/852740/Elon_Musk_Simulator/?snr=1_7_7_204_150_11 (https://store.steampowered.com/app/852740/Elon_Musk_Simulator/?snr=1_7_7_204_150_11)

:whistle:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on August 29, 2018, 10:37:34 AM
https://twitter.com/LLinWood/status/1034761900100407296?s=19
:lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on August 29, 2018, 11:03:36 AM
:D
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on August 29, 2018, 12:20:31 PM
I gotta say between Elon Musk's poor character finally coming to my attention and the fact that the Saudis are taking a major stake in Tesla, that car is no longer an aspirational brand for me.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on August 29, 2018, 12:50:57 PM
Quote from: Jacob on August 29, 2018, 12:20:31 PM
I gotta say between Elon Musk's poor character finally coming to my attention and the fact that the Saudis are taking a major stake in Tesla, that car is no longer an aspirational brand for me.

Yeah, it is funny how quickly he has destroyed the brand. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Malthus on August 29, 2018, 01:05:05 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 29, 2018, 12:50:57 PM
Quote from: Jacob on August 29, 2018, 12:20:31 PM
I gotta say between Elon Musk's poor character finally coming to my attention and the fact that the Saudis are taking a major stake in Tesla, that car is no longer an aspirational brand for me.

Yeah, it is funny how quickly he has destroyed the brand.

I know next to nothing of the electric car market - what piece of that does Tesla have?

Edit: looked it up

https://www.fleetcarma.com/electric-vehicles-sales-update-q1-2018-canada/

Looks like the leader is the Chevy Bolt
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on August 29, 2018, 01:57:39 PM
Quote from: Malthus on August 29, 2018, 01:05:05 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 29, 2018, 12:50:57 PM
Quote from: Jacob on August 29, 2018, 12:20:31 PM
I gotta say between Elon Musk's poor character finally coming to my attention and the fact that the Saudis are taking a major stake in Tesla, that car is no longer an aspirational brand for me.

Yeah, it is funny how quickly he has destroyed the brand.

I know next to nothing of the electric car market - what piece of that does Tesla have?

Edit: looked it up

https://www.fleetcarma.com/electric-vehicles-sales-update-q1-2018-canada/

Looks like the leader is the Chevy Bolt

Market share has little to do with people willing to pay four times the price to get a luxury Tesla to make as a marker of prestige.  I think the high end dealership in West Van is going to suffer significantly.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on August 29, 2018, 02:02:57 PM
Quote from: Malthus on August 29, 2018, 01:05:05 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 29, 2018, 12:50:57 PM
Quote from: Jacob on August 29, 2018, 12:20:31 PM
I gotta say between Elon Musk's poor character finally coming to my attention and the fact that the Saudis are taking a major stake in Tesla, that car is no longer an aspirational brand for me.

Yeah, it is funny how quickly he has destroyed the brand.

I know next to nothing of the electric car market - what piece of that does Tesla have?

Edit: looked it up

https://www.fleetcarma.com/electric-vehicles-sales-update-q1-2018-canada/

Looks like the leader is the Chevy Bolt

Those are Canadian figures though.

Here's the first US sales figures I could find:

https://insideevs.com/july-2018-plug-in-electric-vehicle-sales-report-card/

Tesla crushes it, with the 3, S and X coming in 1st, 3rd and 4th respectively.  Prius Prime, which is not a pure EV, comes in 2nd, with the Volt coming in 5th.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Malthus on August 29, 2018, 02:05:05 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on August 29, 2018, 01:57:39 PM


Market share has little to do with people willing to pay four times the price to get a luxury Tesla to make as a marker of prestige.  I think the high end dealership in West Van is going to suffer significantly.

Heh, I agree with all that - I wasn't making a rhetorical point: I was just curious.  :lol:

Seems like every time people talk about electric cars, they mention Tesla. I was just a bit surprised it wasn't the market leader here in Canada.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Malthus on August 29, 2018, 02:09:14 PM
Quote from: Barrister on August 29, 2018, 02:02:57 PM


Those are Canadian figures though.

Here's the first US sales figures I could find:

https://insideevs.com/july-2018-plug-in-electric-vehicle-sales-report-card/

Tesla crushes it, with the 3, S and X coming in 1st, 3rd and 4th respectively.  Prius Prime, which is not a pure EV, comes in 2nd, with the Volt coming in 5th.

Interesting. I wonder why the sales ranks are totally different in the US. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on August 29, 2018, 02:20:40 PM
The reason for the different market pentration is that Tesla is ery focused on the US market for various reasons and does not even sell their Model 3 outside the US and Canada (Not sure they currently deliver the Model 3 to Canada as they only did so briefly for US tax reasons). The reason for their focus on the US market are manifold (logistics, dealer and charger infrastructure,  tax benefits, homologation etc.). That approach makes sense for a cash flow challenged company.

Their next quarterly result will be interesting regarding their gross margin on the Model 3. That will show if there is a path to sustained profitability for them. Which will also impact whether they can follow their plan for new models (Y, Pickup, Semi, Roadster) and plants and how much more capital they need to raise for those.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on August 29, 2018, 02:21:21 PM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on August 29, 2018, 10:37:34 AM
https://twitter.com/LLinWood/status/1034761900100407296?s=19
:lol:

I wish he would insult me publically. I could use the payout.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on August 29, 2018, 02:28:02 PM
Quote from: Berkut on August 29, 2018, 02:21:21 PM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on August 29, 2018, 10:37:34 AM
https://twitter.com/LLinWood/status/1034761900100407296?s=19
:lol:

I wish he would insult me publically. I could use the payout.

You know I thought he wouldn't have much of a leg to stand on since Musk apologized and retracted his statement, but going back... Musk only apologized.  He never said the comment was untrue.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on August 29, 2018, 02:29:22 PM
Quote from: Malthus on August 29, 2018, 02:09:14 PM
Quote from: Barrister on August 29, 2018, 02:02:57 PM


Those are Canadian figures though.

Here's the first US sales figures I could find:

https://insideevs.com/july-2018-plug-in-electric-vehicle-sales-report-card/

Tesla crushes it, with the 3, S and X coming in 1st, 3rd and 4th respectively.  Prius Prime, which is not a pure EV, comes in 2nd, with the Volt coming in 5th.

Interesting. I wonder why the sales ranks are totally different in the US.

If you look at the numbers the US figures look like an order of magnitude larger.

Wild-assed guess: EVs don't make as much sense in Canada due to greatly restricted battery life in cold weather?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on August 29, 2018, 06:04:28 PM
I can't help but feel that something is not quite right with the sanity of stock market valuations, when a company like Tesla is worth in the same neighborhood as VAG, Daimler, or Ford.  Or when Apple is worth more than all the automakers combined.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tonitrus on August 30, 2018, 11:12:43 PM
Being that Apple is sitting on about $285 billion in cash, they're probably legit.

But yeah, as an oldie, valuations of tech companies with almost no real assets/infrastructure (e.g. Facebook), when compared to automakers or companies like Boeing/General Electric, does feel weird.

But then again, banks have been in that game for centuries.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on August 31, 2018, 01:23:57 PM
@Zanza: I thought I read Teslas were big in Norway because of the mongo green subsidy.

@Beeb: Maybe lack of charging network?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tonitrus on August 31, 2018, 01:42:49 PM
Also, it is my understanding that "EVs suck in cold" is somewhat of a myth, in that it isn't so much the cold nuking the battery, as it is that the EV has to use it's electricity to provide heat to both the car and the cabin (driver/passengers)...so you have more load on the system.  This should be mitigated by the car being kept "warm" when plugged in at night (like a car with a block heater).

That wouldn't help people who regularly park their car outside/don't have a garage....but the idea set-up for an EV owner would be to have a garage anyway.

Having looked at being in the EV market myself...the toughest part for EV owners seems like it would be city-dwellers without easy access to charging infrastructure (and older buildings with parking not having the set-up for their residents "at home")...especially access to fast charging.  Making, right now, the ideal residence for a single EV owner a small cottage/home with a garage.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on August 31, 2018, 03:48:46 PM
Charging at work is also a viable option.  The big bonus here in BC is that charging in lots is currently free as it is illegal to resell electricity.  But that doesn't stop the charging station companies from investing in getting their infrastructure into the prime locations for when it can be a revenue stream.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on August 31, 2018, 04:20:52 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on August 31, 2018, 01:23:57 PM
@Zanza: I thought I read Teslas were big in Norway because of the mongo green subsidy.
Yes, but the Model 3 is not sold there yet. Tesla is very successful there due to huge tax incentives. But their competitors are doing well too, with Nissan Leaf and BMW i3 as pure electric cars outselling Teslas model X and S (which are in different segments though).
https://insideevs.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/444.png
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on August 31, 2018, 06:07:07 PM
Elon Musk is another "stable genius."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on August 31, 2018, 08:45:55 PM
Quote from: DGuller on August 29, 2018, 06:04:28 PM
I can't help but feel that something is not quite right with the sanity of stock market valuations, when a company like Tesla is worth in the same neighborhood as VAG, Daimler, or Ford.  Or when Apple is worth more than all the automakers combined.

VAG is mired in diesel related scandal, Daimler is caught in the crossfire of Trump's trade "policy", and Ford is Ford: destroying shareholder value for nearly a century.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on August 31, 2018, 11:54:27 PM
Quote from: grumbler on August 31, 2018, 06:07:07 PM
Elon Musk is another "stable genius."

What makes you question his intellect?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on September 01, 2018, 01:23:14 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 31, 2018, 08:45:55 PM
Quote from: DGuller on August 29, 2018, 06:04:28 PM
I can't help but feel that something is not quite right with the sanity of stock market valuations, when a company like Tesla is worth in the same neighborhood as VAG, Daimler, or Ford.  Or when Apple is worth more than all the automakers combined.

VAG is mired in diesel related scandal, Daimler is caught in the crossfire of Trump's trade "policy", and Ford is Ford: destroying shareholder value for nearly a century.
It's not like the market caps for any of those companies plummeted in the recent years.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on September 01, 2018, 03:58:19 AM
DGuller: bet $25 even Tesla stock is up by this time next year.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on September 01, 2018, 04:10:29 AM
Offer open until market open next week.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on September 01, 2018, 11:06:31 AM
I'm saying that the stock market valuations seem out of tune with intuition in general, not that they are out of tune right now and will become intuitive sometime within next year.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on September 01, 2018, 01:57:44 PM
Elon, like Donald, and Ann Coulter from the McCain thread, never learned the simple virtues of just shutting the fuck up.


EDIT: there's got to be a Rey Juan Carlos gif for that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Oexmelin on September 02, 2018, 07:28:33 AM
Having a microphone thrust under your mouth for everything you say can convince people that everything they say is gold.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on September 02, 2018, 07:35:32 AM
Quote from: Oexmelin on September 02, 2018, 07:28:33 AM
Having a microphone thrust under your mouth for everything you say can convince people that everything they say is gold.

Thanks Oexy, you've reminded me to get on with recording some more podcasts.  :)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on September 02, 2018, 10:48:16 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on September 01, 2018, 01:57:44 PM
Elon, like Donald, and Ann Coulter from the McCain thread, never learned the simple virtues of just shutting the fuck up.


EDIT: there's got to be a Rey Juan Carlos gif for that.

Odd you include Coulter, whose career is based on saying more outrageous statements than anyone else.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on September 02, 2018, 11:17:18 AM
Quote from: Oexmelin on September 02, 2018, 07:28:33 AM
Having a microphone thrust under your mouth for everything you say can convince people that everything they say is gold.

There always more trade by volume in manure than in gold.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Duque de Bragança on September 02, 2018, 04:54:10 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on September 01, 2018, 01:57:44 PM
Elon, like Donald, and Ann Coulter from the McCain thread, never learned the simple virtues of just shutting the fuck up.


EDIT: there's got to be a Rey Juan Carlos gif for that.

(https://media1.tenor.com/images/de53a20079b81ab23bb2201ff85a89ed/tenor.gif)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Maladict on September 05, 2018, 03:26:41 AM

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/04/elon-musk-claims-diver-in-thai-cave-rescue-is-child-rapist-without-evidence

Quote
Elon Musk calls Thailand diver 'child rapist' in latest baseless attack

Tesla CEO, who previously called Vernon Unsworth a 'pedo', has faced widespread backlash over his comments

Wed 5 Sep 2018 00.48 BST
First published on Wed 5 Sep 2018 00.39 BST
Elon Musk alleged that the diver had moved to Thailand 'for a child bride'.


Elon Musk has escalated his baseless attacks against a British diver, claiming without evidence that the man who helped rescue children from a cave in Thailand was a "child rapist" in an email to a reporter.

The embattled Tesla CEO faced widespread backlash in July when he first called the diver Vernon Unsworth a "pedo" in a tweet – an unfounded claim against a man who was part of the international team that freed 12 young footballers and their coach from the Tham Luang cave complex. Musk, who had unsuccessfully attempted to assist the rescue mission, eventually apologized to Unsworth.


On Tuesday, however, BuzzFeed published two new emails from Musk, in which he called a journalist who has written about the dispute a "fucking asshole" and he launched new extraordinary claims against Unsworth, without providing documentation to support the allegations.

Musk called Unsworth a "single white guy from England who's been traveling to or living in Thailand for 30 to 40 years", alleging that he had moved to Chiang Rai "for a child bride who was about 12 years old at the time". He asserted that the city was "renowned for child sex-trafficking".

BuzzFeed reported that it had investigated the allegations and Unsworth's background, but could not verify any of the claims and said that it was unclear where the allegations originated.


Unsworth, who said he was considering legal action after the original insults on Twitter, is now moving forward with a lawsuit, his lawyer said in an email to the Guardian on Tuesday: "Elon Musk's campaign of publishing vile and false accusations against Mr Unsworth is inexcusable. Musk hopes to be sued and he deserves to be sued. He will be."

Musk's email to BuzzFeed, which was a response to Unsworth's latest legal threats, said: "I suggest that you call people you know in Thailand, find out what's actually going on and stop defending child rapists, you fucking asshole ... As for this alleged threat of a lawsuit, which magically appeared when I raised the issue (nothing was sent or raised beforehand), I fucking hope he sues me."

Musk also defended his original effort to help the rescue mission in a follow-up email.

Musk confirmed to the Guardian on Tuesday that he had sent the email but did not immediately comment further. Tesla spokespeople did not respond to a request for comment.

BuzzFeed said it could not locate any UK criminal records for Unsworth, 63, and also spoke with his girlfriend, who said she was 40 and had been with him for seven years.

The controversy comes at a time when Tesla and Musk continue to battle intense negative publicity and embarrassing controversies. His seemingly impulsive tweets have repeatedly led him into trouble. Notably, Musk recently tweeted that he had "secured" funding to take his electric car company private, which prompted scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and backlash from investors.

Earlier this year, Tesla's credit rating was downgraded to negative, with Moody's citing a "significant shortfall" in the Model 3 production rate. The CEO also faced criticism after he slammed analysts on an earnings call in the spring, saying they should stop asking "boring, bonehead questions".

After the first attack on Unsworth, some investors demanded an apology and criticized Musk for distracting from Tesla's mission.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on September 05, 2018, 03:46:21 AM
He's stuck with a malfunction. Should try turning it off and back on again.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on September 05, 2018, 03:02:09 PM
I find it surprising that a seemingly unbalanced individual like him can become CEO of a billion dollar enterprise.

Or president of the sole superpower...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on September 05, 2018, 03:29:24 PM
I'm one of those rabid Musk fanboys. Super disappointed that he can go off the rails like that  :(
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on September 05, 2018, 03:41:01 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on September 05, 2018, 03:29:24 PM
I'm one of those rabid Musk fanboys. Super disappointed that he can go off the rails like that  :(

Yeah me to. Dude needs to focus on what is important and get off social media.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on September 05, 2018, 03:43:49 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on September 05, 2018, 03:29:24 PM
I'm one of those rabid Musk fanboys. Super disappointed that he can go off the rails like that  :(

I'm not a fan of any of his movies, but what he did for those kids with muscular dystrophy is God's work.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Maladict on September 05, 2018, 03:46:22 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 05, 2018, 03:41:01 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on September 05, 2018, 03:29:24 PM
I'm one of those rabid Musk fanboys. Super disappointed that he can go off the rails like that  :(

Yeah me to. Dude needs to focus on what is important and get off social media.

It's really disappointing. Maybe he's having some kind of breakdown from the pressure he's under, but that's not much of an excuse.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on September 05, 2018, 03:57:30 PM
I like Musk, but more importantly, I want my Tesla shares to rise.

Incidentally, dude is tubbier than I thought he was, based on this vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr9kK0_7x08&t=344s
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on September 05, 2018, 04:05:58 PM
Quote from: Zanza on September 05, 2018, 03:02:09 PM
I find it surprising that a seemingly unbalanced individual like him can become CEO of a billion dollar enterprise.

Or president of the sole superpower...

He's kind of made from the Steve Jobs mold.  If he wasn't an egotistical SOB I doubt he'd have been able to founded two separate billion dollar companies that are trying to change the world.

I admire the heck out of the man, but he is not someone I'd really want to have a beer with.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on September 05, 2018, 05:15:23 PM
Yeah, I can see admiring his skills but I don't see how that translates to liking the man. He seems repugnant.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on September 06, 2018, 12:03:48 AM
I think he may actually be mentally ill from overwork; apparently he has been working 120 hours per week; he needs to step back and take a break, maybe get some help.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on September 06, 2018, 06:04:14 AM
If we're into Musk gossipping, did you guys read the story about him being stoned off his mind when he tweeted about Tesla going off the stock exchange and considering some kind of share buyback, and then freaking the hell out when he realized he could be facing charges for that?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: derspiess on September 06, 2018, 08:23:55 AM
Quote from: Barrister on September 05, 2018, 04:05:58 PM
He's kind of made from the Steve Jobs mold.  If he wasn't an egotistical SOB I doubt he'd have been able to founded two separate billion dollar companies that are trying to change the world.

I admire the heck out of the man, but he is not someone I'd really want to have a beer with.

Kind of goes along with how most successful football coaches are absolute assholes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Malicious Intent on September 06, 2018, 08:33:50 AM
He is known to often rely on medication (Ambien) to get some sleep. That drug can seriously mess you up.

Musk must really learn to reduce his workload, delegate more and take some time for himself. But then again, he would probably just found another company as a hobby, as he did with the Boring Company.

At SpaceX he has Gwynne Shotwell as COO, who complements him well and is very effective at running the business side of the company. No such person at Tesla.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on September 06, 2018, 11:21:25 AM
Not to mention Shotwell is the ideal name for a rocket company exec.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PJL on September 06, 2018, 01:51:11 PM
Well if we're going down that route, then Musk is in the wrong business, he should be setting up a fragrance company
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on September 06, 2018, 04:47:51 PM
Quote from: Malicious Intent on September 06, 2018, 08:33:50 AM
He is known to often rely on medication (Ambien) to get some sleep. That drug can seriously mess you up.

Musk must really learn to reduce his workload, delegate more and take some time for himself. But then again, he would probably just found another company as a hobby, as he did with the Boring Company.

At SpaceX he has Gwynne Shotwell as COO, who complements him well and is very effective at running the business side of the company. No such person at Tesla.

Is his behaviour more or less repugnant that Rosanne Bar's 'drug induced' racism?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on September 07, 2018, 10:53:27 AM
QuoteTesla shares crash after Elon Musk smokes joint on live web show
Two senior executives quit electric carmaker as market value falls 8%
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Malicious Intent on September 07, 2018, 12:33:25 PM
Link to the show below. I quickly stopped watching, found the host insufferable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycPr5-27vSI (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycPr5-27vSI)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on September 07, 2018, 12:41:27 PM
People are debating about Musk in terms of what kind of guy he is, but it seems like he is having a breakdown and needs some help.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on September 07, 2018, 01:01:46 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on September 07, 2018, 12:41:27 PM
People are debating about Musk in terms of what kind of guy he is, but it seems like he is having a breakdown and needs some help.

Yeah that's not a bad theory to fit the observable facts.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on December 07, 2019, 11:19:09 AM
I'm fairly shocked to be honest.  In the inevitable lawsuit over the "pedo guy" Twitter insult, jury finds for Musk:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/12/jury-sides-with-elon-musk-in-pedo-guy-defamation-case/

Not that I thought the plaintiff would get the many millions he was seeking, but I thought he'd probably get something.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on December 07, 2019, 01:22:10 PM
Defamation cases are tough to win in the US.

Pro tip: if you want to prevail as a Plaintiff, try to avoid starting the conversation by proposing the other party shove a submarine up his ass.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on December 07, 2019, 08:34:14 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on September 05, 2018, 03:43:49 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on September 05, 2018, 03:29:24 PM
I'm one of those rabid Musk fanboys. Super disappointed that he can go off the rails like that  :(

I'm not a fan of any of his movies, but what he did for those kids with muscular dystrophy is God's work.


This was a reference to a TV show from the 1990's called The Critic.  What I don't understand is why I thought it would be a good idea to bring that up.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on December 07, 2019, 08:41:26 PM
Zoupa is French, therefore you brought up Jerry Lewis, the patron saint of French comedy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on December 07, 2019, 09:17:28 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on December 07, 2019, 08:41:26 PM
Zoupa is French, therefore you brought up Jerry Lewis, the patron saint of French comedy.

What? :mellow:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on December 07, 2019, 10:23:47 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on December 07, 2019, 08:41:26 PM
Zoupa is French, therefore you brought up Jerry Lewis, the patron saint of French comedy.


I didn't think anyone else remembered that show.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on May 11, 2020, 05:14:56 PM
And now after filing his lawsuit against Alameda County having more stringent lockdown measures than California, he's now literally calling for the police to arrest him as he has Tesla re-open in defiance of Alameda County.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: jimmy olsen on May 14, 2020, 06:35:53 AM
Musk is a douche, but most geniuses are jerks, so it's not surprising
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on May 14, 2020, 06:39:48 AM
https://www.salon.com/2020/05/14/trump-and-musk-two-unstable-geniuses-compared_partner/

QuoteTrump and Musk: Two unstable geniuses compared
Recognizing what constitutes reality is a minimum job requirement for any leader.

...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on May 14, 2020, 08:02:42 AM
That is a stupid article, and I haven't even read it. The title alone makes me certain the author is definitely dumber than one of their subjects, and possibly both.

Musk is most certainly a genius if you define it was some kind of incredibly intelligent person with unique drive, talent, and vision. He is also a douchebag, and you can make a good argument about his stability or lack thereof.

Trump is not a genius, and nobody other than himself would even claim he might be one. He isn't even of average intelligence. Comparing him to Musk doesn't even fucking make sense. Why not compare him to, I don't know, a great quarterback or some artist? Maybe we could write an article about how he compares to Brad Pitt or Taylor Swift while we are at it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on May 14, 2020, 08:14:12 AM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on May 14, 2020, 06:35:53 AM
Musk is a douche, but most geniuses are jerks, so it's not surprising
It's not that they're jerks, it's just that dealing with stupid people all day long every day can really wear on you after a while.  :(
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on May 14, 2020, 08:44:10 AM
Quote from: Berkut on May 14, 2020, 08:02:42 AMTrump is not a genius, and nobody other than himself would even claim he might be one.

The article is not amazing, yeah, but it says that Trump is a genious swindler, which is a point worth defending, not a genious full stop.  :P It's not really a praise of Trump.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on May 14, 2020, 08:52:38 AM
Trump isn't a genius swindler. He's a disgusting floater in a toilet bowl of retard.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on May 14, 2020, 08:59:55 AM
Quote from: The Brain on May 14, 2020, 08:52:38 AM
Trump isn't a genius swindler. He's a disgusting floater in a toilet bowl of retard.
You can't argue with his success at swindling, he managed to swindle up all the way to presidency.  I still think that he's a lucky moron whose idiocy just happens to brainwash many people he comes across without him ever having any idea as to how he accomplishes it.  He's an idiot savant cult leader.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on May 14, 2020, 09:06:13 AM
There's different types of intelligence, and Trump is definitely someone who has min/maxed his character.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on May 14, 2020, 09:19:43 AM
Quote from: Tyr on May 14, 2020, 09:06:13 AM
There's different types of intelligence, and Trump is definitely someone who has min/maxed his character.
I don't think there are different types of intelligence, it's a convenient theory that has never held up in empirical studies.  There are many talents, though, and people can be talented at some things without being intelligent, it just means that their success in their strong-suit will not translate to other things.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on May 14, 2020, 09:22:37 AM
Quote from: DGuller on May 14, 2020, 08:59:55 AM
Quote from: The Brain on May 14, 2020, 08:52:38 AM
Trump isn't a genius swindler. He's a disgusting floater in a toilet bowl of retard.
You can't argue with his success at swindling, he managed to swindle up all the way to presidency.  I still think that he's a lucky moron whose idiocy just happens to brainwash many people he comes across without him ever having any idea as to how he accomplishes it.  He's an idiot savant cult leader.

My impression is that he's a pinball ball made out of his dad's money who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on May 14, 2020, 09:29:27 AM
There is one similarity between the two.  Both have disclosed their battles with mental illness.  Musk through an interview where he discussed it.  Trump through his conduct.

That is about where any similarities end.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on May 14, 2020, 09:38:29 AM
Quote from: Tyr on May 14, 2020, 09:06:13 AM
There's different types of intelligence, and Trump is definitely someone who has min/maxed his character.

All he does is roll CHA for Deception, with a +4 against rednecks feat bonus.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on May 14, 2020, 09:51:21 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 14, 2020, 09:29:27 AM
There is one similarity between the two.  Both have disclosed their battles with mental illness.  Musk through an interview where he discussed it.  Trump through his conduct.

That is about where any similarities end.

Perhaps you've forgotten about their twitter behaviour.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on May 14, 2020, 10:03:05 AM
He is just the type who can thrive under current overall cultural and political circumstances. Well, pre-pandemic circumstances, that is.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on May 14, 2020, 02:37:49 PM
Quote from: garbon on May 14, 2020, 09:51:21 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 14, 2020, 09:29:27 AM
There is one similarity between the two.  Both have disclosed their battles with mental illness.  Musk through an interview where he discussed it.  Trump through his conduct.

That is about where any similarities end.

Perhaps you've forgotten about their twitter behaviour.

Fair
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on April 24, 2021, 05:19:07 PM
And now he'll be hosting SNL? :huh:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tonitrus on April 24, 2021, 06:16:27 PM
Why not?  They've had Trump remember...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on April 24, 2021, 10:34:29 PM
He's certainly a celebrity.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on April 25, 2021, 01:42:09 AM
Quote from: Tonitrus on April 24, 2021, 06:16:27 PM
Why not?  They've had Trump remember...

Trying to think how that is a good argument.... :P

https://ew.com/tv/colin-jost-donald-trump-snl-porn-stars-sketch/
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tonitrus on April 25, 2021, 03:56:23 AM
Quote from: garbon on April 25, 2021, 01:42:09 AM
Quote from: Tonitrus on April 24, 2021, 06:16:27 PM
Why not?  They've had Trump remember...

Trying to think how that is a good argument.... :P

https://ew.com/tv/colin-jost-donald-trump-snl-porn-stars-sketch/

The argument is that they don't exactly have high standards for the guest host position.  :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on April 25, 2021, 03:57:44 AM
Quote from: celedhring on May 14, 2020, 09:38:29 AM
Quote from: Tyr on May 14, 2020, 09:06:13 AM
There's different types of intelligence, and Trump is definitely someone who has min/maxed his character.

All he does is roll CHA for Deception, with a +4 against rednecks feat bonus.

This made me realize it's been like 14 months since my last RPG session  :(
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on April 25, 2021, 03:33:43 PM
I truly wonder how SNL is still on the air. Does anyone here watch it?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on April 25, 2021, 03:34:42 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on April 25, 2021, 03:33:43 PM
I truly wonder how SNL is still on the air. Does anyone here watch it?

I watch it religiously. I'm not religious btw.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 25, 2021, 04:04:18 PM
I'll watch an occasional youtube clip.  Bill Burr was funny, whenever he was on.  The full time cast is dull, dull, dull.

Even when SNL was good it was one, two, or maybe three (golden age) funny people with everybody else playing props.  Now they're all props.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on April 25, 2021, 05:35:42 PM
Same, the occasional clip.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on April 25, 2021, 07:10:01 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 25, 2021, 04:04:18 PM
I'll watch an occasional youtube clip.  Bill Burr was funny, whenever he was on.  The full time cast is dull, dull, dull.

Even when SNL was good it was one, two, or maybe three (golden age) funny people with everybody else playing props.  Now they're all props.

1986-1990 (the Second Golden Age) had a bunch of very funny people: Jan Hooks, Phil Hartman, John Lovitz, Dana Carvey, Dennis Miller, Kevin Nealon, and (towards the end), Mike Meyers.  I agree that they never again came close to that kind of lineup.

Nowadays the show seems like a zombie show; dead, but doesn't realize it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on April 26, 2021, 01:19:42 AM
I don't think it's that the show has declined but our receptiveness has. There are people out there posting about how it's better than ever or waxing nostalgic about the 2010 cast. I suspect mostly youngsters.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on April 26, 2021, 07:17:56 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on April 25, 2021, 03:33:43 PM
I truly wonder how SNL is still on the air. Does anyone here watch it?

It is a bit of an institution, I'd say, so it still carries plenty of gravitas. Also, I think it sitll does pretty good ratings for a tv network show in this day and age, which is not that common anymore.

As for the show itself, back in the day I did try to more or less follow it, and still follow it on and off nowadays, mostly through youtube (although they're quite stingy with the more recent clips in YT, making the more recent ones unavailable from outside the US, so I'm not super up to date). That said, in the last few years they have been criticized of being overtly reliant on big name guests and sometimes controversial hosts (for instance Trump's turn as host in the run-up to the 2016 elections) to drive up ratings, so having Musk as host falls in this category, I'd say.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 25, 2021, 04:04:18 PMBill Burr was funny, whenever he was on.

Bill Burr has only been a guest once and has never been part of the cast, so you must be thinking about somebody else.

Quote from: Eddie Teach on April 26, 2021, 01:19:42 AM
I don't think it's that the show has declined but our receptiveness has. There are people out there posting about how it's better than ever or waxing nostalgic about the 2010 cast. I suspect mostly youngsters.

Yeah, as I said it still does solid ratings, has a pretty large online following, and it still produces plenty of talent for tv and cinema, as well as fodder for celebrity media. No idea about the age profile of their viewers, so no idea if it's mostly watched by younger people or not, but I guess that, being such a long-standing show, people might feel nostalgic about the casts of their youth, or back when they watched it regularly, and have the ususal "nowadays cast is terrible, it was much better back in the day when so and so were the stars of the show" kind of reaction.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 26, 2021, 07:24:43 AM
I think it's tough to objectively compare SNL across different eras, unless you were watching it fully throughout.  It's one of those shows where usually a couple of gems are hidden in a pile of shit.  We probably remember just the extracted and washed gems from the past, whereas the shit of today is still fresh on our mind.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on April 26, 2021, 07:34:50 AM
Quote from: DGuller on April 26, 2021, 07:24:43 AM
I think it's tough to objectively compare SNL across different eras, unless you were watching it fully throughout.  It's one of those shows where usually a couple of gems are hidden in a pile of shit.  We probably remember just the extracted and washed gems from the past, whereas the shit of today is still fresh on our mind.
Also I think it's probably one of those shows - and a bit like football - in that there's an age/period of your life when you are most receptive to it and you get attached to that incarnation. Plus, as you say, you judge against the best bits you remember. It may well be that for the target audience right now, it's a golden age :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on April 26, 2021, 07:47:04 AM
Also for some of the more "timely" humour that is more rooted in the mores of the time it was made, watching it many years afterwards just makes it not that funny, but if you watched it at the moment it might have been really good because you were "in" on the subtleties and background of the sketch. I guess it's inevitable in such a long-running show.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 26, 2021, 09:33:31 AM
Quote from: The Larch on April 26, 2021, 07:17:56 AM
Bill Burr has only been a guest once and has never been part of the cast, so you must be thinking about somebody else.

Or maybe I was aware he was a guest, and then went on to contrast him with the everyday cast?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on April 26, 2021, 09:53:49 AM
I didn't watch a single SNL skit until the youtube era, so I don't have any kind of emotional attachment to it. But certainly the golden era ones were funnier. That said, Sheilbh's argument about selection bias (and who's making this selection) has weight.

Nonetheless, I've never been that much of a fan. Not my favorite sketch comedy show by long shot.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on April 26, 2021, 09:56:23 AM
Quote from: celedhring on April 26, 2021, 09:53:49 AM
Nonetheless, I've never been that much of a fan. Not my favorite sketch comedy show by long shot.
And it's quite rare that a sketch show lives up to your memories when you revisit it. The only exception I can think of is Smack the Pony which is consistently and enduringly brilliant.

In most cases you forget a lot of filler.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on April 26, 2021, 11:09:14 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 26, 2021, 09:56:23 AM
Quote from: celedhring on April 26, 2021, 09:53:49 AM
Nonetheless, I've never been that much of a fan. Not my favorite sketch comedy show by long shot.
And it's quite rare that a sketch show lives up to your memories when you revisit it. The only exception I can think of is Smack the Pony which is consistently and enduringly brilliant.

In most cases you forget a lot of filler.

Oh absolutely. That's why I rely on internet curation for most of these shows  :D

Incidentally: writing sketch comedy is one of these things I've never got the chance to do, and I would love to do at some point. But it's fallen relatively out of fashion over here.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on April 26, 2021, 11:21:06 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 26, 2021, 09:56:23 AM
Quote from: celedhring on April 26, 2021, 09:53:49 AM
Nonetheless, I've never been that much of a fan. Not my favorite sketch comedy show by long shot.
And it's quite rare that a sketch show lives up to your memories when you revisit it. The only exception I can think of is Smack the Pony which is consistently and enduringly brilliant.

In most cases you forget a lot of filler.

I'm going to assume that Smack the Pony is a quaint British show that nobody outside of the UK has ever heard of.  :P

But yeah, by nature there's plenty of filler in these kind of sketch shows that is forgotten over time when the greatest hits are filtered out. Even Monty Python's Flying Circus had plenty of weird sketches that are not that well remembered.

A sketch show I really liked and whose sketches I kept finding funny even after many years (although some are pretty dated by now) is Chappelle's Show, which only lasted for 3 seasons (that might help in hindsight as it didn't have time to lose quality). Key & Peele (only 5 seasons) has some very good sketches as well, but many of them don't hit at all for me. SNL has been on for... (goes to check) 46 seasons ( :wacko: ), so besides their greatest hits it must have produced industrial amounts of filler material as well.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on April 26, 2021, 11:22:34 AM
Quote from: celedhring on April 26, 2021, 11:09:14 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 26, 2021, 09:56:23 AM
Quote from: celedhring on April 26, 2021, 09:53:49 AM
Nonetheless, I've never been that much of a fan. Not my favorite sketch comedy show by long shot.
And it's quite rare that a sketch show lives up to your memories when you revisit it. The only exception I can think of is Smack the Pony which is consistently and enduringly brilliant.

In most cases you forget a lot of filler.

Oh absolutely. That's why I rely on internet curation for most of these shows  :D

Incidentally: writing sketch comedy is one of these things I've never got the chance to do, and I would love to do at some point. But it's fallen relatively out of fashion over here.

Well, at least over there you guys have "Polonia".  :P At the national level it has fallen out of fashion quite spectacularly, yeah, nowadays it's a format that is only used for end of the year specials by José Mota.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 26, 2021, 11:26:35 AM
I've seen a couple episodes of Smack the Pony.  All girl comedy show.  I remember the Finnish Prime Minister from Veep was in it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 26, 2021, 11:27:16 AM
Back in the day SNL permeated our culture - people used the punchlines in every day speech.  I still can't hear someone saying they want a Coke without thinking about Belushi's line. 

I agree with Shielbh, there is definitely an age and stage role in this.  For me the current cast is never going to measure up to Akroyd, Belushi, Murray and then Murphy.

Dana Carvey, Dennis Miller and Mike Meyers didn't.  So the current group has no chance with me.  :D
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on April 26, 2021, 11:34:31 AM
Quote from: The Larch on April 26, 2021, 11:21:06 AM
I'm going to assume that Smack the Pony is a quaint British show that nobody outside of the UK has ever heard of.  :P
:lol: Not quaint. It's late 90s-early 00s, mostly women who work with Armando Ianucci and Steve Coogan who've been in loads of other British comedy stuff. There's definitely a catching me at the right time thing - but I think it's incredible and have always loved it.

I think because they never really did catchphrase sketches which was a huge thing in mid-90s (Harry Enfield, the Fast Show) and then in the later 2000s (Little Britain) but which I was never a massive fan of :blush:

QuoteA sketch show I really liked and whose sketches I kept finding funny even after many years (although some are pretty dated by now) is Chappelle's Show, which only lasted for 3 seasons (that might help in hindsight as it didn't have time to lose quality). Key & Peele (only 5 seasons) has some very good sketches as well, but many of them don't hit at all for me. SNL has been on for... (goes to check) 46 seasons ( :wacko: ), so besides their greatest hits it must have produced industrial amounts of filler material as well.
Yeah I think that is very key and why they obviously need to constantly re-fresh the cast/writers.

SNL isn't really a thing here - I think because they're quite aggressive on the rights. So the only concept we have of SNL is that it exists and is an institution, and that lots of actors in Hollywood comedies came from it :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on April 26, 2021, 11:42:27 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 26, 2021, 11:27:16 AM
Back in the day SNL permeated our culture - people used the punchlines in every day speech.  I still can't hear someone saying they want a Coke without thinking about Belushi's line. 

I agree with Shielbh, there is definitely an age and stage role in this.  For me the current cast is never going to measure up to Akroyd, Belushi, Murray and then Murphy.

Dana Carvey, Dennis Miller and Mike Meyers didn't.  So the current group has no chance with me.  :D

Edie Murphy's time on SNL is almost the poster child for Yi's impression:  a funny guy surrounded by stiffs.  Joe Piscopo was the only other person carrying water.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 26, 2021, 11:56:35 AM
Quote from: grumbler on April 26, 2021, 11:42:27 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 26, 2021, 11:27:16 AM
Back in the day SNL permeated our culture - people used the punchlines in every day speech.  I still can't hear someone saying they want a Coke without thinking about Belushi's line. 

I agree with Shielbh, there is definitely an age and stage role in this.  For me the current cast is never going to measure up to Akroyd, Belushi, Murray and then Murphy.

Dana Carvey, Dennis Miller and Mike Meyers didn't.  So the current group has no chance with me.  :D

Edie Murphy's time on SNL is almost the poster child for Yi's impression:  a funny guy surrounded by stiffs.  Joe Piscopo was the only other person carrying water.

With Murphy and Piscopo, all you really needed was a supporting cast.  Sure, SNL in the early 80s wasn't the first cast, but it was still very good - and for my (and I think your) age group at the time, it was must watch TV.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on April 26, 2021, 12:04:37 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 26, 2021, 11:27:16 AM
Back in the day SNL permeated our culture - people used the punchlines in every day speech.  I still can't hear someone saying they want a Coke without thinking about Belushi's line. 

The world was also a very different place with fewer sources of entertainment. Not entirely germane, but for reference, the UK only got Channel 4 at the end of Belushi's time on SNL.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on April 26, 2021, 12:07:09 PM
Quote from: The Larch on April 26, 2021, 11:22:34 AM
Quote from: celedhring on April 26, 2021, 11:09:14 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 26, 2021, 09:56:23 AM
Quote from: celedhring on April 26, 2021, 09:53:49 AM
Nonetheless, I've never been that much of a fan. Not my favorite sketch comedy show by long shot.
And it's quite rare that a sketch show lives up to your memories when you revisit it. The only exception I can think of is Smack the Pony which is consistently and enduringly brilliant.

In most cases you forget a lot of filler.

Oh absolutely. That's why I rely on internet curation for most of these shows  :D

Incidentally: writing sketch comedy is one of these things I've never got the chance to do, and I would love to do at some point. But it's fallen relatively out of fashion over here.

Well, at least over there you guys have "Polonia".  :P At the national level it has fallen out of fashion quite spectacularly, yeah, nowadays it's a format that is only used for end of the year specials by José Mota.

That's 100% political humor though (and with a heavy pro-indy skew as you know  :P), I feel it's not quite the same.

It used to be quite popular in the 1980s. I still had a sketch writing class at my uni, in the late 1990s.

Then there was that off-kilter sketch comedy wave in the 2000s (Hora chanante and similar) but the genre seems dead in Spain nowadays.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 26, 2021, 12:20:42 PM
Quote from: garbon on April 26, 2021, 12:04:37 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 26, 2021, 11:27:16 AM
Back in the day SNL permeated our culture - people used the punchlines in every day speech.  I still can't hear someone saying they want a Coke without thinking about Belushi's line. 

The world was also a very different place with fewer sources of entertainment. Not entirely germane, but for reference, the UK only got Channel 4 at the end of Belushi's time on SNL.

Yeah, I think that had a lot to do with it.  What else was there for us at the time?  Not much.

In Canada we had SCTV and that was much better than SNL, but less of an audience, even in Canada.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tonitrus on April 26, 2021, 01:30:28 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 26, 2021, 12:20:42 PM
Quote from: garbon on April 26, 2021, 12:04:37 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 26, 2021, 11:27:16 AM
Back in the day SNL permeated our culture - people used the punchlines in every day speech.  I still can't hear someone saying they want a Coke without thinking about Belushi's line. 

The world was also a very different place with fewer sources of entertainment. Not entirely germane, but for reference, the UK only got Channel 4 at the end of Belushi's time on SNL.

Yeah, I think that had a lot to do with it.  What else was there for us at the time?  Not much.

In Canada we had SCTV and that was much better than SNL, but less of an audience, even in Canada.

Weren't many of that early/best SNL cast also SCTV refugees/carpetbaggers?  :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 26, 2021, 01:51:27 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on April 26, 2021, 01:30:28 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 26, 2021, 12:20:42 PM
Quote from: garbon on April 26, 2021, 12:04:37 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 26, 2021, 11:27:16 AM
Back in the day SNL permeated our culture - people used the punchlines in every day speech.  I still can't hear someone saying they want a Coke without thinking about Belushi's line. 

The world was also a very different place with fewer sources of entertainment. Not entirely germane, but for reference, the UK only got Channel 4 at the end of Belushi's time on SNL.

Yeah, I think that had a lot to do with it.  What else was there for us at the time?  Not much.

In Canada we had SCTV and that was much better than SNL, but less of an audience, even in Canada.

Weren't many of that early/best SNL cast also SCTV refugees/carpetbaggers?  :P

Some would definitely make that claim   :Canuck:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on May 13, 2021, 12:53:25 PM
Elon Musk announces you can no longer buy a Tesla with Bitcoin.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/musk-bitcoin-is-bad-for-climate-and-you-cant-buy-teslas-with-it-anymore/

Musk says the environmental benefits of buying a Tesla is outweighed by the environmental cost of mining the bitcoin.

The article looks at it, says a Tesla Model 3 produces 8.85 tonnes of CO2 over its lifetime.  One bitcoin (which is about what that Model 3 would cost) would produce 400 tonnes of CO2.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on May 13, 2021, 12:54:35 PM
That's pretty great.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on May 13, 2021, 01:50:57 PM
Is this because he supports dogecoin? Or is this an actual turn against crypto currency?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on May 13, 2021, 01:52:47 PM
Quote from: garbon on May 13, 2021, 01:50:57 PM
Is this because he supports dogecoin? Or is this an actual turn against crypto currency?

Probably he understood that selling a car as environment friendly was undercut by accepting payment in Bitcoin.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on May 13, 2021, 01:54:23 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 13, 2021, 01:52:47 PM
Quote from: garbon on May 13, 2021, 01:50:57 PM
Is this because he supports dogecoin? Or is this an actual turn against crypto currency?

Probably he understood that selling a car as environment friendly was undercut by accepting payment in Bitcoin.

Undercut how they sell like hotcakes?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on May 13, 2021, 01:55:12 PM
Quote from: garbon on May 13, 2021, 01:50:57 PM
Is this because he supports dogecoin? Or is this an actual turn against crypto currency?

Apparently Dogecoin took a tumble after his SNL episode due to some of the comments he made during it.  :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on May 13, 2021, 01:55:41 PM
If he manages to kill Bitcoin, it would be the greatest and the most useful accomplishment of his career.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on May 13, 2021, 01:59:27 PM
Quote from: The Larch on May 13, 2021, 01:55:12 PM
Quote from: garbon on May 13, 2021, 01:50:57 PM
Is this because he supports dogecoin? Or is this an actual turn against crypto currency?

Apparently Dogecoin took a tumble after his SNL episode due to some of the comments he made during it.  :lol:

It disturbs me slightly how major economic trends seem to result from Elon Musk's public appearances. Oh he legally smoked weed with Joe Rogan? Well that means billions of dollars of economic activity should take place...for reasons.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on May 13, 2021, 02:01:10 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 13, 2021, 01:59:27 PM
Quote from: The Larch on May 13, 2021, 01:55:12 PM
Quote from: garbon on May 13, 2021, 01:50:57 PM
Is this because he supports dogecoin? Or is this an actual turn against crypto currency?

Apparently Dogecoin took a tumble after his SNL episode due to some of the comments he made during it.  :lol:

It disturbs me slightly how major economic trends seem to result from Elon Musk's public appearances. Oh he legally smoked weed with Joe Rogan? Well that means billions of dollars of economic activity should take place...for reasons.

IIRC the SEC reprimended him officially after either the Rogan stuff or some other comment he made related to it, as it veered really close to stock price manipulation. The guy talks as if it didn't matter what he says, but it matters.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on May 13, 2021, 02:04:35 PM
Quote from: The Larch on May 13, 2021, 02:01:10 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 13, 2021, 01:59:27 PM
Quote from: The Larch on May 13, 2021, 01:55:12 PM
Quote from: garbon on May 13, 2021, 01:50:57 PM
Is this because he supports dogecoin? Or is this an actual turn against crypto currency?

Apparently Dogecoin took a tumble after his SNL episode due to some of the comments he made during it.  :lol:

It disturbs me slightly how major economic trends seem to result from Elon Musk's public appearances. Oh he legally smoked weed with Joe Rogan? Well that means billions of dollars of economic activity should take place...for reasons.

IIRC the SEC reprimended him officially after either the Rogan stuff or some other comment he made related to it, as it veered really close to stock price manipulation. The guy talks as if it didn't matter what he says, but it matters.

He was more than reprimanded - he was fined something like $10 million and had to step down as Chairman of Tesla or something.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on May 13, 2021, 02:06:36 PM
That was because he tweeted he had a firm buy out offer from the Saudis to take Tesla private.  It had nothing to do with huffing Rogan's blunt AFAIK.

It was a great buying opportunity and I bought 100 shares.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on May 13, 2021, 02:08:02 PM
I could have sworn his stock suffered from the huffing of the blunt. Ah well.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on May 13, 2021, 02:12:22 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 13, 2021, 02:08:02 PM
I could have sworn his stock suffered from the huffing of the blunt. Ah well.

There might have been some day long price dip but the SEC and the chairman and all that weren't related.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on May 13, 2021, 02:15:40 PM
It seems he's had plenty of issues with the SEC due to his tweeting:

QuoteIn September 2018, Musk was sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a tweet claiming funding had been secured for potentially taking Tesla private. The lawsuit claimed that discussions Musk held with foreign investors in July 2018 did not confirm key deal terms and thus characterized the tweet as false, misleading, and damaging to investors, and sought to bar Musk from serving as CEO of publicly traded companies. Musk called the allegations unjustified and claimed he had never compromised his integrity. Two days later, Musk settled with the SEC, without admitting or denying the SEC's allegations. As a result, Musk and Tesla were fined $20 million each, and Musk was forced to step down for three years as Tesla chairman but was able to remain as CEO.

Musk has stated in interviews he does not regret the tweet that triggered the SEC investigation. On February 19, 2019, Musk stated in a tweet that Tesla would build half a million cars in 2019. The SEC reacted to Musk's tweet by filing in court, initially asking the court to hold him in contempt for violating the terms of a settlement agreement with such a tweet, which was disputed by Musk. This was eventually settled by a joint agreement between Musk and the SEC clarifying the previous agreement details. The agreement included a list of topics that Musk would need preclearance before tweeting about. In May 2020, a judge prevented a lawsuit from proceeding that claimed a tweet by Musk regarding Tesla stock price ("too high imo") violated the agreement.

The stock price manipulation thing I remembered had to do with him joking about something regarding Tesla's stock price reaching 420$.

Edit: Found the reference, it's in one of the notes to that paragraph from his wiki:

QuoteMusk stated he was considering taking Tesla private at a price of $420 a share, an alleged reference to marijuana. Members of Tesla's board and rapper Azealia Banks alleged that Musk may have been under the influence of recreational drugs when he wrote the tweet.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on May 13, 2021, 03:14:36 PM
Quote from: garbon on May 13, 2021, 01:54:23 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 13, 2021, 01:52:47 PM
Quote from: garbon on May 13, 2021, 01:50:57 PM
Is this because he supports dogecoin? Or is this an actual turn against crypto currency?

Probably he understood that selling a car as environment friendly was undercut by accepting payment in Bitcoin.

Undercut how they sell like hotcakes?

He may be thinking beyond this month.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on May 13, 2021, 03:57:34 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 13, 2021, 01:59:27 PM
Quote from: The Larch on May 13, 2021, 01:55:12 PM
Quote from: garbon on May 13, 2021, 01:50:57 PM
Is this because he supports dogecoin? Or is this an actual turn against crypto currency?

Apparently Dogecoin took a tumble after his SNL episode due to some of the comments he made during it.  :lol:

It disturbs me slightly how major economic trends seem to result from Elon Musk's public appearances. Oh he legally smoked weed with Joe Rogan? Well that means billions of dollars of economic activity should take place...for reasons.

All this shit - bitcoin, weed companies - they are all speculative investment vehicles where the "value" assigned to the asset is 99.99% related to the perception that the value will increase because other people will want to get in on something that will increase. NOT because anyone is actually looking at the utility to the item and concluding that it has worth.

It is all Dutch Tulips.

So why would anyone be surprised when something that has nothing to do with anything concrete, and everything to do with emotive perception causes radical changes in the value of something that is valued based on nothing but emotive perceptions?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on May 14, 2021, 10:46:41 AM
Blockchain is great, but it has given birth to a bunch of financial hot hair. Add NFTs to the list of things hopefully will bust soon.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on May 14, 2021, 10:52:59 AM
Quote from: celedhring on May 14, 2021, 10:46:41 AM
Blockchain is great, but it has given birth to a bunch of financial hot hair. Add NFTs to the list of things hopefully will bust soon.

NFT "investments" are extremely retarded.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on May 14, 2021, 10:54:03 AM
Quote from: celedhring on May 14, 2021, 10:46:41 AM
Blockchain is great, but it has given birth to a bunch of financial hot hair. Add NFTs to the list of things hopefully will bust soon.

All these paintings are going to be worthless - Tuscany circa 1600   :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Habbaku on May 14, 2021, 11:05:14 AM
Quote from: celedhring on May 14, 2021, 10:46:41 AM
Blockchain is great, but it has given birth to a bunch of financial hot hair. Add NFTs to the list of things hopefully will bust soon.

:yes: Approximately 5%, if that, of all crypto projects are actually worth a shit, and I am not sure any of them are actually worth their current valuation. Even what I consider to be the best of the lot (Ether) has a lot of hurdles to overcome before it's reasonable to consider its current valuation as reasonable.

Now, of course, the future man from 2025 coming back to tell me how everything runs on the Ethereum network now and that $4k is actually really cheap will have a point, but...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on May 14, 2021, 01:44:32 PM
NFT could be a legit thing if the underlying NFT has a use or value. Otherwise it's just "everyone make your own digital pogs!" IMO.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on May 14, 2021, 01:46:26 PM
I mean at least you can hang a Caravaggio in your lounge.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Habbaku on May 14, 2021, 02:03:01 PM
Quote from: Jacob on May 14, 2021, 01:44:32 PM
NFT could be a legit thing if the underlying NFT has a use or value. Otherwise it's just "everyone make your own digital pogs!" IMO.

I'm not sure what you mean by underlying value. It clearly does have value to the people willing to pay piles of money to buy it.

Now, I of course disagree on the, er, value of their perception of its value, but still.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on May 14, 2021, 03:14:20 PM
Most people when they say crypto doesn't have value mean it doesn't produce a revenue stream.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on May 14, 2021, 03:16:26 PM
Quote from: Habbaku on May 14, 2021, 02:03:01 PM
Quote from: Jacob on May 14, 2021, 01:44:32 PM
NFT could be a legit thing if the underlying NFT has a use or value. Otherwise it's just "everyone make your own digital pogs!" IMO.

I'm not sure what you mean by underlying value. It clearly does have value to the people willing to pay piles of money to buy it.

Now, I of course disagree on the, er, value of their perception of its value, but still.

Yeah I don't know what I mean either... I was reaching towards a "guaranteed to be redeemable for specific goods or services" or something like that. Like Team Fortress Hats or some such. But I'm not sure....
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on May 14, 2021, 03:17:18 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 14, 2021, 03:14:20 PM
Most people when they say crypto doesn't have value mean it doesn't produce a revenue stream.

I have been slow to get involved because it seems very undiversified+sporadic. Though there are probably funds where you are investing in a whole portfolio of crypto out there.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Habbaku on May 14, 2021, 03:18:24 PM
Fair enough. At a certain point, all of this stuff is subjective in value anyway, and it's not like the valuations of it make much sense in the vast majority of cases (DogeCoin and SHIB coin for instance). Suckers willing to buy up a product based on belief it'll go up isn't new, as Berkut has intimated.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Habbaku on May 14, 2021, 03:19:21 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 14, 2021, 03:17:18 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 14, 2021, 03:14:20 PM
Most people when they say crypto doesn't have value mean it doesn't produce a revenue stream.

I have been slow to get involved because it seems very undiversified+sporadic. Though there are probably funds where you are investing in a whole portfolio of crypto out there.

Yeah, crypto ETFs are coming online and are at least a reasonable way to get exposed to the crypto world without taking the risk of managing your own wallet or worrying over what to buy. I've seen worse products, but still wouldn't encourage anyone to buy into a crypto ETF in any serious way (IE, greater than 5% of their portfolio).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on May 14, 2021, 07:08:55 PM
Quote from: Jacob on May 14, 2021, 01:44:32 PM
NFT could be a legit thing if the underlying NFT has a use or value. Otherwise it's just "everyone make your own digital pogs!" IMO.
well, art has no use in itself, yet people will pay astronomical prices for a painting done by a monkey.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on May 27, 2021, 03:00:05 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 13, 2021, 03:14:36 PM
Quote from: garbon on May 13, 2021, 01:54:23 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 13, 2021, 01:52:47 PM
Quote from: garbon on May 13, 2021, 01:50:57 PM
Is this because he supports dogecoin? Or is this an actual turn against crypto currency?

Probably he understood that selling a car as environment friendly was undercut by accepting payment in Bitcoin.

Undercut how they sell like hotcakes?

He may be thinking beyond this month.

Or he is just what he always does. See latest things around cryptocurrency from Musk.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2021/05/25/elon-musk-reveals-why-hes-backing-dogecoin-over-bitcoin-ethereum-and-others-after-surprise-call-for-upgrade-ideas-sends-its-price-sharply-higher/?sh=35e3cb20604d

QuoteElon Musk Reveals Why He's Backing Dogecoin Over Bitcoin, Ethereum And Others After His Surprise Call For Upgrade 'Ideas' Sends Its Price Sharply Higher

Elon Musk, the Tesla TSLA +2.4% chief executive who's sent the bitcoin price on a roller coaster this year, has continued his potentially ironic support of the "joke" bitcoin rival dogecoin.

Musk took to his preferred platform, Twitter, to explain why he's backing dogecoin, telling another Twitter user dogecoin "has dogs and memes"—helping the dogecoin price rebound from a steep sell-off over the weekend.

"Curious what are your thoughts on ethereum 2.0, cardano, solana, polkadot, IOTA and others that are trying to scale with low fees," asked Dave Lee, a YouTuber and Tesla investor. "What makes you choose doge over them?"

"[Dogecoin] has dogs and memes, whereas the others do not," Musk replied. The cryptocurrency market has been flooded by digital tokens looking to improve on bitcoin over the last few years, with rivals to ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency after bitcoin, being challenged by a slew of alternatives that promise lower fees, faster transaction times and improved efficiency.

Earlier, Musk issued a call to developers to submit ideas for dogecoin upgrades and improvements via Reddit and GitHub, also replying to a news story about ethereum upgrades, saying ethereum's co-founder Vitalik Buterin "fears the [doge]."

"Someone suggested changing dogecoin fees based on phases of the moon, which is pretty awesome," Musk added, telling one other Twitter user dogecoin developers "told [him] they would appreciate help."

Dogecoin, despite attracting criticism for its lack of development and high token concentration among a small group of accounts, has soared a staggering 12,000% on this time last year as people bet the price will continue to climb and social media influencers and billionaires cheer on the Shiba Inu dog-based memecoin—fuelling speculation the dogecoin price could climb as high as $1 per dogecoin token.

Musk, who enthusiastically embraced the honorary title of dogecoin CEO following a 2019 Twitter poll, has repeatedly named the meme-based cryptocurrency as his preferred digital token over recent years.

However, speaking during an interview in February, Musk said all his dogecoin-related comments shouldn't be taken seriously—something that continues to cast doubt over how much attention should be paid to Musk's frequent, market-moving dogecoin posts.

As well as boosting the dogecoin price with his tongue-in-cheek comments, Musk sent the bitcoin price higher after announcing he'd met with North American bitcoin miners.

The so-called miners, who secure the bitcoin network by directing computing power towards it in return for newly created bitcoin tokens, were brought together over the weekend by bitcoin investor Michael Saylor to discuss how to reduce bitcoin's eye-watering carbon footprint—something that caused Musk to suspend Tesla's use of bitcoin for payments earlier this month.

"Spoke with North American Bitcoin miners. They committed to publish current & planned renewable usage & to ask miners [world-wide] to do so," Musk posted to Twitter, adding he felt the meeting was: "Potentially promising."

...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on May 27, 2021, 12:16:46 PM
Like I said, he may be thinking beyond this month.  His actions are consistent with trying to force crypto to have less of an environmental impact. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on May 27, 2021, 12:19:41 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 27, 2021, 12:16:46 PM
Like I said, he may be thinking beyond this month.  His actions are consistent with trying to force crypto to have less of an environmental impact.

They really aren't.

Oh, he has made noise about the environmental impact before.  But it also sounds a lot like he's just trolling us all.  I mean - he's pluggin the joke crypto dogecoin!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on May 27, 2021, 12:24:55 PM
Quote from: Barrister on May 27, 2021, 12:19:41 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 27, 2021, 12:16:46 PM
Like I said, he may be thinking beyond this month.  His actions are consistent with trying to force crypto to have less of an environmental impact.

They really aren't.

Oh, he has made noise about the environmental impact before.  But it also sounds a lot like he's just trolling us all.  I mean - he's pluggin the joke crypto dogecoin!

/grumbler/ argument by assertion /grumbler/

If you read the article Garbon posted, it even mentions the fact that Musk has said Ether is going to 2.0 because it fears the Doge.

You have to have already made up your mind that there is not something beyond Musk just being an idiot to not see some obvious links to another goal.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on May 27, 2021, 12:40:02 PM
Quote from: Barrister on May 27, 2021, 12:19:41 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 27, 2021, 12:16:46 PM
Like I said, he may be thinking beyond this month.  His actions are consistent with trying to force crypto to have less of an environmental impact.

They really aren't.

Oh, he has made noise about the environmental impact before.  But it also sounds a lot like he's just trolling us all.  I mean - he's pluggin the joke crypto dogecoin!

Sounds to me like he's just using his influence to manipulate prices for his own benefit.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on May 27, 2021, 12:44:40 PM
Quote from: Jacob on May 27, 2021, 12:40:02 PM
Quote from: Barrister on May 27, 2021, 12:19:41 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 27, 2021, 12:16:46 PM
Like I said, he may be thinking beyond this month.  His actions are consistent with trying to force crypto to have less of an environmental impact.

They really aren't.

Oh, he has made noise about the environmental impact before.  But it also sounds a lot like he's just trolling us all.  I mean - he's pluggin the joke crypto dogecoin!

Sounds to me like he's just using his influence to manipulate prices for his own benefit.

If Musk was just all about making himself a lot of cash, why do you think he is doing shit like SpaceX?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on May 27, 2021, 01:02:29 PM
Name brand recognition. Even more worrisome than someone out for a quick buck. you can understand their reasoning, but someone who wants to be famous is a lot more unpredictable.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on May 27, 2021, 01:04:17 PM
Quote from: HVC on May 27, 2021, 01:02:29 PM
Name brand recognition. Even more worrisome than someone out for a quick buck. you can understand their reasoning, but someone who wants to be famous is a lot more unpredictable.

Being famous is the milestone he reached maybe a decade ago.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on May 27, 2021, 01:07:04 PM
Quote from: Berkut on May 27, 2021, 12:44:40 PM
If Musk was just all about making himself a lot of cash, why do you think he is doing shit like SpaceX?

I don't think he's one-dimensional. He could for example enjoy making lots of cash in various ways, so he can spend some of it doing other things.

But I dunno, is it a foregone conclusion that SpaceX won't be profitable?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on May 27, 2021, 01:12:03 PM
It might be but it is hardly a safe bet, especially when he first started it up.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on May 27, 2021, 01:15:39 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 27, 2021, 01:12:03 PM
It might be but it is hardly a safe bet, especially when he first started it up.

I don't think SpaceX being or not being a safe bet is much of an indicator of whether Musk is or is not using his influence to manipulate the crypto market for short term profit.

I mean, he might not be doing so but it's not an unreasonable explanation.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on May 27, 2021, 01:17:31 PM
I think he likes toys. Think about when he wanting to build his unnecessary submarine. The one mentioned in the OP.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on May 27, 2021, 01:20:29 PM
If SpaceX loses money he can always use Tesla to bail it out, like he did with SolarCity.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on May 27, 2021, 01:35:02 PM
Quote from: Jacob on May 27, 2021, 01:15:39 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 27, 2021, 01:12:03 PM
It might be but it is hardly a safe bet, especially when he first started it up.

I don't think SpaceX being or not being a safe bet is much of an indicator of whether Musk is or is not using his influence to manipulate the crypto market for short term profit.

I mean, he might not be doing so but it's not an unreasonable explanation.

Sure, my point is the cynical view is not the only reasonable explanation.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on May 27, 2021, 01:42:39 PM
Quote from: Jacob on May 27, 2021, 01:07:04 PM
Quote from: Berkut on May 27, 2021, 12:44:40 PM
If Musk was just all about making himself a lot of cash, why do you think he is doing shit like SpaceX?

I don't think he's one-dimensional. He could for example enjoy making lots of cash in various ways, so he can spend some of it doing other things.

But I dunno, is it a foregone conclusion that SpaceX won't be profitable?

SpaceX is a private company (unlike Tesla) so we can't know for sure if it is profitable or not.

But what we do know is that SpaceX has been busy rapidly developing a friggin Mars lander all on it's own dime, so Musk doesn't really seem worried about maximizing his short-term profitability.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on May 27, 2021, 01:46:29 PM
The prospectus for Tesla expressly said they would never pay a dividend, which is why I passed on it way back at the beginning.  His companies are very much about changing the world.

That being said SpaceX has captured a big chunk of global launch market so they must be generating some cash flow.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on May 27, 2021, 01:57:41 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 27, 2021, 01:35:02 PM
Sure, my point is the cynical view is not the only reasonable explanation.

Agreed.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on May 27, 2021, 02:10:39 PM
Musk is kind of a d-bag, but I don't get why people have this cynical attitude that he is somehow secretly just lying about his motivations.

I think it is more about what people feel they have to believe about rich people then anything the actual evidence shows.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on May 27, 2021, 02:14:34 PM
Quote from: Berkut on May 27, 2021, 02:10:39 PM
Musk is kind of a d-bag, but I don't get why people have this cynical attitude that he is somehow secretly just lying about his motivations.

I think it is more about what people feel they have to believe about rich people then anything the actual evidence shows.

When it comes to Dogecoin, he's been pretty clear he's just fucking with people.  That's sometimes just the kind of guy he is.  I mean come on now - he named his company SpaceX (try saying it out loud).  His Tesla car models are the S, 3, X, Y (Mercedes had the rights to the name E-Class).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on May 27, 2021, 02:25:21 PM
plus the whole pedophile slander thing. he's a fame whore. He's also smart, i'm not taking that away from him. but that shadows his motivations in my view.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on May 27, 2021, 03:08:40 PM
Quote from: Barrister on May 27, 2021, 02:14:34 PM
Quote from: Berkut on May 27, 2021, 02:10:39 PM
Musk is kind of a d-bag, but I don't get why people have this cynical attitude that he is somehow secretly just lying about his motivations.

I think it is more about what people feel they have to believe about rich people then anything the actual evidence shows.

When it comes to Dogecoin, he's been pretty clear he's just fucking with people.  That's sometimes just the kind of guy he is.  I mean come on now - he named his company SpaceX (try saying it out loud).  His Tesla car models are the S, 3, X, Y (Mercedes had the rights to the name E-Class).


Is this some kind of secret code/handshake thing I should know about?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on May 27, 2021, 03:10:31 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 27, 2021, 03:08:40 PM
Quote from: Barrister on May 27, 2021, 02:14:34 PM
Quote from: Berkut on May 27, 2021, 02:10:39 PM
Musk is kind of a d-bag, but I don't get why people have this cynical attitude that he is somehow secretly just lying about his motivations.

I think it is more about what people feel they have to believe about rich people then anything the actual evidence shows.

When it comes to Dogecoin, he's been pretty clear he's just fucking with people.  That's sometimes just the kind of guy he is.  I mean come on now - he named his company SpaceX (try saying it out loud).  His Tesla car models are the S, 3, X, Y (Mercedes had the rights to the name E-Class).


Is this some kind of secret code/handshake thing I should know about?

Say "SpaceX" out loud.

It sounds like "Space Sex".
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on May 27, 2021, 03:20:42 PM
I guess it depends on your diction.

I wouldn't have noticed it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on May 27, 2021, 04:03:26 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 27, 2021, 03:20:42 PM
I guess it depends on your diction.

I wouldn't have noticed it.


Hehehehe... heheh... you said "diction"... hehehe.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on May 27, 2021, 04:04:16 PM
Quote from: Barrister on May 27, 2021, 02:14:34 PM
Quote from: Berkut on May 27, 2021, 02:10:39 PM
Musk is kind of a d-bag, but I don't get why people have this cynical attitude that he is somehow secretly just lying about his motivations.

I think it is more about what people feel they have to believe about rich people then anything the actual evidence shows.

When it comes to Dogecoin, he's been pretty clear he's just fucking with people.  That's sometimes just the kind of guy he is.  I mean come on now - he named his company SpaceX (try saying it out loud).  His Tesla car models are the S, 3, X, Y (Mercedes had the rights to the name E-Class).

And in Teslas' radios, the volume goes to 11.  No shit.

The dogecoin stuff was obviously intended as a joke, though.  Look at the reasons he gave.  Clearly not serious.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on May 27, 2021, 04:17:27 PM
Fair enough. I'm not much of a Musk watcher to comment on whether it's obviously a joke or not. And I suppose the market manipulation for profit theory can be proven out fairly easily as well - did he make a killing based on the market's reactions to his comments?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on May 27, 2021, 04:47:08 PM
Quote from: Jacob on May 27, 2021, 04:17:27 PM
Fair enough. I'm not much of a Musk watcher to comment on whether it's obviously a joke or not. And I suppose the market manipulation for profit theory can be proven out fairly easily as well - did he make a killing based on the market's reactions to his comments?

It's right in the article:
Quotespeaking during an interview in February, Musk said all his dogecoin-related comments shouldn't be taken seriously

I just find it mind-bottling that people can seriously question whether he's serious when he has himself said he isn't serious.  Do those people think that SNL's weekend update is a real news show?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on May 27, 2021, 05:04:33 PM
Quote from: grumbler on May 27, 2021, 04:47:08 PM
Quote from: Jacob on May 27, 2021, 04:17:27 PM
Fair enough. I'm not much of a Musk watcher to comment on whether it's obviously a joke or not. And I suppose the market manipulation for profit theory can be proven out fairly easily as well - did he make a killing based on the market's reactions to his comments?

It's right in the article:
Quotespeaking during an interview in February, Musk said all his dogecoin-related comments shouldn't be taken seriously

I just find it mind-bottling that people can seriously question whether he's serious when he has himself said he isn't serious.  Do those people think that SNL's weekend update is a real news show?

I didn't read the article. But yeah, obviously if he said he was just kidding that's all the evidence we need :)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on May 28, 2021, 10:01:53 AM
Quote from: Jacob on May 27, 2021, 04:03:26 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 27, 2021, 03:20:42 PM
I guess it depends on your diction.

I wouldn't have noticed it.


Hehehehe... heheh... you said "diction"... hehehe.

Glad someone noticed   :D
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 24, 2021, 10:15:34 AM
Elon keeps selling Tesla Stock. So, bad things about to happen to the stock price/company?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 24, 2021, 10:48:10 AM
It's not exactly a state secret that Tesla stock's valuation is high.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 24, 2021, 11:07:11 AM
Quote from: HVC on November 24, 2021, 10:15:34 AM
Elon keeps selling Tesla Stock. So, bad things about to happen to the stock price/company?

Twitter must be telling him to sell.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 24, 2021, 11:12:31 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 24, 2021, 10:48:10 AM
It's not exactly a state secret that Tesla stock's valuation is high.

yes, but people are still buying at inflated rates. wondering if this will cause any tesla crashes.

Also, i want him to concentrate on his damn roof tiles.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 24, 2021, 12:11:13 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 24, 2021, 10:15:34 AM
Elon keeps selling Tesla Stock. So, bad things about to happen to the stock price/company?
I guess he's just being smart. He wants to get his bazillions into usable form but knows he has to do it slowly.
He has a bunch of options coming due early next year which should top up his holdings.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on November 24, 2021, 12:30:20 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 24, 2021, 10:15:34 AM
Elon keeps selling Tesla Stock. So, bad things about to happen to the stock price/company?
Elon Musk is a few billion $ behind in his tax payments.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on February 11, 2022, 10:23:26 PM
A couple of not very flattering piece of news related to Musk have appeared today:

QuoteHorrific allegations of racism prompt California lawsuit against Tesla

The N-word and other racist slurs were hurled daily at Black workers at Tesla's California plant, delivered not just by fellow employees but also by managers and supervisors.

So says California's civil rights agency in a lawsuit filed against the electric-vehicle maker in Alameda County Superior Court on Thursday on behalf of thousands of Black workers after a decade of complaints and a 32-month investigation.

Tesla segregated Black workers into separate areas that its employees referred to as "porch monkey stations," "the dark side," "the slave ship" and "the plantation," the lawsuit alleges.

Only Black workers had to scrub floors on their hands and knees, and they were relegated to the Fremont, Calif., factory's most difficult physical jobs, the suit states.

Graffiti — including "KKK," "Go back to Africa," the hangman's noose, the Confederate Flag and "F-- [N-word]" — were carved into restroom walls, workplace benches and lunch tables and were slow to be erased, the lawsuit says.

Tesla responded to the lawsuit, filed by the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, with a blog post saying that the agency had investigated almost 50 discrimination complaints in the past without finding misconduct — an assertion the agency denied.

"A narrative spun by the DFEH and a handful of plaintiff firms to generate publicity is not factual proof," the blog post said, adding that the company provides "the best paying jobs in the automotive industry ... at a time when manufacturing jobs are leaving California."

The lawsuit comes in the wake of Tesla's billionaire chief executive, Elon Musk, moving the company's headquarters from Palo Alto to Austin, Texas, where he is building a major new assembly plant.

The state's lawsuit suggests the relocation to a state known for looser enforcement is no coincidence, declaring it to be "another move to avoid accountability."

Not only were Tesla's Black workers subjected to "willful, malicious" harassment, but they were also denied promotions and paid less than other workers for the same jobs, the suit asserted. They were disciplined for infractions for which other workers were not penalized.

In an interview, DFEH Director Kevin Kish said the lawsuit is the largest ever brought by the state for racial discrimination in terms of the size of the affected workforce since the agency gained prosecutorial powers in 2013.

Before that, complaints were handled by an agency administrative law judge rather than in court. But as more employers have forced workers to sign arbitration agreements preventing them from taking complaints to court, "government has the only effective enforcement mechanism to remedy broad pervasive violations in a workplace," he said.

"We hear a lot about 'structural racism.' This case is very focused on segregation — the structural barriers to equality for Black employees," Kish said.

Most of the agency's complaints involve individual workers or small groups. And racial complaints are on the rise. In 2016, the agency investigated 744 cases. By 2020, that had grown to 1,548, Kish said.

The economic and political stakes of taking on Tesla are hard to exaggerate: The company has drawn praise for proving people will buy electric cars when most of the auto industry was saying that would be impossible.

Quote"Extreme Suffering": 15 of 23 Monkeys with Elon Musk's Neuralink Brain Chips Reportedly Died
"Pretty much every single monkey that had had implants put in their head suffered from pretty debilitating health effects"

Out of a total of 23 monkeys implanted with Elon Musk's Neuralink brain chips at the University of California Davis between 2017 and 2020, at least 15 reportedly died.

Via Business Insider and the New York Post, the news comes from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, an animal-rights group that viewed over 700 pages of documents, veterinary records, and necropsy reports through a public records request at the university.

Neuralink was founded in 2016 with a goal of helping people recover from traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries, curing depression and other mental health disorders, and connecting humans to the internet for everything from music streaming to near-telepathic communication. The company has often touted its successes, such as a demonstration on a pig in 2020, and a 2021 video of a macaque playing Pong with its mind.

(...)

Musk previously said that he hoped to begin human trials in 2021, but that goal has been pushed back to 2022. Based on the PCRM's findings, the brain chips may be nowhere near ready.

"Pretty much every single monkey that had had implants put in their head suffered from pretty debilitating health effects," said the PCRM's research advocacy director Jeremy Beckham. "They were, frankly, maiming and killing the animals."

Neuralink chips were implanted by drilling holes into the monkeys' skulls. One primate developed a bloody skin infection and had to be euthanized. Another was discovered missing fingers and toes, "possibly from self-mutilation or some other unspecified trauma," and had to be put down. A third began uncontrollably vomiting shortly after surgery, and days later "appeared to collapse from exhaustion/fatigue." An autopsy revealed the animal suffered from a brain hemorrhage.

The PCRM filed a complaint with the the US Department of Agriculture on Thursday, accusing UC Davis and Neuralink of nine violations of the Animal Welfare Act. "Many, if not all, of the monkeys experienced extreme suffering as a result of inadequate animal care and the highly invasive experimental head implants during the experiments, which were performed in pursuit of developing what Neuralink and Elon Musk have publicly described as a 'brain-machine interface,'" the group wrote in the complaint.

"These highly invasive implants and their associated hardware, which are inserted in the brain after drilling holes in the animals' skulls, have produced recurring infections in the animals, significantly compromising their health, as well as the integrity of the research."

A spokesperson for UC Davis responded to the complaint, saying, "We strive to provide the best possible care to animals in our charge. Animal research is strictly regulated, and UC Davis follows all applicable laws and regulations including those of the U.S. Department of Agriculture."

The spokesperson added that the university stopped working with Neuralink in 2020. Neuralink has not issued a response.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: ulmont on February 11, 2022, 11:24:14 PM
Quote from: The Larch on February 11, 2022, 10:23:26 PM
A couple of not very flattering piece of news related to Musk have appeared today:

I am shocked! shocked! that a white south african would be supporting an apartheid regime!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on February 12, 2022, 11:02:16 AM
Research animal died during research?  Stop the presses!

Neuralink does need to start using lawyers instead of monkeys as test subjects, though, to avoid unnecessary bad press.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on February 12, 2022, 11:28:03 AM
That was my thought as well, isn't the whole point of animal testing is to see whether the subjects would die a painful premature death?  Obviously you shouldn't be doing something guaranteed to kill the animals just to get a boner, but testing something that may be dangerous is the job of these animals.  It's not like the animals that make it through a study get to enjoy an early retirement somewhere on the tropical island.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on February 12, 2022, 11:35:24 AM
Quote from: grumbler on February 12, 2022, 11:02:16 AM
Research animal died during research?  Stop the presses!

Neuralink does need to start using lawyers instead of monkeys as test subjects, though, to avoid unnecessary bad press.

Not sure if lawyer brains are similar enough to human ones, though. :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on February 12, 2022, 11:39:31 AM
Quote from: DGuller on February 12, 2022, 11:28:03 AM
That was my thought as well, isn't the whole point of animal testing is to see whether the subjects would die a painful premature death?  Obviously you shouldn't be doing something guaranteed to kill the animals just to get a boner, but testing something that may be dangerous is the job of these animals.  It's not like the animals that make it through a study get to enjoy an early retirement somewhere on the tropical island.

I think the idea is that you only use animals - especially higher order species like monkeys - when you're very confident you won't inflict unnecessary suffering on them; as opposed to "let's just fuck around and see what happens, and if they suffer and die oh well that's what they're for."

That said, I'm not personally prepared to judge where the line is - and thus neither am I ready to say whether this case is on the right or wrong side of it - but hopefully there are ethics bodies and law that determines that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on February 12, 2022, 12:42:20 PM
Quote from: Jacob on February 12, 2022, 11:39:31 AM
Quote from: DGuller on February 12, 2022, 11:28:03 AM
That was my thought as well, isn't the whole point of animal testing is to see whether the subjects would die a painful premature death?  Obviously you shouldn't be doing something guaranteed to kill the animals just to get a boner, but testing something that may be dangerous is the job of these animals.  It's not like the animals that make it through a study get to enjoy an early retirement somewhere on the tropical island.

I think the idea is that you only use animals - especially higher order species like monkeys - when you're very confident you won't inflict unnecessary suffering on them; as opposed to "let's just fuck around and see what happens, and if they suffer and die oh well that's what they're for."

That said, I'm not personally prepared to judge where the line is - and thus neither am I ready to say whether this case is on the right or wrong side of it - but hopefully there are ethics bodies and law that determines that.
I see.  I can definitely imagine the disruption bros at Tesla completely disregarding established protocols, if not stopped by external forces, as the whole process of medical research seems like the very opposite of their MO.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on February 12, 2022, 12:50:11 PM
Quote from: The Larch on February 11, 2022, 10:23:26 PM
A couple of not very flattering piece of news related to Musk have appeared today:

I feel this makes a nice contrast to the first article about racist work environments:

(https://preview.redd.it/gksua50dhfh81.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=5c80ca19169a5f7c7b97666ce361d3a45160f8cb)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on February 12, 2022, 01:05:42 PM
Serve them to whom?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on February 12, 2022, 03:41:52 PM
Yes. To have such a high fuck up rate really suggests they shouldn't have been at the stage of testing on monkeys.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on February 12, 2022, 06:40:38 PM
Quote from: DGuller on February 12, 2022, 01:05:42 PM
Serve them to whom?

Soylent Green is people!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on February 12, 2022, 06:48:53 PM
One should keep in mind that PCRM is an advocacy group opposed to all animal medical research, so take their findings with a grain of salt.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on February 12, 2022, 11:28:50 PM
Quote from: DGuller on February 12, 2022, 01:05:42 PM
Serve them to whom?

In the case of billionaire entrepreneurs:

(https://painting-movies.com/wp-content/uploads/molochmaschine.jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on April 14, 2022, 05:59:47 AM
So apparently Musk has made an official bid to buy Twitter for more than 40 billion dollars.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on April 14, 2022, 06:02:07 AM
Hopefully just to delete it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on April 14, 2022, 06:06:51 AM
The levels of trolling he does to manipulate share prices is insane. I kinda' wish the bluff offer gets accepted so he burns 40 billion.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Darth Wagtaros on April 14, 2022, 07:53:57 AM
Quote from: grumbler on February 12, 2022, 06:40:38 PM
Quote from: DGuller on February 12, 2022, 01:05:42 PMServe them to whom?

Soylent Green is people!
It's a cookbook!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 14, 2022, 08:08:46 AM
Quote from: Tamas on April 14, 2022, 06:06:51 AMThe levels of trolling he does to manipulate share prices is insane. I kinda' wish the bluff offer gets accepted so he burns 40 billion.

I suppose if you consider one time when he made a dubious comment and didn't dump any shares as an insane level.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 14, 2022, 09:59:48 AM
Quote from: Syt on February 12, 2022, 11:35:24 AM
Quote from: grumbler on February 12, 2022, 11:02:16 AMResearch animal died during research?  Stop the presses!

Neuralink does need to start using lawyers instead of monkeys as test subjects, though, to avoid unnecessary bad press.

Not sure if lawyer brains are similar enough to human ones, though. :P

:grr:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 14, 2022, 10:23:11 AM
Quote from: The Larch on April 14, 2022, 05:59:47 AMSo apparently Musk has made an official bid to buy Twitter for more than 40 billion dollars.

FFS Elon.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on April 14, 2022, 11:35:14 AM
Quote from: Barrister on April 14, 2022, 10:23:11 AM
Quote from: The Larch on April 14, 2022, 05:59:47 AMSo apparently Musk has made an official bid to buy Twitter for more than 40 billion dollars.

FFS Elon.

I think I'll leave Twitter if his hostile takeover succeeds.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 14, 2022, 11:43:12 AM
It's just that just one week ago he was going to join the board of directors, and was going to promise to NOT try to buy the company.  So this is clearly yet another hairbrained Elon Musk plan put together inside of one week.  When his companies already have eleventy-billion other things on the go right now (I want my Cybertruck!).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on April 14, 2022, 12:21:19 PM
Why is this surprising? Mega billionaires want their own private media. Microsoft has MSN, Jeff Bezos has the washington post, and twitter may end up being musk's.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 14, 2022, 12:23:57 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on April 14, 2022, 12:21:19 PMWhy is this surprising? Mega billionaires want their own private media. Microsoft has MSN, Jeff Bezos has the washington post, and twitter may end up being musk's.

Is anyone saying it's surprising?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 14, 2022, 12:34:48 PM
I'm seeing suggestions that Musk may just be fucking with people (which is also something he's known to do).  Filing with the SEC means he can't get into trouble with the SEC, but the purchase stock price of 54.20 sounds familiar...

He's not obliged to follow through with anything so far.  It's just an intention.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on April 14, 2022, 02:58:03 PM
I don't think the current offer on the table is serious, but I'm not convinced he isn't (I hope he isn't...).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on April 14, 2022, 03:14:21 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 14, 2022, 12:23:57 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on April 14, 2022, 12:21:19 PMWhy is this surprising? Mega billionaires want their own private media. Microsoft has MSN, Jeff Bezos has the washington post, and twitter may end up being musk's.

Is anyone saying it's surprising?

Yeah. Lots of people. Here in a headline:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-elon-musks-shocking-twitter-bid-could-just-be-mega-trolling
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on April 14, 2022, 03:21:37 PM
Quote from: Barrister on April 14, 2022, 11:43:12 AMIt's just that just one week ago he was going to join the board of directors, and was going to promise to NOT try to buy the company.  So this is clearly yet another hairbrained Elon Musk plan put together inside of one week.  When his companies already have eleventy-billion other things on the go right now (I want my Cybertruck!).

Get a f150 lightning. Even with the production backlog you're way more likely to get one
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 14, 2022, 03:23:55 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on April 14, 2022, 03:14:21 PMYeah. Lots of people. Here in a headline:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-elon-musks-shocking-twitter-bid-could-just-be-mega-trolling

Ah, I thought you were talking about folks on languish.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on April 14, 2022, 03:30:57 PM
Quote from: HVC on April 14, 2022, 03:21:37 PMGet a f150 lightning. Even with the production backlog you're way more likely to get one

I want the F-100 Eluminator (https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2021/11/02/all-electric-f-100-eluminator-concept.html) they teased last year.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on April 14, 2022, 03:31:00 PM
Quote from: Barrister on April 14, 2022, 12:34:48 PMI'm seeing suggestions that Musk may just be fucking with people (which is also something he's known to do).  Filing with the SEC means he can't get into trouble with the SEC, but the purchase stock price of 54.20 sounds familiar...

He's not obliged to follow through with anything so far.  It's just an intention.

54.20 is familiar how?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on April 14, 2022, 03:33:16 PM
Quote from: Josquius on April 14, 2022, 03:31:00 PM54.20 is familiar how?

It's a 420 (marijuana) joke.  Something Musk is very public about indulging in.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 14, 2022, 03:35:44 PM
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on April 14, 2022, 03:33:16 PM
Quote from: Josquius on April 14, 2022, 03:31:00 PM54.20 is familiar how?

It's a 420 (marijuana) joke.  Something Musk is very public about indulging in.

Yes.

But even more specifically, when Musk said he had a deal arranged to take Tesla private, he was going to do so at $420 per share.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 25, 2022, 12:48:08 PM
So it sounds like Twitter is going to agree to Musk's buyout.  :huh:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 25, 2022, 12:55:59 PM
Quote from: Barrister on April 25, 2022, 12:48:08 PMSo it sounds like Twitter is going to agree to Musk's buyout.  :huh:
What could possibly go wrong?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 25, 2022, 12:57:33 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 25, 2022, 12:55:59 PM
Quote from: Barrister on April 25, 2022, 12:48:08 PMSo it sounds like Twitter is going to agree to Musk's buyout.  :huh:
What could possibly go wrong?

So like I am kind of a fan of Musk.  In the same way I was a fan of Steve Jobs - they are both major league assholes who managed to accomplish some amazing things.

But yes - so many, many things could go wrong.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 25, 2022, 01:00:06 PM
Quote from: Barrister on April 25, 2022, 12:57:33 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 25, 2022, 12:55:59 PM
Quote from: Barrister on April 25, 2022, 12:48:08 PMSo it sounds like Twitter is going to agree to Musk's buyout.  :huh:
What could possibly go wrong?

So like I am kind of a fan of Musk.  In the same way I was a fan of Steve Jobs - they are both major league assholes who managed to accomplish some amazing things.

But yes - so many, many things could go wrong.
Yep, I think he is pretty much a complete asshole, and we could use a couple more like him.

But taking over Twitter? At best a distraction from what he ought to be focused on, and at worst a complete and utter disaster.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 25, 2022, 01:07:52 PM
Worse than an asshole, he seems like an asshole who sometimes likes to see world burn.  Most social media leaders damage democracy through arrogance and greed, I can see Musk doing it just for the LOLs.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 25, 2022, 01:10:20 PM
I mean - if I squint I can sort-of see the business case for buying Twitter.  It's hugely influential despite having a comparatively small userbase (compared to other social media), so perhaps there's a way to unlock that influence to greater profits.

But nothing Musk has said indicates such thinking.  I mean - an edit button is not going to unlock billions of dollars of shareholder value.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on April 25, 2022, 01:18:16 PM
Quote from: Barrister on April 25, 2022, 01:10:20 PMI mean - if I squint I can sort-of see the business case for buying Twitter.  It's hugely influential despite having a comparatively small userbase (compared to other social media), so perhaps there's a way to unlock that influence to greater profits.

But nothing Musk has said indicates such thinking.  I mean - an edit button is not going to unlock billions of dollars of shareholder value.
I really can't see a business case for it. It strikes me as a standard billionaire buys media company/sports team vanity buy (but an expensive one, at a premium) - although interesting to see that dynamic on a social media company.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on April 25, 2022, 01:43:21 PM
He'll dance out of it, I don't think he was serious.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on April 25, 2022, 01:51:38 PM
and: I was wrong.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on April 25, 2022, 01:52:05 PM
I don't think he was serious at first but since he as apparently has find the needed loans. Morgan Stanley, iirc.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 25, 2022, 01:53:58 PM
And it's announced.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/elon-musk-to-acquire-twitter-301532245.html
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 25, 2022, 01:58:35 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 25, 2022, 01:07:52 PMWorse than an asshole, he seems like an asshole who sometimes likes to see world burn.  Most social media leaders damage democracy through arrogance and greed, I can see Musk doing it just for the LOLs.
I don't agree that he wants to see the world burn, even sometimes. I've never seen anything like that from him.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on April 25, 2022, 01:59:27 PM
Musk has purchased/started companies with dubious prospects in the past, but at least you could kinda see the whole sustainability/mobility angle. I really can't see where Twitter fits.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on April 25, 2022, 02:14:44 PM
Elon will unban Trump from Twitter and after some hemming and hawing about social media Donald will make a triumphal comeback tweet:

Quote"I AM BACK, no thanks to all those Losers And Haters!"


Our long national nightmare is going to get worse.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on April 25, 2022, 02:16:49 PM
Quote from: FunkMonk on April 25, 2022, 02:14:44 PMElon will unban Trump from Twitter and after some hemming and hawing about social media Donald will make a triumphal comeback tweet:

Quote"I AM BACK, no thanks to all those Losers And Haters!"


Our long national nightmare is going to get worse.

I'd think that the twitter ban is one of hte best things going for the republicans.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on April 25, 2022, 02:43:05 PM
Quote from: celedhring on April 25, 2022, 01:59:27 PMI really can't see where Twitter fits.

The world's most expensive vanity purchase?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on April 25, 2022, 02:51:08 PM
I deactivated my account / deleted Twitter apps the moment the deal was announced. I have zero interest in Parler which is all that I imagine Twitter under Musk will be, nonstop white nationalism and anti-vaxx stuff. I used it solely as a passive account to access news, so guess back to things like RSS and etc instead.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on April 25, 2022, 02:52:17 PM
Quote from: Barrister on April 25, 2022, 01:53:58 PMAnd it's announced.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/elon-musk-to-acquire-twitter-301532245.html

Huh. Everyone was certain it was a joke. Damn.

What happened to the poison pill defence they were planning?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 25, 2022, 02:53:24 PM
I have a Twitter account, but I never actually use it. 

It just seems to uniquely designed to concentrate all of the worst elements of social media. Anonymity combined with an intentional format designed to make sure there is little or no nuance or depth to anything.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on April 25, 2022, 02:59:30 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 25, 2022, 02:53:24 PMI have a Twitter account, but I never actually use it.

It just seems to uniquely designed to concentrate all of the worst elements of social media. Anonymity combined with an intentional format designed to make sure there is little or no nuance or depth to anything.

Yeah, Twitter has always been useless for interacting/discussing (which may be why of all the "major" social media platforms it has never made money, and has a relatively small user base), but after RSS feeds kinda became less common I do think it was a pretty good way, if you curated who you followed, to get breaking news updates. My now-deleted account followed a lot of reputable journalists and news outlets, and a lot of times they would break stuff on Twitter before anywhere else, I'm hoping many of them choose to go elsewhere.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on April 25, 2022, 02:59:41 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 25, 2022, 02:51:08 PMI deactivated my account / deleted Twitter apps the moment the deal was announced. I have zero interest in Parler which is all that I imagine Twitter under Musk will be, nonstop white nationalism and anti-vaxx stuff. I used it solely as a passive account to access news, so guess back to things like RSS and etc instead.

My social media break started last week when I got a new phone and didn't know my passwords. I think I'll continue with that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on April 25, 2022, 03:02:58 PM
Quote from: Josquius on April 25, 2022, 02:52:17 PM
Quote from: Barrister on April 25, 2022, 01:53:58 PMAnd it's announced.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/elon-musk-to-acquire-twitter-301532245.html

Huh. Everyone was certain it was a joke. Damn.

What happened to the poison pill defence they were planning?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/apr/25/twitter-elon-musk-buy-takeover-deal-tesla

QuoteTwitter's board at first enacted an anti-takeover measure known as a poison pill that could have made a takeover attempt prohibitively expensive. But its initial reluctance to accept a transaction appeared to fade after Musk confirmed a funding package for the deal and shareholders warmed to it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on April 25, 2022, 03:25:52 PM
let's see what happens first eh.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on April 25, 2022, 03:28:33 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on April 25, 2022, 02:16:49 PM
Quote from: FunkMonk on April 25, 2022, 02:14:44 PMElon will unban Trump from Twitter and after some hemming and hawing about social media Donald will make a triumphal comeback tweet:

Quote"I AM BACK, no thanks to all those Losers And Haters!"


Our long national nightmare is going to get worse.

I'd think that the twitter ban is one of hte best things going for the republicans.

It's the best thing going for anyone who consumes American media.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on April 25, 2022, 03:47:59 PM
I use Twitter a lot. Not for discussion but it's a great place to get news. Especially sporting News. I'll miss it so when Musk ruins it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 25, 2022, 03:50:09 PM
I've just started using Twitter the way Otto described - basically a month into the current war.

I think I'm going to save my account deletion for when he unbans Trump and his fellow enemies of democracy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on April 25, 2022, 04:21:53 PM
Practically speaking I'm not sure Musk will actually make much difference to Twitter - I don't fully get the garment-rending online. Trump'll get unbanned but I think that's about it. It's not like Twitter did a mass sweep of the Nazis or anti-vaxx they are still very much there (just ask any female journalist).

I also thnk there's a slight contradiction between people who have (rightly) said that Twitter is a private company and can ban whoever they want, who are now considering its takeover by a weird billionaire (as opposed to Jack and the Saudis) a threat to the public sphere.

I still basically lean to the side that it's a private company that I'll use as long as it provides me with the service I want - and I think it probably will. But I don't massively think the stuff around disinformation/misinformation and the impact of social media is correct.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 25, 2022, 04:34:47 PM
I personally think the "it's a private company" argument was always a little strained.  I think social media companies are closer to being privately-held utility companies, which puts some responsibilities on them that purely private companies won't have. 

I think the "private company" argument kicked the can down the road on the discussion of limits of tolerance of intolerance.  I personally think that it should've been legal to ban Trump from Twitter even if Twitter were government-owned, and it would be the shortcoming of the First Amendment if it prohibited such an action.  Paradox of tolerance is a thing, and sticking to a principle that rests on a paradox is a punt, not a principled stand.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on April 25, 2022, 04:37:10 PM
I've always used Twitter to connect with people of similar interests. I have a soccer list and an Arsenal FC list  :lol:
As well as a list containing historians and other academics.  :smarty: 

I will continue to use Twitter as long as these folks continue to as well.

I occasionally scroll through my regular feed just to see what the latest outrage is. I use it to get a feel for the current fad or discourse. I also use it for laughs if I'm bored of YT videos or IG or the Discord servers I chat on and I've already done the day's Wordle.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on April 25, 2022, 04:40:45 PM
If you're only tolerating tolerance then you are intolerant. There's no paradox. Other than the strawman based on unlimited tolerance.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on April 25, 2022, 04:46:03 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 25, 2022, 04:34:47 PMI personally think the "it's a private company" argument was always a little strained.  I think social media companies are closer to being privately-held utility companies, which puts some responsibilities on them that purely private companies won't have. 
Yeah I can see an argument for that, but I never felt there was an absolute right to be on Twitter or any other platform. It's challenging though thinking what those responsibilities should look like.

Especially, for example, in the UK where we have the Online Safety Bill which is horrendous and I don't think anyone is happy with it, but creates liability for companies for them to prevent "harmful content" including the idea of "legal but harmful content". If we're going down that route, I feel like a sharper clearer set of rules and regulation by government would be better than making that the responsibility of the company - so they mainly have to enforce, not work out what might be hamrful.

But I have no idea what the answer is to be honest, I think it's incredibly tough.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 25, 2022, 05:37:05 PM
Quote from: The Brain on April 25, 2022, 04:40:45 PMIf you're only tolerating tolerance then you are intolerant. There's no paradox. Other than the strawman based on unlimited tolerance.
Intolerance may be the bad word, because in this case it doesn't mean bigoted as it usually does, it really means opposed to free speech.  Maybe anti-tolerant is a better word.  The point is that giving freedom to destroy freedom is not promoting freedom, and that's where the paradox lies.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on April 25, 2022, 05:51:12 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 25, 2022, 05:37:05 PM
Quote from: The Brain on April 25, 2022, 04:40:45 PMIf you're only tolerating tolerance then you are intolerant. There's no paradox. Other than the strawman based on unlimited tolerance.
Intolerance may be the bad word, because in this case it doesn't mean bigoted as it usually does, it really means opposed to free speech.  Maybe anti-tolerant is a better word.  The point is that giving freedom to destroy freedom is not promoting freedom, and that's where the paradox lies.

Sticks and stones...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 25, 2022, 06:10:55 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 25, 2022, 04:21:53 PMI don't fully get the garment-rending online. Trump'll get unbanned but I think that's about it.

I think there's a decent chance that Trump would've lost to Hillary if it hadn't been for Twitter.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 25, 2022, 06:32:06 PM
Quote from: The Brain on April 25, 2022, 05:51:12 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 25, 2022, 05:37:05 PM
Quote from: The Brain on April 25, 2022, 04:40:45 PMIf you're only tolerating tolerance then you are intolerant. There's no paradox. Other than the strawman based on unlimited tolerance.
Intolerance may be the bad word, because in this case it doesn't mean bigoted as it usually does, it really means opposed to free speech.  Maybe anti-tolerant is a better word.  The point is that giving freedom to destroy freedom is not promoting freedom, and that's where the paradox lies.

Sticks and stones...
:rolleyes: I'm happy for you, you live in a country where professional propaganda campaigns are not likely to make your country take an authoritarian turn.  You can afford to be so flippant and fatalistic.  I can't, so as a citizen I don't have an option to punt. 

Free speech near-absolutism used to be a simple principle, but in 2022 it's now a simplistic principle.  Social media being used by authoritarians to make countries more illiberal is not a strawman, it's a reality in more than a few countries.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on April 25, 2022, 06:40:59 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 25, 2022, 06:32:06 PM
Quote from: The Brain on April 25, 2022, 05:51:12 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 25, 2022, 05:37:05 PM
Quote from: The Brain on April 25, 2022, 04:40:45 PMIf you're only tolerating tolerance then you are intolerant. There's no paradox. Other than the strawman based on unlimited tolerance.
Intolerance may be the bad word, because in this case it doesn't mean bigoted as it usually does, it really means opposed to free speech.  Maybe anti-tolerant is a better word.  The point is that giving freedom to destroy freedom is not promoting freedom, and that's where the paradox lies.

Sticks and stones...
:rolleyes: I'm happy for you, you live in a country where professional propaganda campaigns are not likely to make your country take an authoritarian turn.  You can afford to be so flippant and fatalistic.  I can't, so as a citizen I don't have an option to punt. 

Free speech near-absolutism used to be a simple principle, but in 2022 it's now a simplistic principle.  Social media being used to make countries more illiberal is not a strawman, it's a reality in more than a few countries.

*shrug* My impression is that democracy and freedom of speech is the most desirable system. If this impression ever changes then I will support a different system.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on April 25, 2022, 06:46:51 PM
I used to be the same way.  Reality is hell on ideals.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on April 25, 2022, 06:53:52 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on April 25, 2022, 06:46:51 PMI used to be the same way.  Reality is hell on ideals.

In Sweden the past weeks dozens of police officers have been wounded, firefighters attacked and much material damage has been done by persons completely opposed to an open and democratic society. I still think that banning their propaganda would be extremely poor policy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 25, 2022, 07:05:54 PM
Quote from: The Brain on April 25, 2022, 06:40:59 PM*shrug* My impression is that democracy and freedom of speech is the most desirable system.
I think that as well, which is why I think protecting it is a good idea.  Sometimes freedom can only be protected with some elements of lack of freedom.  Democratic countries don't consider drafting people in times of war to protect their country to be beyond the pale, even though you're removing freedom from the people being drafted.  Reality is complicated and can't always be compressed down to clever one-liners.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on April 25, 2022, 07:22:05 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 25, 2022, 07:05:54 PM
Quote from: The Brain on April 25, 2022, 06:40:59 PM*shrug* My impression is that democracy and freedom of speech is the most desirable system.
I think that as well, which is why I think protecting it is a good idea.  Sometimes freedom can only be protected with some elements of lack of freedom.  Democratic countries don't consider drafting people in times of war to protect their country to be beyond the pale, even though you're removing freedom from the people being drafted.  Reality is complicated and can't always be compressed down to clever one-liners.

Reality is indeed very complicated. Which makes simple solutions not always the best. I'm reminded of the situation where society is attacked by a virus. Trying to stop the virus from reaching the population doesn't necessarily lead to a better outcome than developing resistance in the population and living with the virus.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on April 25, 2022, 07:29:53 PM
What are you advocating here, Guller? That the government step in and decide who Twitter bans?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 25, 2022, 07:37:05 PM
Free speech is great.

I am not a big fan of misinformation campaigns nor influence operations waged by hostile powers with the intent to cause harm and undermine the security of our nations.

I believe there's probably a way to regulate speech that can lessen those harms while remaining sufficiently free. I suspect it's about solid, trustworthy processes and instutions.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on April 25, 2022, 07:52:41 PM
Quote from: The Brain on April 25, 2022, 07:22:05 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 25, 2022, 07:05:54 PM
Quote from: The Brain on April 25, 2022, 06:40:59 PM*shrug* My impression is that democracy and freedom of speech is the most desirable system.
I think that as well, which is why I think protecting it is a good idea.  Sometimes freedom can only be protected with some elements of lack of freedom.  Democratic countries don't consider drafting people in times of war to protect their country to be beyond the pale, even though you're removing freedom from the people being drafted.  Reality is complicated and can't always be compressed down to clever one-liners.

Reality is indeed very complicated. Which makes simple solutions not always the best. I'm reminded of the situation where society is attacked by a virus. Trying to stop the virus from reaching the population doesn't necessarily lead to a better outcome than developing resistance in the population and living with the virus.

 :bleeding:

Oh Lord, please stay in your lane.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 25, 2022, 07:59:34 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on April 25, 2022, 07:29:53 PMWhat are you advocating here, Guller? That the government step in and decide who Twitter bans?
I'm advocating that we should consider more government policies to deal with speech designed to attack democracy than just sit back and hope for the best.  I don't have any detailed policy proposals, but I can pass judgments on actions that other countries have done. 

For example, when some former Soviet republics banned Russian TV channels, I thought that was an acceptable policy, and in fact a smart policy.  The propaganda zombifying the Russian speakers in those countries presented a very real threat to the democracy of those countries, a much bigger threat than the censorship of said propaganda or the slippery slope that comes with it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on April 25, 2022, 08:21:03 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 25, 2022, 04:21:53 PMPractically speaking I'm not sure Musk will actually make much difference to Twitter - I don't fully get the garment-rending online. Trump'll get unbanned but I think that's about it. It's not like Twitter did a mass sweep of the Nazis or anti-vaxx they are still very much there (just ask any female journalist).

I also thnk there's a slight contradiction between people who have (rightly) said that Twitter is a private company and can ban whoever they want, who are now considering its takeover by a weird billionaire (as opposed to Jack and the Saudis) a threat to the public sphere.

I still basically lean to the side that it's a private company that I'll use as long as it provides me with the service I want - and I think it probably will. But I don't massively think the stuff around disinformation/misinformation and the impact of social media is correct.

This is probably because you have no fucking clue how Twitter runs or operates. Their health and safety division has been doing massive auto-moderating and suppression of some of the worst crazy racist / vaccine misinformation etc. That does not mean the platform was totally purged of them. If Musk is taken at face value he won't want any of that, and it means Twitter will look like 8chan or Parler. Literally every communications platform to ever exist on the internet that has had fully unbridled moderation looks like 8chan or Parler.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on April 25, 2022, 08:30:12 PM
Quote from: FunkMonk on April 25, 2022, 04:37:10 PMI've always used Twitter to connect with people of similar interests. I have a soccer list and an Arsenal FC list  :lol:
As well as a list containing historians and other academics.  :smarty: 

I will continue to use Twitter as long as these folks continue to as well.

Me too, and I've already seen a couple of messages of people from some of those groups (mostly some classicists) dropping messages of the "well, it's sad to see people leave, if you want to keep in touch please follow me on FB", or something to the like, as well as some big time people saying the ususal "I've lost X thousand followers today, what the hell has happened?". To me this feels overblown at the moment, given that Musk has not yet even formalized the acquisition. Even once he does, it remains to be seen what he'll do in a practical sense. He's quite the blowhard, so from what he says to what he does there can be a huge difference. If it ends up turning into a cesspool, well, then people will leave in droves, and good riddance to it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on April 25, 2022, 09:09:54 PM
What happens now is going to depend on a few factors:
My knee-jerk is to assume this is going to be bad.  I don't actually know what changes will take place, or how drastic they will be.  I could speculate, but I don't feel that I should.  I will say that I think OvB's fear is a valid worst-case possibility, but also that it's unlikely to happen.  This may well be partly a vanity purchase for Musk, but it still represents a significant fraction of his net worth.  I doubt he threw this cash out, including a major leverage on his Tesla holdings, on a whim.  I think he has ideas on where to take the platform long-term.  Whether they make sense, or will pan out, I don't know.  I hope he's smart enough to modify his ideas based on how the platform actually operates and what it has to deal with.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on April 25, 2022, 09:51:30 PM
Quote from: The Brain on April 25, 2022, 06:53:52 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on April 25, 2022, 06:46:51 PMI used to be the same way.  Reality is hell on ideals.

In Sweden the past weeks dozens of police officers have been wounded, firefighters attacked and much material damage has been done by persons completely opposed to an open and democratic society. I still think that banning their propaganda would be extremely poor policy.
We also live in a world where a large but unknown number of people died because they refused a vaccine because they read that Covid was fake.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on April 25, 2022, 09:54:17 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on April 25, 2022, 07:52:41 PM
Quote from: The Brain on April 25, 2022, 07:22:05 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 25, 2022, 07:05:54 PM
Quote from: The Brain on April 25, 2022, 06:40:59 PM*shrug* My impression is that democracy and freedom of speech is the most desirable system.
I think that as well, which is why I think protecting it is a good idea.  Sometimes freedom can only be protected with some elements of lack of freedom.  Democratic countries don't consider drafting people in times of war to protect their country to be beyond the pale, even though you're removing freedom from the people being drafted.  Reality is complicated and can't always be compressed down to clever one-liners.

Reality is indeed very complicated. Which makes simple solutions not always the best. I'm reminded of the situation where society is attacked by a virus. Trying to stop the virus from reaching the population doesn't necessarily lead to a better outcome than developing resistance in the population and living with the virus.

 :bleeding:

Oh Lord, please stay in your lane.

Well, That was basically Sweden's response to a real virus.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on April 25, 2022, 11:21:28 PM
As long as I can read threads about some dude accidentally releasing hundreds of crickets in his house and his wife almost killing him, or debate whether a dress is gold or black, or see live tweets of rich kids being fed table scraps on some desert island after being conned into attending a fake music festival, Twitter, or a service like it, is something I'll continue to use. I hope the new asshole in charge of it doesn't fucking ruin it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on April 26, 2022, 01:44:31 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on April 25, 2022, 07:52:41 PM
Quote from: The Brain on April 25, 2022, 07:22:05 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 25, 2022, 07:05:54 PM
Quote from: The Brain on April 25, 2022, 06:40:59 PM*shrug* My impression is that democracy and freedom of speech is the most desirable system.
I think that as well, which is why I think protecting it is a good idea.  Sometimes freedom can only be protected with some elements of lack of freedom.  Democratic countries don't consider drafting people in times of war to protect their country to be beyond the pale, even though you're removing freedom from the people being drafted.  Reality is complicated and can't always be compressed down to clever one-liners.

Reality is indeed very complicated. Which makes simple solutions not always the best. I'm reminded of the situation where society is attacked by a virus. Trying to stop the virus from reaching the population doesn't necessarily lead to a better outcome than developing resistance in the population and living with the virus.

 :bleeding:

Oh Lord, please stay in your lane.

Do you think that trying to completely close your borders to the virus necessarily leads to a better outcome than vaccinating the population?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on April 26, 2022, 03:03:01 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 25, 2022, 04:46:03 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 25, 2022, 04:34:47 PMI personally think the "it's a private company" argument was always a little strained.  I think social media companies are closer to being privately-held utility companies, which puts some responsibilities on them that purely private companies won't have. 
Yeah I can see an argument for that, but I never felt there was an absolute right to be on Twitter or any other platform. It's challenging though thinking what those responsibilities should look like.

Especially, for example, in the UK where we have the Online Safety Bill which is horrendous and I don't think anyone is happy with it, but creates liability for companies for them to prevent "harmful content" including the idea of "legal but harmful content". If we're going down that route, I feel like a sharper clearer set of rules and regulation by government would be better than making that the responsibility of the company - so they mainly have to enforce, not work out what might be hamrful.

But I have no idea what the answer is to be honest, I think it's incredibly tough.

I feel like it is hard to treat it like any other private company when, for whatever reason, so much of our society has decided to route itself through Twitter.

This morning when looking online (Guardian, a couple gaming sites, thehill, axios, buzzfeed, etc.), I was struck by how many times a twitter post was cited as the source of content for the article. That taken the form as either just a vox populi component to official statements from an organisation or politician. Most annoying was the few times it was hyperlinked text that unknowingly was a like to a series of tweets on the platform.

With so much discourse running through (and being sourced from) Twitter, it certainly bears some scrutiny.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on April 26, 2022, 04:10:10 AM
Quote from: Jacob on April 25, 2022, 06:10:55 PMI think there's a decent chance that Trump would've lost to Hillary if it hadn't been for Twitter.
It's possible. I think there was a study and areas with lots of Twitter users were, after all adjustments, was indicative of areas being more likely to vote for Clinton than Trump - which makes sense because Twitter's userbase is younger, college/uni educated and more left-wing than the public. So Twitter exposed those people to Trump, or Cruz or whoever else was running on the right and mobilised them against them.

The issue is I think Twitter is disproportionately popular with journalists, people working in media, think-tankers etc. I think Twitter is like Trump's rallies. In themselves I think the impact is very low. The way they were covered by the media - and I mean mainstream media like CNN, NYT etc, not just Fox - did have an impact. But I think that's a media/journalism issue.

I don't know if it's better now - in a weird way, I think it would probably be good if Trump was normalised a bit and covered like any other politician. But I think going live to a Trump rally for the entire rally is a really bad editorial decision (and not something most candidates would get), similarly allowing a tweet to be the big story of the day. Twitter and the rallies I think allowed Trump to make everything reality TV of fake controversies and a bit of drama - but that only happened because that is how the media covered it.

Quote from: garbon on April 26, 2022, 03:03:01 AMI feel like it is hard to treat it like any other private company when, for whatever reason, so much of our society has decided to route itself through Twitter.

This morning when looking online (Guardian, a couple gaming sites, thehill, axios, buzzfeed, etc.), I was struck by how many times a twitter post was cited as the source of content for the article. That taken the form as either just a vox populi component to official statements from an organisation or politician. Most annoying was the few times it was hyperlinked text that unknowingly was a like to a series of tweets on the platform.

With so much discourse running through (and being sourced from) Twitter, it certainly bears some scrutiny.
I agree. I think it's difficult though because the more you move from "it's a private company so it can ban who it wants and decide what is acceptable speech", the more you are probably going to move into challenges of who it can ban and why.

It is above all because it is the social media platform of journalists, media, think tanks, politicians that it matters. It isn't that lots of our society have routed themselves through Twitter - but that world has. They are very important for the rest of us.

As you say Twitter is a source for stories - the most annoying to me (which Twitter promotes) is the "a debate is being had about x". It doesn't always but sometimes you'll see that picked up on the BBC and it's basically a few people with collectively a couple of thousand followers arguing about something suddenly transformed into news on the BBC front page.

Twitter interactions themselves are often the story and in part that is understandable - I think it is cheap, I think it's where journalists already are and sometimes it's justified. Twitter has about as many users as Reddit, but because that's not where journalists spend their time we get fewer Reddit based stories.

I think in a way that again goes to a journalism/media issue. I don't think we're there on how the media should treat/report on Twitter.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 26, 2022, 04:27:53 AM
Back in the time before time things that occupied a lot of minds Was the possibility of control aid media being concentrated in a few owners.  Concerned over that drove regulation which prevented, or at least try to prevent, that sort of concentration from occurring.

The Internet changed all that. I think mainly because government officials and politicians didn't understand what was happening. Not to be too critical, few people did.  And so the Internet was completely and regulated. Unlike all other media.

It may now be too late.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on April 26, 2022, 05:47:29 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 26, 2022, 04:27:53 AMBack in the time before time things that occupied a lot of minds Was the possibility of control aid media being concentrated in a few owners.  Concerned over that drove regulation which prevented, or at least try to prevent, that sort of concentration from occurring.

The Internet changed all that. I think mainly because government officials and politicians didn't understand what was happening. Not to be too critical, few people did.  And so the Internet was completely and regulated. Unlike all other media.

It may now be too late.

Russia and China have showed great success in regulating the Internet, hope is not lost.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on April 26, 2022, 06:03:18 AM
Isn't it possible that Musk is not some ideological crusader, but, rather, a businessman with no moral misgivings, and thus just wants a major asset in negotiating with current and future governments?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on April 26, 2022, 06:08:09 AM
Quote from: Tamas on April 26, 2022, 06:03:18 AMIsn't it possible that Musk is not some ideological crusader, but, rather, a businessman with no moral misgivings, and thus just wants a major asset in negotiating with current and future governments?

Both of those stances seem concerning.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on April 26, 2022, 06:09:10 AM
Quote from: garbon on April 26, 2022, 06:08:09 AM
Quote from: Tamas on April 26, 2022, 06:03:18 AMIsn't it possible that Musk is not some ideological crusader, but, rather, a businessman with no moral misgivings, and thus just wants a major asset in negotiating with current and future governments?

Both of those stances seem concerning.

Of course, but it would be important to identify the correct one and avoid addressing/being obsessed with the wrong one. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on April 26, 2022, 06:12:40 AM
Quote from: Tamas on April 26, 2022, 06:09:10 AM
Quote from: garbon on April 26, 2022, 06:08:09 AM
Quote from: Tamas on April 26, 2022, 06:03:18 AMIsn't it possible that Musk is not some ideological crusader, but, rather, a businessman with no moral misgivings, and thus just wants a major asset in negotiating with current and future governments?

Both of those stances seem concerning.

Of course, but it would be important to identify the correct one and avoid addressing/being obsessed with the wrong one. 

If you optimize a platform for the far right out of conviction or other self interests, what's the difference?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on April 26, 2022, 06:14:27 AM
I'm simply choosing to take Musk at his word, that he is a "Free Speech absolutist", and anyone who comes from the same internet I did should know what that means. I feel like most of us here were very active on the Internet back in the 90s, and there's a lot of lessons from back then.

Reddit was originally run on almost free speech absolutism principles. The premise being, Reddit is not going to moderate the content of posts, instead it lets the people who run the subreddits do so. If a subreddit has a bunch of offensive and objectionable things in it, and you dislike how the sub's moderators handle it, don't visit that sub. Of course there were exceptions even at the very beginning--child porn I believe is technically a strict liability thing, so reddit couldn't just allow that on its platform and say "hey we don't moderate it", so that was basically always actioned even in the early/wild days of the early 2000s.

But back then, Reddit generally was the wild West outside of a few like outright direct criminal things it would stop. Reddit had to continually increase how much it moderated subreddits over time, until by 2022 you end up with pretty similar concepts to Twitter governing how reddit oversees the various subreddits.

Over time a few things happened, Reddit found that it couldn't make like any money whatsoever because advertisers simply didn't want to be affiliated with a platform that had all the NeoNazi and other awful shit on it that Reddit did. They also found that the subreddits affiliated with the most toxic online communities, also often correlated with subreddits causing serious problems that Reddit had to address. It ends up White Nationalists and people of that ilk are also the type who are going to engage in incessant campaigns doxxing, harassing users/moderators of other subreddits, threatening violence on other subreddits, and other things that were just creating too many problems for reddit. So eventually a lot of that just had to go away, and it did. Then reddit started to crack down even more broadly, there were some real gross subs with what I think are called "cuties" content, which is basically pedophiles sharing pictures of children that are not pornographic, but basically are being used for sexual gratification purposes by the pedophiles, that had to go too and was purged out.

Eventually the twin desires of getting the worst people in the world off your platform, removing subreddits that simply create too many moderation problems with frequent criminality, and removing the worst of the worst subs in terms of hurting relationships with advertisers...you end up with a platform just like Twitter that is pretty free for all but actually moderates a ton of stuff under the hood. If Musk is really to be held to his word, he would get rid of all that moderation and take Twitter back to "Day 0" reddit, where the only thing prohibited is things that create direct criminal liability for Twitter (aka child porn and use of twitter to plan/organize criminal actions.)

I should note back in then early days of Reddit I was a pretty active user and kind of a big believer in Reddit's almost pure free speech approach. It was the actual experience of living on the Internet through the last 25 years and seeing how that worked out that convinced me that approach doesn't work, and that Reddit was right to crack down on almost everything it has cracked down on.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on April 26, 2022, 06:48:00 AM
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FRRBy9UXIAAxg0G?format=jpg&name=small)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 26, 2022, 08:12:19 AM
Quote from: Tamas on April 26, 2022, 05:47:29 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 26, 2022, 04:27:53 AMBack in the time before time things that occupied a lot of minds Was the possibility of control aid media being concentrated in a few owners.  Concerned over that drove regulation which prevented, or at least try to prevent, that sort of concentration from occurring.

The Internet changed all that. I think mainly because government officials and politicians didn't understand what was happening. Not to be too critical, few people did.  And so the Internet was completely and regulated. Unlike all other media.

It may now be too late.

Russia and China have showed great success in regulating the Internet, hope is not lost.

My greatest concern is that younger people like you equate regulation with communism. That actually makes me think that all is lost. It is your generation that is going to elect the leaders that matter most in the coming years.


Look at the discussion we are having in this thread. The fate of one of the most important worldwide communication tools is in the hands of one man.  Whole discussion revolves around what he will or won't do.  And in that context, A comment about relation is met with a stupid retort.  We are truly fucked.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on April 26, 2022, 08:19:54 AM
How much regulation of the internet did the Soviet Union manage before its end? Non-rhetorical.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on April 26, 2022, 09:17:32 AM
Musk is who he is, as the thread title indicates.  His model of corporate leadership is not one I would personally embrace; I'm confident that he is responsible for more cardiac episodes among general counsel than all other CEOs combined.

That said - the results are hard to argue with.  He's had a lot of success building high profile businesses under challenging circumstances.

Occam's razor - he saw a business he was interested in and figured he could run it better. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 26, 2022, 10:17:07 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 26, 2022, 06:14:27 AMI should note back in then early days of Reddit I was a pretty active user and kind of a big believer in Reddit's almost pure free speech approach. It was the actual experience of living on the Internet through the last 25 years and seeing how that worked out that convinced me that approach doesn't work, and that Reddit was right to crack down on almost everything it has cracked down on.

Not sure if you were aware of this, but one of the founders of Reddit had a lengthy Twitter thread about a week ago about Musk purchasing Twitter.  Basically said that no matter how much Musk believes in free speech, the dynamics of running a large social media company force you to have a certain level of moderatio or else the entire network just will collapse.

https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1514938507407421440?s=20&t=FXMNA7faMd8wnwAjf-rBxA
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 26, 2022, 10:18:35 AM
Let's put on an optimist hat for a moment.  Is there anything objectively good that can result from Musk owning Twitter?  We're mourning it as if it isn't a steaming pile of crap currently, but it already is.  Can he actually accomplish some objective good as the owner?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 26, 2022, 10:24:20 AM
Quote from: DGuller on April 26, 2022, 10:18:35 AMLet's put on an optimist hat for a moment.  Is there anything objectively good that can result from Musk owning Twitter?  We're mourning it as if it isn't a steaming pile of crap currently, but it already is.  Can he actually accomplish some objective good as the owner?

A time-limited "Edit" button would actually be useful.  How many tweets have you seen with a typo in them, with a follow up twee correcting the typo, when surely just allowing a quick edit would be simpler?

I think Musk also floated forcing people to confirm their ID.  For whatever benefits allowing anonymous accounts brings (I follow a Canadian fighting in Ukraine on Twitter - fascinating stuff, but he never shows his face or his name), I'm pretty sure it's overwhelmed by the number of anonymous trolls who make Twitter so unpleasant.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 26, 2022, 10:25:50 AM
He could make it more profitable. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 26, 2022, 10:33:03 AM
Quote from: DGuller on April 26, 2022, 10:18:35 AMLet's put on an optimist hat for a moment.  Is there anything objectively good that can result from Musk owning Twitter?  We're mourning it as if it isn't a steaming pile of crap currently, but it already is.  Can he actually accomplish some objective good as the owner?
Absolutely.

A privately held company owned and controlled by Musk could enact some criticial changes that could improve the platform immensely.

More robust authentication of users to eliminate bots for example.

Requiring users to "prove" they are human.

One of things he mentioned was making the algorithms open source and transparent.

All of this could be very good, in fact.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on April 26, 2022, 10:38:06 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 26, 2022, 10:25:50 AMHe could make it more profitable. 

Charge money per every 1,000 followers.

Create premium paid accounts that users have to pay to reply to.

Subscription model.

More ads.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on April 26, 2022, 12:43:34 PM
Thread highlighting change in followership on Twitter in past 24 hours. Democrats, MSNBC et al losing followers in significant numbers. Meanwhile, Republicans, Fox News hosts, Jair Bolsonaro etc. see significant gains (Ron DeSantis gaining 96k followers ... )

https://twitter.com/cbouzy/status/1518953731961802752?s=20&t=RHcia4G6g_mW62wMSoug3g
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on April 26, 2022, 12:44:16 PM
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FRRq9GOWYAIE1K4?format=jpg&name=small)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on April 26, 2022, 01:30:36 PM
Quote from: FunkMonk on April 26, 2022, 10:38:06 AMCharge money per every 1,000 followers.

Create premium paid accounts that users have to pay to reply to.

Subscription model.

More ads.
I think he has talked about a subscription/no ads model before which would be really interesting and change the service that Twitter is pretty radically. It might be interesting to see a social media company that moves away from pure data harvesting that underpins the ad modela and try to make money based on its own product :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on April 26, 2022, 01:57:38 PM
At any rate, some people are happy, I suppose.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FROt9TPWUAAOR-D?format=jpg&name=small)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FROt9TOWUAIk65z?format=jpg&name=small)

(These two in the run-up to the decision - seems a bit dystopian that politicians threaten a corporation with consequences if they refuse a buyout from - how to put this delicately - an eccentric multibillionaire.)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FROt9TOXwAIjQ0u?format=jpg&name=small)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FROt9TPX0AEDTWP?format=jpg&name=small)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FROn5bxWYAIGTz0?format=jpg&name=900x900)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FROrOSCX0AYjVD1?format=jpg&name=900x900)

This gloating by these people makes it hard to imagine much good will come of this. They may be in for a rude awakening, though I somehow doubt that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on April 26, 2022, 04:27:41 PM
Well, that's bad news for democracy in the West.

Putin should have waited for 2025
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Solmyr on April 27, 2022, 05:33:30 AM
Quote from: Barrister on April 26, 2022, 10:24:20 AMI think Musk also floated forcing people to confirm their ID.  For whatever benefits allowing anonymous accounts brings (I follow a Canadian fighting in Ukraine on Twitter - fascinating stuff, but he never shows his face or his name), I'm pretty sure it's overwhelmed by the number of anonymous trolls who make Twitter so unpleasant.

A lot of members of vulnerable minorities would be forced off Twitter due to facing death threats etc. if they were there under their real names.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on April 27, 2022, 06:45:37 AM
If somebody wants to dissect Musk's take on free speech from yesterday, here it is:

QuoteBy "free speech", I simply mean that which matches the law.

I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.

If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect.

Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on April 27, 2022, 08:02:19 AM
So basically please don't lump me in with those nutters who bang on about free speech as they want to encourage the violent overthrow of the democratically elected government?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on April 27, 2022, 08:05:05 AM
Quote from: Syt on April 26, 2022, 01:57:38 PM(These two in the run-up to the decision - seems a bit dystopian that politicians threaten a corporation with consequences if they refuse a buyout from - how to put this delicately - an eccentric multibillionaire.)

It's the new Stalinist GOP led by Commissar Fidel DeSantis.  Business will be permitted to operate but only if they follow the will of the State and the Leader.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on April 27, 2022, 08:05:09 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 27, 2022, 08:02:19 AMSo basically please don't lump me in with those nutters who bang on about free speech as they want to encourage the violent overthrow of the democratically elected government?

I'd assume it means that of course I'll prevent people from transmitting illegal things but it isn't on me if people want to post hateful things online. Sort of the opposite conclusion of the EU/UK on online harms.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 08:06:24 AM
Quote from: Solmyr on April 27, 2022, 05:33:30 AM
Quote from: Barrister on April 26, 2022, 10:24:20 AMI think Musk also floated forcing people to confirm their ID.  For whatever benefits allowing anonymous accounts brings (I follow a Canadian fighting in Ukraine on Twitter - fascinating stuff, but he never shows his face or his name), I'm pretty sure it's overwhelmed by the number of anonymous trolls who make Twitter so unpleasant.

A lot of members of vulnerable minorities would be forced off Twitter due to facing death threats etc. if they were there under their real names.

I question that as being really true.

But in any case, the issue is not forcing them to reveal their real names, it is forcing them to prove that they are real to the platform.

I think there is no reason there cannot be some standards around anonymity. In general, you should be forced to "prove" you are an actual human being, and broadly who you claim to be. If an argument can be made that in some cases, that presents a risk, then force people to make THAT argument and there can be exceptions.

But 99.99% of people using Twitter don't fall into those categories. And if we want social media to stop being so damn toxic, there has to be some kind of vetting. I am all for free speech for actual human beings. Not so much for bots, Russian psyops trolls, and advertisers.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on April 27, 2022, 08:31:29 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 08:06:24 AM
Quote from: Solmyr on April 27, 2022, 05:33:30 AM
Quote from: Barrister on April 26, 2022, 10:24:20 AMI think Musk also floated forcing people to confirm their ID.  For whatever benefits allowing anonymous accounts brings (I follow a Canadian fighting in Ukraine on Twitter - fascinating stuff, but he never shows his face or his name), I'm pretty sure it's overwhelmed by the number of anonymous trolls who make Twitter so unpleasant.

A lot of members of vulnerable minorities would be forced off Twitter due to facing death threats etc. if they were there under their real names.

I question that as being really true.

But in any case, the issue is not forcing them to reveal their real names, it is forcing them to prove that they are real to the platform.

I think there is no reason there cannot be some standards around anonymity. In general, you should be forced to "prove" you are an actual human being, and broadly who you claim to be. If an argument can be made that in some cases, that presents a risk, then force people to make THAT argument and there can be exceptions.

But 99.99% of people using Twitter don't fall into those categories. And if we want social media to stop being so damn toxic, there has to be some kind of vetting. I am all for free speech for actual human beings. Not so much for bots, Russian psyops trolls, and advertisers.

I can see it if it is say some sort of captcha. But if the social media company holds onto your identify info, pretty easy to see trouble someone could be in if say their authoritarian country pushes for that information to be shared. In line with their local laws, of course.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on April 27, 2022, 08:31:45 AM
Twitter is the least lucrative of the "Majors" precisely because its user base is so small, and it's always been suspected a decent chunk of that userbase are bots. Removing all of them likely hurts Twitter's ability to sell advertising, which is at least one reason it has not been done to this point.

Also, of course Musk has no fucking clue what he's going to do and likely hasn't thought this through at all. But he doesn't have to--he's making bets by leveraging Tesla shares, which are massively overvalued because millions of idiots think Musk is a genius and are willing to value his company at hundreds of times future revenue and higher than every other carmaker in America combined (despite having like 1/65th of their production output.)

If Musk means what he says about "doing no more than the law itself" on limiting speech, that also means not limiting anonymous speech, under current free speech jurisprudence you are entitled to anonymity. Now a private company isn't bound to respect that, but Musk has said he wants no further restrictions beyond what the law requires. Well, the law doesn't require you identify yourself to engage in speech.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 27, 2022, 08:48:42 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 26, 2022, 10:33:03 AM
Quote from: DGuller on April 26, 2022, 10:18:35 AMLet's put on an optimist hat for a moment.  Is there anything objectively good that can result from Musk owning Twitter?  We're mourning it as if it isn't a steaming pile of crap currently, but it already is.  Can he actually accomplish some objective good as the owner?
Absolutely.

A privately held company owned and controlled by Musk could enact some criticial changes that could improve the platform immensely.

More robust authentication of users to eliminate bots for example.

Requiring users to "prove" they are human.

One of things he mentioned was making the algorithms open source and transparent.

All of this could be very good, in fact.

Is there anything stopping a publicly traded company from doing all of those things?

The main difference between a company owned by one shareholder and a publicly held company is the one shareholder can completely screw the company's value without having to answer to the other shareholders. That may give him more flexibility to take risks that are not as palatable to a publicly traded company. But none of the things you listed appear to be in that category.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 08:54:35 AM
Quote from: garbon on April 27, 2022, 08:31:29 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 08:06:24 AM
Quote from: Solmyr on April 27, 2022, 05:33:30 AM
Quote from: Barrister on April 26, 2022, 10:24:20 AMI think Musk also floated forcing people to confirm their ID.  For whatever benefits allowing anonymous accounts brings (I follow a Canadian fighting in Ukraine on Twitter - fascinating stuff, but he never shows his face or his name), I'm pretty sure it's overwhelmed by the number of anonymous trolls who make Twitter so unpleasant.

A lot of members of vulnerable minorities would be forced off Twitter due to facing death threats etc. if they were there under their real names.

I question that as being really true.

But in any case, the issue is not forcing them to reveal their real names, it is forcing them to prove that they are real to the platform.

I think there is no reason there cannot be some standards around anonymity. In general, you should be forced to "prove" you are an actual human being, and broadly who you claim to be. If an argument can be made that in some cases, that presents a risk, then force people to make THAT argument and there can be exceptions.

But 99.99% of people using Twitter don't fall into those categories. And if we want social media to stop being so damn toxic, there has to be some kind of vetting. I am all for free speech for actual human beings. Not so much for bots, Russian psyops trolls, and advertisers.

I can see it if it is say some sort of captcha. But if the social media company holds onto your identify info, pretty easy to see trouble someone could be in if say their authoritarian country pushes for that information to be shared. In line with their local laws, of course.
I don't think we can set our standards around the dangers authoritarian countries might create. If China, as an example, want to pass laws that say "Twitter has to tell us how these people are" then Twitter has to decide if it wants to do business in China at all.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on April 27, 2022, 08:56:43 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 08:06:24 AM
Quote from: Solmyr on April 27, 2022, 05:33:30 AM
Quote from: Barrister on April 26, 2022, 10:24:20 AMI think Musk also floated forcing people to confirm their ID.  For whatever benefits allowing anonymous accounts brings (I follow a Canadian fighting in Ukraine on Twitter - fascinating stuff, but he never shows his face or his name), I'm pretty sure it's overwhelmed by the number of anonymous trolls who make Twitter so unpleasant.

A lot of members of vulnerable minorities would be forced off Twitter due to facing death threats etc. if they were there under their real names.

I question that as being really true.

But in any case, the issue is not forcing them to reveal their real names, it is forcing them to prove that they are real to the platform.

I think there is no reason there cannot be some standards around anonymity. In general, you should be forced to "prove" you are an actual human being, and broadly who you claim to be. If an argument can be made that in some cases, that presents a risk, then force people to make THAT argument and there can be exceptions.

But 99.99% of people using Twitter don't fall into those categories. And if we want social media to stop being so damn toxic, there has to be some kind of vetting. I am all for free speech for actual human beings. Not so much for bots, Russian psyops trolls, and advertisers.

I mean, back at brexit ref time I had people threatening me with physical violence.
And I'm a straight white guy in the UK.
To be a queer black woman in the US...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 08:58:53 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 27, 2022, 08:48:42 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 26, 2022, 10:33:03 AM
Quote from: DGuller on April 26, 2022, 10:18:35 AMLet's put on an optimist hat for a moment.  Is there anything objectively good that can result from Musk owning Twitter?  We're mourning it as if it isn't a steaming pile of crap currently, but it already is.  Can he actually accomplish some objective good as the owner?
Absolutely.

A privately held company owned and controlled by Musk could enact some criticial changes that could improve the platform immensely.

More robust authentication of users to eliminate bots for example.

Requiring users to "prove" they are human.

One of things he mentioned was making the algorithms open source and transparent.

All of this could be very good, in fact.

Is there anything stopping a publicly traded company from doing all of those things?

The main difference between a company owned by one shareholder and a publicly held company is the one shareholder can completely screw the company's value without having to answer to the other shareholders. That may give him more flexibility to take risks that are not as palatable to a publicly traded company. But none of the things you listed appear to be in that category.
Nothing but the will to do so.

You are right, there isn't anything structural to stop any of that, other then the boards fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders.

But the question was "Is there anything objectively good that can result from Musk owning Twitter". Yes, there are things that *could* be objectively good as a result.

Clearly the people who own the company can direct the companies strategy and tactics. Unless you presume that everything Twitter does now is as good as it possibly can be, then certainly changing who makes those decisions (and their priorities) CAN be good.

Will they be good? That seems pretty damn unlikely.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 09:01:19 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 27, 2022, 08:56:43 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 08:06:24 AM
Quote from: Solmyr on April 27, 2022, 05:33:30 AM
Quote from: Barrister on April 26, 2022, 10:24:20 AMI think Musk also floated forcing people to confirm their ID.  For whatever benefits allowing anonymous accounts brings (I follow a Canadian fighting in Ukraine on Twitter - fascinating stuff, but he never shows his face or his name), I'm pretty sure it's overwhelmed by the number of anonymous trolls who make Twitter so unpleasant.

A lot of members of vulnerable minorities would be forced off Twitter due to facing death threats etc. if they were there under their real names.

I question that as being really true.

But in any case, the issue is not forcing them to reveal their real names, it is forcing them to prove that they are real to the platform.

I think there is no reason there cannot be some standards around anonymity. In general, you should be forced to "prove" you are an actual human being, and broadly who you claim to be. If an argument can be made that in some cases, that presents a risk, then force people to make THAT argument and there can be exceptions.

But 99.99% of people using Twitter don't fall into those categories. And if we want social media to stop being so damn toxic, there has to be some kind of vetting. I am all for free speech for actual human beings. Not so much for bots, Russian psyops trolls, and advertisers.

I mean, back at brexit ref time I had people threatening me with physical violence.
And I'm a straight white guy in the UK.
To be a queer black woman in the US...
I think the number of queer black woman in the US who are actually in danger from their Twitter activity, even if their identity was known (and that is not what is being discussed anyway) is statistically close to zero.

People threaten people on the internet with violence all the time. One of the ways they get away with that (which is illegal, btw) is that they are anonymous and the law cannot actually respond to their illegal activity because of that anonymity.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:06:57 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 09:01:19 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 27, 2022, 08:56:43 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 08:06:24 AM
Quote from: Solmyr on April 27, 2022, 05:33:30 AM
Quote from: Barrister on April 26, 2022, 10:24:20 AMI think Musk also floated forcing people to confirm their ID.  For whatever benefits allowing anonymous accounts brings (I follow a Canadian fighting in Ukraine on Twitter - fascinating stuff, but he never shows his face or his name), I'm pretty sure it's overwhelmed by the number of anonymous trolls who make Twitter so unpleasant.

A lot of members of vulnerable minorities would be forced off Twitter due to facing death threats etc. if they were there under their real names.

I question that as being really true.

But in any case, the issue is not forcing them to reveal their real names, it is forcing them to prove that they are real to the platform.

I think there is no reason there cannot be some standards around anonymity. In general, you should be forced to "prove" you are an actual human being, and broadly who you claim to be. If an argument can be made that in some cases, that presents a risk, then force people to make THAT argument and there can be exceptions.

But 99.99% of people using Twitter don't fall into those categories. And if we want social media to stop being so damn toxic, there has to be some kind of vetting. I am all for free speech for actual human beings. Not so much for bots, Russian psyops trolls, and advertisers.

I mean, back at brexit ref time I had people threatening me with physical violence.
And I'm a straight white guy in the UK.
To be a queer black woman in the US...
I think the number of queer black woman in the US who are actually in danger from their Twitter activity, even if their identity was known (and that is not what is being discussed anyway) is statistically close to zero.

People threaten people on the internet with violence all the time. One of the ways they get away with that (which is illegal, btw) is that they are anonymous and the law cannot actually respond to their illegal activity because of that anonymity.



If a criminal doesn't introduce himself the police in the US cannot respond to a crime?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on April 27, 2022, 09:09:26 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 27, 2022, 08:48:42 AMThe main difference between a company owned by one shareholder and a publicly held company is the one shareholder can completely screw the company's value without having to answer to the other shareholders.

LOL.

QuoteThat may give him more flexibility to take risks that are not as palatable to a publicly traded company. But none of the things you listed appear to be in that category.

Last year twitter lost $221 million. The year before it lost over $1.1 billion.

Okay, maybe it is high growth tech company and losses aren't such a big deal. Its free cash flows have gotten worse each of the last three years.

Maybe it needs to be taking some big swings?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 09:10:14 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:06:57 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 09:01:19 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 27, 2022, 08:56:43 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 08:06:24 AM
Quote from: Solmyr on April 27, 2022, 05:33:30 AM
Quote from: Barrister on April 26, 2022, 10:24:20 AMI think Musk also floated forcing people to confirm their ID.  For whatever benefits allowing anonymous accounts brings (I follow a Canadian fighting in Ukraine on Twitter - fascinating stuff, but he never shows his face or his name), I'm pretty sure it's overwhelmed by the number of anonymous trolls who make Twitter so unpleasant.

A lot of members of vulnerable minorities would be forced off Twitter due to facing death threats etc. if they were there under their real names.

I question that as being really true.

But in any case, the issue is not forcing them to reveal their real names, it is forcing them to prove that they are real to the platform.

I think there is no reason there cannot be some standards around anonymity. In general, you should be forced to "prove" you are an actual human being, and broadly who you claim to be. If an argument can be made that in some cases, that presents a risk, then force people to make THAT argument and there can be exceptions.

But 99.99% of people using Twitter don't fall into those categories. And if we want social media to stop being so damn toxic, there has to be some kind of vetting. I am all for free speech for actual human beings. Not so much for bots, Russian psyops trolls, and advertisers.

I mean, back at brexit ref time I had people threatening me with physical violence.
And I'm a straight white guy in the UK.
To be a queer black woman in the US...
I think the number of queer black woman in the US who are actually in danger from their Twitter activity, even if their identity was known (and that is not what is being discussed anyway) is statistically close to zero.

People threaten people on the internet with violence all the time. One of the ways they get away with that (which is illegal, btw) is that they are anonymous and the law cannot actually respond to their illegal activity because of that anonymity.



If a criminal doesn't introduce himself the police in the US cannot respond to a crime?
Of course, that is definitely what I just said.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:11:01 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 09:10:14 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:06:57 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 09:01:19 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 27, 2022, 08:56:43 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 08:06:24 AM
Quote from: Solmyr on April 27, 2022, 05:33:30 AM
Quote from: Barrister on April 26, 2022, 10:24:20 AMI think Musk also floated forcing people to confirm their ID.  For whatever benefits allowing anonymous accounts brings (I follow a Canadian fighting in Ukraine on Twitter - fascinating stuff, but he never shows his face or his name), I'm pretty sure it's overwhelmed by the number of anonymous trolls who make Twitter so unpleasant.

A lot of members of vulnerable minorities would be forced off Twitter due to facing death threats etc. if they were there under their real names.

I question that as being really true.

But in any case, the issue is not forcing them to reveal their real names, it is forcing them to prove that they are real to the platform.

I think there is no reason there cannot be some standards around anonymity. In general, you should be forced to "prove" you are an actual human being, and broadly who you claim to be. If an argument can be made that in some cases, that presents a risk, then force people to make THAT argument and there can be exceptions.

But 99.99% of people using Twitter don't fall into those categories. And if we want social media to stop being so damn toxic, there has to be some kind of vetting. I am all for free speech for actual human beings. Not so much for bots, Russian psyops trolls, and advertisers.

I mean, back at brexit ref time I had people threatening me with physical violence.
And I'm a straight white guy in the UK.
To be a queer black woman in the US...
I think the number of queer black woman in the US who are actually in danger from their Twitter activity, even if their identity was known (and that is not what is being discussed anyway) is statistically close to zero.

People threaten people on the internet with violence all the time. One of the ways they get away with that (which is illegal, btw) is that they are anonymous and the law cannot actually respond to their illegal activity because of that anonymity.



If a criminal doesn't introduce himself the police in the US cannot respond to a crime?
Of course, that is definitely what I just said.

OK.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on April 27, 2022, 09:11:49 AM
I'm not actually convinced Twitter's baseline business model is viable, there are actually a number of current generation companies where I hold that opinion--the Food delivery apps for example all appear to operate genuinely non-viable businesses that are simply being propped up by investors lusting for growth, and all of those apps have the imprimatur of being "tech" companies (even though in many ways they are really not), because they're mostly based in tech hubs and center their business around a smartphone app.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on April 27, 2022, 09:16:36 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 27, 2022, 09:11:49 AMI'm not actually convinced Twitter's baseline business model is viable, there are actually a number of current generation companies where I hold that opinion--the Food delivery apps for example all appear to operate genuinely non-viable businesses that are simply being propped up by investors lusting for growth, and all of those apps have the imprimatur of being "tech" companies (even though in many ways they are really not), because they're mostly based in tech hubs and center their business around a smartphone app.

During the 2000 tech bubble, a local startup called "kudzu" started grocery delivery. It had no minimum and no delivery charge. My roommate and I at the time would use it for our groceries on a item by item basis. Watching TV and we wanted to drink an Arizona iced tea? We'd order two and 30-45 minutes later we'd have two teas. It was pretty awesome until the tech bubble went bust and kudzu went bankrupt.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 27, 2022, 09:21:44 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:11:01 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 09:10:14 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:06:57 AMIf a criminal doesn't introduce himself the police in the US cannot respond to a crime?
Of course, that is definitely what I just said.

OK.
It sure is nice to be on a platform that allows you to write more than one sentence.  :wub:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:26:51 AM
Quote from: DGuller on April 27, 2022, 09:21:44 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:11:01 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 09:10:14 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:06:57 AMIf a criminal doesn't introduce himself the police in the US cannot respond to a crime?
Of course, that is definitely what I just said.

OK.
It sure is nice to be on a platform that allows you to write more than one sentence.  :wub:

What happens if Musk buys Languish though?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on April 27, 2022, 09:27:41 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 27, 2022, 08:31:45 AM1)
Also, of course Musk has no fucking clue what he's going to do and likely hasn't thought this through at all. But he doesn't have to--he's making bets by leveraging Tesla shares, which are massively overvalued because millions of idiots think Musk is a genius and are willing to value his company at hundreds of times future revenue and higher than every other carmaker in America combined (despite having like 1/65th of their production output.)

2)
If Musk means what he says about "doing no more than the law itself" on limiting speech, that also means not limiting anonymous speech, under current free speech jurisprudence you are entitled to anonymity. Now a private company isn't bound to respect that, but Musk has said he wants no further restrictions beyond what the law requires. Well, the law doesn't require you identify yourself to engage in speech.

1) He is a genius.  No social skills at all, possibly due to his asperger, but he is a pretty smart guy.  He's also quite arrogant, which comes with being a multibillionaire genius.

2) Twitter operates in many countries.  If Elon Musk will go as far as the law allows it to, does it mean it will censor accounts from a country where hate speech is illegal, or where it's illegal to criticize a government's decisions?  I mean "Fuck the J* and the N*" is perfectly legal speech in the US.  In Canada, I'm entering hate speech territory (a little more complex than that obviously, but you get the gist of it).  Will Twitter protect my free speech or abide by Canadian laws where I am located and where Twitter likely has servers?

I think it's a little more complex than what Republicans envision.  Also, Twitter didn't start censoring speech because they were authoritarians.  They did it because it made sense for their business, like Reddit.  It's always a question of how many people you lose vs how many you gains.  4Chan/8Chan stuff like that get talked a lot, but they don't have the user base to generate billions in revenue.  Will Musk accept the price?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on April 27, 2022, 09:28:28 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:26:51 AM
Quote from: DGuller on April 27, 2022, 09:21:44 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:11:01 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 09:10:14 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:06:57 AMIf a criminal doesn't introduce himself the police in the US cannot respond to a crime?
Of course, that is definitely what I just said.

OK.
It sure is nice to be on a platform that allows you to write more than one sentence.  :wub:

What happens if Musk buys Languish though?
We will become a haven of free speech where people are free to troll and insult each other at will without moderation intervention.

Basically, business as usual.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on April 27, 2022, 09:34:35 AM
Quote from: viper37 on April 27, 2022, 09:28:28 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:26:51 AM
Quote from: DGuller on April 27, 2022, 09:21:44 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:11:01 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 09:10:14 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:06:57 AMIf a criminal doesn't introduce himself the police in the US cannot respond to a crime?
Of course, that is definitely what I just said.

OK.
It sure is nice to be on a platform that allows you to write more than one sentence.  :wub:

What happens if Musk buys Languish though?
We will become a haven of free speech where people are free to troll and insult each other at will without moderation intervention.

Basically, business as usual.

Pretty sure our active mod wouldn't let us descend into 4chan chaos currently. ;)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on April 27, 2022, 09:34:48 AM
I think the core problem with Twitter is the people that get the most value out of it are people with huge numbers of followers, because it is essentially a form of "free" advertising. The issue is--those are the same people/entities who Twitter in theory probably needs to try and capture revenue from, and they have a decreased interest in paying for advertising when most of the value they get out of the platform is offered for free.

That could certainly mean that a pay-per-follower or pay-per-tweet model for large accounts might be a way to capture more revenue, but I'm not sure at a sufficient level to make Twitter a highly profitable or even moderately profitable company.

The big difference between Twitter and other platforms is it mostly serves a lot of people who want to listen to a few, more important people--be it a news source they care about, a celebrity, a politician etc. This means people have much less of a reason to "engage" on Twitter in ways that Facebook for example heavily monetizes. Facebook as a platform was designed to leverage on two powerful human instincts--the desire for people to toot their own horn to people they barely know and extended family, and the desire of people to be nosy and follow what people they barely know and extended family do. This leads to lots of "engagement" on Facebook in ways that create reams of personal data that Facebook can use to better monetize its users. It also lead to much higher user growth on Facebook than on Twitter.

Instagram, which is also owned by Facebook, leverages a desire for people to consume shared images and to share images, stripped out of the "cruft" of a traditional platform like...Facebook. But it actually still creates good user data based on what type of images people like to consume and etc, you can build a customer profile.

Twitter in many ways looks more like a quasi-RSS feed, with far less aptitude for building such profiles. There are certainly millions of "ordinary people" inanely tweeting nonsense, but those tweets aren't producing much value because they are rarely tied to the sort of robust profile a Facebook account has. In another sense, you could say "well getting rid of anonymity would somewhat fix this", and it would probably make Twitter profiles more valuable per unit to advertisers, but it would also probably significantly reduce Twitter's total number of active accounts--because again, many experts think a non-negligible number of Twitter accounts are dupe accounts, bot accounts etc. It is a genuine question as to whether "cleaning that up" and the resultant decline in accounts, will result in a net positive as to how Twitter can market itself to advertisers.

Additionally, the way the far right is gleefully looking forward to "taking over" Twitter is a big risk to all of this. I can't frankly think of any platform in which the far right dominates by spewing nonsense, that has survived with a healthy population. Such environments almost always become closed to / uninteresting to outsiders--see how 4chan / 8chan developed (not that those sites were ever intended to be profitable.)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on April 27, 2022, 09:35:14 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:26:51 AM
Quote from: DGuller on April 27, 2022, 09:21:44 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:11:01 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 09:10:14 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:06:57 AMIf a criminal doesn't introduce himself the police in the US cannot respond to a crime?
Of course, that is definitely what I just said.

OK.
It sure is nice to be on a platform that allows you to write more than one sentence.  :wub:

What happens if Musk buys Languish though?

I see someone missed post 22275 of a certain thread.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:42:45 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on April 27, 2022, 09:35:14 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:26:51 AM
Quote from: DGuller on April 27, 2022, 09:21:44 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:11:01 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 09:10:14 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:06:57 AMIf a criminal doesn't introduce himself the police in the US cannot respond to a crime?
Of course, that is definitely what I just said.

OK.
It sure is nice to be on a platform that allows you to write more than one sentence.  :wub:

What happens if Musk buys Languish though?

I see someone missed post 22275 of a certain thread.

I'm sorry.

Have you guys noticed any differences since Musk bought Languish?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 27, 2022, 09:46:43 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:26:51 AMPretty sure our active mod wouldn't let us descend into 4chan chaos currently. ;)

I'd actually enjoy wielding the ban-hammer with CdM-esque abandon, at least for while.

I suspect Musk would fire me fairly quickly, though.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on April 27, 2022, 10:11:55 AM
Interesting take from the Guardian's Tech Correspondent - which I basically agree with - adapted from his Twitter thread and then sent in his newsletter (both platforms captured by the far-right for "free speech" reasons :lol:):
QuoteOK, I was wrong: I really thought Musk was bullshitting. But he is, as tech analyst Benedict Evans puts it, "a bullshitter who delivers". He doesn't care if things are true when he says them, but sometimes makes them true anyway.
    We can file "I'm going to buy Twitter for $54.20" alongside "I'll sell a flamethrower", "I'll start a tunnelling business called the Boring Company", and "I'll call my baby X Æ A-12" as things that didn't sound sincere but apparently were.
    What next for Twitter, though? I think it's still the case that the model for Musk is "billionaire buying a sports team" rather than "billionaire investing in a high-yielding asset" – but his bankers will be demanding a return.
    That means limited scope to make fundamental changes. For all he discussed in now-deleted tweets about removing adverts and improving the subscription offering, those things cost money, and he needs to boost Twitter's profit, not shrink it.
    So the changes we should expect fall into two camps: minor tweaks demanded by a notorious power user – and shifts in matters of principle, which are free to make and only likely to affect the bottom line in diffuse ways.

    On the former, Twitter has already built an edit button that it could enable at the flick of a switch. He's also talked of "authenticating all humans", likely by offering the "verified" label to anyone who wants to send in proof of ID.
    As for the matters of principle, Musk has been clear: "Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated."
    There are obvious high profile changes he could order – chief among them demanding the reinstatement of Donald Trump's account (though the former president has said he doesn't want to come back).
    Musk could also fiddle with Twitter's terms of service. Perhaps a man who famously called the Covid panic "dumb", sued to avoid lockdowns and said he wouldn't get vaccinated might oppose bans on Covid misinformation, for instance.
    But most free speech controversies happen at the coal face of a moderation queue, where a part-time owner (remember, Musk still owns and runs SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, and the Boring Company) is unlikely to spend much time.
    So expect the free-speech push to largely happen at the level of extravagant public interventions over high-profile cases. If you're famous enough that your Twitter ban catches Musk's attention, you might have a good shot at a reversal.
    Musk has also suggested that "the twitter algorithm" needs to be made open source. This might happen quickly, but I don't think it's likely to affect much: random chunks of computer code being published that refer to other bits of code that haven't been published tells us ... nothing?
    And while he wants Twitter to be a free-speech platform, the direction of travel is against him, especially overseas. What is he going to do when Twitter's lawyers tell him about the UK's Online Safety Act, which requires all sorts of content moderation? Or Germany's NetzDG?
    Or, for that matter, China. As the Wall Street Journal's Mike Forsythe points out, Twitter is now owned by someone with major manufacturing and sales dependencies in the PRC. What happens if Musk is quietly told to dox a Chinese dissident or see Teslas banned from sale?
    And so people are leaving Twitter. Not in their millions, yet, but certainly in their thousands. As a very unscientific datapoint: I've lost 30 followers since the acquisition was confirmed. Even scaled up to the whole platform, that's not enough to worry Twitter, yet, but it's telling.
    The question is, where does a Twitter power user go? The popular answer seems to be Mastodon, a decentralised, "federated" clone of Twitter that is spread over thousands of volunteer-run instances, each of which can interact with each other, or not, as they see fit.
    "Since August 2018 I have run a social network site called Friend Camp for about 50 of my friends," writes Darius Kazemi, the creator of one such Mastodon instance. "I think Friend Camp is a really nice place ... and I'd like to see more places like Friend Camp on the internet."
    Personally, I like Mastodon in theory, but in practice, I fear fragmenting a Twitter-style social network over untold instances feels a bit too much like responding to Microsoft putting adverts in Windows by recommending Linux on the desktop.
    Others have mooted Tumblr, which is darkly humorous because a huge chunk of Tumblr's power users moved over to Twitter in 2017 after an unpopular acquisition led to changes in moderation that were disliked by some of the site's loudest communities. Turn the volume up, Elton John.
    I don't think it's possible for a site to be both a replacement for Twitter, and a healthy social network, because I no longer think it's possible for a healthy social network to exist that connects the world.
    "A lot of the internet is 10,000 people bullying someone who deserves to be bullied by maybe 1 to 3 people" has become a foundational piece of social network analysis for me, and it's not clear how Musk owning Twitter makes that worse, nor how decentralised replacements fix that.
    But back to Musk. What should we look out for in the weeks to come? First is a staff exodus at Twitter. Not (just) because he's as hated as he is loved, but because going private changes, and likely reduces, the compensation for people who used to get paid in part in stock options.
    Second is a gentle tap on the brakes of some of the site's more controversial moderation decisions. Some high-profile bans will be rescinded, some phrases will disappear from Twitter's terms of service, but the day-to-day experience will take much longer to shift.

    In the mid-to-long term, I wonder if there's cause for optimism. The story of Twitter over the last decade has been of a site stuck in a fundamental disconnect between its incredible socio-cultural importance, and the underperforming business that owns and runs it.
    For the first time, Twitter is owned by someone who thinks the most important part of the site is the conversation, not the adverts that are delivered in between. Maybe he'll ruin everything, but at least he's focusing on the right thing.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on April 27, 2022, 10:48:57 AM
Quote from: garbon on April 27, 2022, 09:34:35 AM
Quote from: viper37 on April 27, 2022, 09:28:28 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:26:51 AM
Quote from: DGuller on April 27, 2022, 09:21:44 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:11:01 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 09:10:14 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 27, 2022, 09:06:57 AMIf a criminal doesn't introduce himself the police in the US cannot respond to a crime?
Of course, that is definitely what I just said.

OK.
It sure is nice to be on a platform that allows you to write more than one sentence.  :wub:

What happens if Musk buys Languish though?
We will become a haven of free speech where people are free to troll and insult each other at will without moderation intervention.

Basically, business as usual.

Pretty sure our active mod wouldn't let us descend into 4chan chaos currently. ;)
well, ok we won't sink that low, that's for certain :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 27, 2022, 11:04:28 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 08:58:53 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 27, 2022, 08:48:42 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 26, 2022, 10:33:03 AM
Quote from: DGuller on April 26, 2022, 10:18:35 AMLet's put on an optimist hat for a moment.  Is there anything objectively good that can result from Musk owning Twitter?  We're mourning it as if it isn't a steaming pile of crap currently, but it already is.  Can he actually accomplish some objective good as the owner?
Absolutely.

A privately held company owned and controlled by Musk could enact some criticial changes that could improve the platform immensely.

More robust authentication of users to eliminate bots for example.

Requiring users to "prove" they are human.

One of things he mentioned was making the algorithms open source and transparent.

All of this could be very good, in fact.

Is there anything stopping a publicly traded company from doing all of those things?

The main difference between a company owned by one shareholder and a publicly held company is the one shareholder can completely screw the company's value without having to answer to the other shareholders. That may give him more flexibility to take risks that are not as palatable to a publicly traded company. But none of the things you listed appear to be in that category.
Nothing but the will to do so.

You are right, there isn't anything structural to stop any of that, other then the boards fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders.

But the question was "Is there anything objectively good that can result from Musk owning Twitter". Yes, there are things that *could* be objectively good as a result.

Clearly the people who own the company can direct the companies strategy and tactics. Unless you presume that everything Twitter does now is as good as it possibly can be, then certainly changing who makes those decisions (and their priorities) CAN be good.

Will they be good? That seems pretty damn unlikely.

But to quibble with your use of the word "objective" - isn't what you are saying simply speculation that he will make things better than the current management of the company?  That isn't that just you saying you think he is going to do things you agree with?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 11:08:09 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 27, 2022, 11:04:28 AMBut to quibble with your use of the word "objective" - isn't what you are saying simply speculation that he will make things better than the current management of the company?  That isn't that just you saying you think he is going to do things you agree with?

I am not at all speculating that he will make things better, I am answering the question asked, which was is there some optimistic scenario under which this could be a good thing.

Obviously, to answer that I am going to define "good things" as being things I think are good, and hence I agree with. But you could also imagine his control allowing him to do bad things I don't agree with, or things that I think are bad and you think are good. 

By "objectively good" are you saying things that everyone in the world agree is good? Then I guess no, there is likely nothing he or anyone could ever do that are "objectively" good.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 27, 2022, 11:46:33 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 27, 2022, 09:11:49 AMI'm not actually convinced Twitter's baseline business model is viable, there are actually a number of current generation companies where I hold that opinion--the Food delivery apps for example all appear to operate genuinely non-viable businesses that are simply being propped up by investors lusting for growth, and all of those apps have the imprimatur of being "tech" companies (even though in many ways they are really not), because they're mostly based in tech hubs and center their business around a smartphone app.

I don't think there's any question that Twitter is viable.  It had revenue of $5 billion dollars in 2021, and has been in business for over a decade.  Twitter is not Pets.com, which sold pet food at a substantial loss and hoped to make up for it on volume.

The more important question though is whether it will support the $44 billion valuation.  Musk is borrowing a lot of money to finance the purchase, and it's doubtful that Twitter can make enough money to finance that debt.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on April 27, 2022, 11:53:08 AM
Quote from: Barrister on April 27, 2022, 11:46:33 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 27, 2022, 09:11:49 AMI'm not actually convinced Twitter's baseline business model is viable, there are actually a number of current generation companies where I hold that opinion--the Food delivery apps for example all appear to operate genuinely non-viable businesses that are simply being propped up by investors lusting for growth, and all of those apps have the imprimatur of being "tech" companies (even though in many ways they are really not), because they're mostly based in tech hubs and center their business around a smartphone app.

I don't think there's any question that Twitter is viable.  It had revenue of $5 billion dollars in 2021, and has been in business for over a decade.  Twitter is not Pets.com, which sold pet food at a substantial loss and hoped to make up for it on volume.

The more important question though is whether it will support the $44 billion valuation.  Musk is borrowing a lot of money to finance the purchase, and it's doubtful that Twitter can make enough money to finance that debt.

Longterm viability is not just a question of revenue Padawan, but profits. Twitter has had trouble demonstrating it can operate profitably, which means much of its valuation is a future bet that at some point Twitter is going to figure that out and be worth its lofty valuation. That is a thesis that can make speculators in shares wealthy, but is not guaranteed to make the business viable.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 27, 2022, 12:05:48 PM
After a bit of sleep and reflection, this is my take:

On the balance, I remain a non-fan of Elon Musk and I expect he'll magnify the negative impact that Twitter has on society without doing much to improve the positive impact. I also expect he'll wield the influence he has to advance billionaire interests, undermine protections for those in weaker positions in society, and put a bit of a thumb on the scale in favour of the GOP.

It'll be interesting to see how effective he is, and whether he can make his money back in any real way.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 27, 2022, 12:54:55 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 11:08:09 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 27, 2022, 11:04:28 AMBut to quibble with your use of the word "objective" - isn't what you are saying simply speculation that he will make things better than the current management of the company?  That isn't that just you saying you think he is going to do things you agree with?

I am not at all speculating that he will make things better, I am answering the question asked, which was is there some optimistic scenario under which this could be a good thing.

Obviously, to answer that I am going to define "good things" as being things I think are good, and hence I agree with. But you could also imagine his control allowing him to do bad things I don't agree with, or things that I think are bad and you think are good.

By "objectively good" are you saying things that everyone in the world agree is good? Then I guess no, there is likely nothing he or anyone could ever do that are "objectively" good.

Ok another quibble - the question your were answering, as you phrased it was, "But the question was "Is there anything objectively good that can result from Musk owning Twitter"."  and your answer, Yes, there are things that *could* be objectively good as a result."

Putting aside the trickier question of whether such a thing even exists - by definition an objective good is something independent of what you personally think is good. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 12:58:45 PM
OK. So you problem is with DG's question asked, not with my answer. Perhaps bring it up with him?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 27, 2022, 01:00:02 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 12:58:45 PMOK. So you problem is with DG's question asked, not with my answer. Perhaps bring it up with him?


I am not sure how you got that understanding from me pointing out that your answer used the word "objective" improperly.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 27, 2022, 01:04:59 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 27, 2022, 11:53:08 AM
Quote from: Barrister on April 27, 2022, 11:46:33 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 27, 2022, 09:11:49 AMI'm not actually convinced Twitter's baseline business model is viable, there are actually a number of current generation companies where I hold that opinion--the Food delivery apps for example all appear to operate genuinely non-viable businesses that are simply being propped up by investors lusting for growth, and all of those apps have the imprimatur of being "tech" companies (even though in many ways they are really not), because they're mostly based in tech hubs and center their business around a smartphone app.

I don't think there's any question that Twitter is viable.  It had revenue of $5 billion dollars in 2021, and has been in business for over a decade.  Twitter is not Pets.com, which sold pet food at a substantial loss and hoped to make up for it on volume.

The more important question though is whether it will support the $44 billion valuation.  Musk is borrowing a lot of money to finance the purchase, and it's doubtful that Twitter can make enough money to finance that debt.

Longterm viability is not just a question of revenue Padawan, but profits. Twitter has had trouble demonstrating it can operate profitably, which means much of its valuation is a future bet that at some point Twitter is going to figure that out and be worth its lofty valuation. That is a thesis that can make speculators in shares wealthy, but is not guaranteed to make the business viable.

Well aware of the distinction between revenue and profits. :contract:

Twitter has operated profitably in the past.  Twitter has run a positive EBITDA since 2016.  Quickly looking at their balance sheet they do appear to be in growth mode - attempting to grow the business at the expense of profitability today - all pretty standard Silicon Valley stuff.

I'm not saying Musk is making a wise investment.  I'm not saying Twitter is going to become massively more valuable.  But nothing to me indicates that Twitter is not a viable business going forward as long as Musk or other management doesn't drive it into the ditch.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 01:11:08 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 27, 2022, 01:00:02 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 12:58:45 PMOK. So you problem is with DG's question asked, not with my answer. Perhaps bring it up with him?


I am not sure how you got that understanding from me pointing out that your answer used the word "objective" improperly.
I was answering a question - can there be an optimistic scenario where there is an objective good from Musk taking over Twitter.

If you define "objective good" as a good that nobody disagrees with, then either your example of good is very vague, like "increase in human knowledge" or "greater justice" in which case it cannot really be answered specifically, or it means something more like "a good that can be measured and most people would agree is a benefit in net evaluation". In that case, it can be answered by reasonable people who are willing to accept that their definition of those things might not always align perfectly, but even so there is a discussion to be had.

Why you find this argument about the "improper" use of the term objective is interesting at all is beyond me. I am confident that everyone, including you, knew exactly what was being discussed. Have a nice day.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on April 27, 2022, 01:14:21 PM
Quote from: Barrister on April 27, 2022, 01:04:59 PMTwitter has operated profitably in the past.  Twitter has run a positive EBITDA since 2016.

Not the same thing.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 27, 2022, 01:15:59 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on April 27, 2022, 01:14:21 PM
Quote from: Barrister on April 27, 2022, 01:04:59 PMTwitter has operated profitably in the past.  Twitter has run a positive EBITDA since 2016.

Not the same thing.

:huh:

Which is why I put them in two separate sentences. Twitter ran a profit in 2018 and 2019.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on April 27, 2022, 01:26:44 PM
Last three years was: 1.4B, -1.1B, -0.2B.  They haven't run one since 2019.
That year they got the benefit of a $1 billion tax credit.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 27, 2022, 01:48:12 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on April 27, 2022, 01:26:44 PMLast three years was: 1.4B, -1.1B, -0.2B.  They haven't run one since 2019.
That year they got the benefit of a $1 billion tax credit.

:huh:

You're not normally so obtuse Minsky.

When I said "Twitter ran a profit in 2018 and 2019." I think it was pretty clear they hadn't run one since.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 27, 2022, 02:05:40 PM
So despite Twitter agreeing to sell itself to Musk for $54.20 per share, the current stock price of Twitter is $48.65.  It seems like you could make easy money buying stock today in order to sell to Musk in a few months.

Unless you think the deal doesn't go ahead...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 27, 2022, 02:59:45 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 01:11:08 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 27, 2022, 01:00:02 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 12:58:45 PMOK. So you problem is with DG's question asked, not with my answer. Perhaps bring it up with him?


I am not sure how you got that understanding from me pointing out that your answer used the word "objective" improperly.
I was answering a question - can there be an optimistic scenario where there is an objective good from Musk taking over Twitter.

If you define "objective good" as a good that nobody disagrees with, then either your example of good is very vague, like "increase in human knowledge" or "greater justice" in which case it cannot really be answered specifically, or it means something more like "a good that can be measured and most people would agree is a benefit in net evaluation". In that case, it can be answered by reasonable people who are willing to accept that their definition of those things might not always align perfectly, but even so there is a discussion to be had.

Why you find this argument about the "improper" use of the term objective is interesting at all is beyond me. I am confident that everyone, including you, knew exactly what was being discussed. Have a nice day.

You have some serious reading comprehension problems today.  Bye.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 03:18:37 PM
Well that was fascinating.

But back to DG's original post - it's not like Twitter NOW isn't a total disaster from the standpoint of society and it's role in polarization and the dumbing down of discourse.

There is a perfectly reasonable argument to be made that its bad enough that Musk can't make it that much worse....
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on April 27, 2022, 04:02:02 PM
Quote from: Barrister on April 27, 2022, 02:05:40 PMSo despite Twitter agreeing to sell itself to Musk for $54.20 per share, the current stock price of Twitter is $48.65.  It seems like you could make easy money buying stock today in order to sell to Musk in a few months.

Unless you think the deal doesn't go ahead...

Merger arb.  Musk has a lot of cash to raise to close.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 27, 2022, 04:48:40 PM
That price does seem to imply a non-insignificant probability of the deal falling through, doesn't it?  Am I correct in reasoning that if the normal price of Twitter share, pre-Musk, were $40, and the Musk buyout price is $54, then the price of $49 implies about a 1 in 3 chance of the deal not being completed?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 28, 2022, 07:40:19 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK4yYeh-ygg

Large changes in # of followers after takeover annoucement.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on April 28, 2022, 07:46:52 AM
Posted a Twitter thread about follower changes (left wing down, right wing up) bit further upthread. Saw a comment it might have been a bot realignment?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 28, 2022, 07:49:49 AM
What does a bot master get out of being a follower?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 28, 2022, 07:52:59 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 28, 2022, 07:49:49 AMWhat does a bot master get out of being a follower?
Payment from the person being followed?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on April 28, 2022, 07:55:16 AM
Quote from: Syt on April 28, 2022, 07:46:52 AMPosted a Twitter thread about follower changes (left wing down, right wing up) bit further upthread. Saw a comment it might have been a bot realignment?

Ill have to look this up. Seems interesting.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 28, 2022, 08:11:48 AM
Quote from: DGuller on April 28, 2022, 07:52:59 AMPayment from the person being followed?

OK, but how does that play into Musk taking over and Obama losing 300K followers and MTG gaining 93K?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 28, 2022, 08:44:27 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 28, 2022, 08:11:48 AM
Quote from: DGuller on April 28, 2022, 07:52:59 AMPayment from the person being followed?

OK, but how does that play into Musk taking over and Obama losing 300K followers and MTG gaining 93K?
:hmm: It doesn't.  Maybe some troll accounts follow some real people just to give themselves legit cred?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 28, 2022, 10:01:31 AM
I think it's left-wing folks quitting twitter and right wing folks returning/ signing up based on where they think Twitter is going.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on April 28, 2022, 02:32:35 PM
More "brilliant" political takes by Musk:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FRcu9TeXEAMjvTM?format=jpg&name=medium)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on April 28, 2022, 02:39:00 PM
Quote from: The Larch on April 28, 2022, 02:32:35 PMMore "brilliant" political takes by Musk:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FRcu9TeXEAMjvTM?format=jpg&name=medium)

:hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 28, 2022, 02:43:43 PM
Quote from: The Larch on April 28, 2022, 02:32:35 PMMore "brilliant" political takes by Musk:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FRcu9TeXEAMjvTM?format=jpg&name=medium)
I am not sure I would call it brilliant, but I don't disagree with the basic sentiment as it relates to the cultural left. 

And of course it ignores what the right was doing all that time, but I guess that isn't the point of the cartoon.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on April 28, 2022, 02:47:25 PM
The brilliant part was mine, it was ironic.  :P

Just out of curiosity, in which particular issues do you think the "cultural left" has moved since 2008-2012?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 28, 2022, 02:56:32 PM
Quote from: The Larch on April 28, 2022, 02:47:25 PMThe brilliant part was mine, it was ironic.  :P

Just out of curiosity, in which particular issues do you think the "cultural left" has moved since 2008-2012?
Abandonment of principles around the value of free expression.

That comic would be more accurate if there was a "center as the right perceives it" and another "center as the left perceives it" with a lot of space between them where most of us live.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 28, 2022, 03:21:43 PM
Quote from: The Larch on April 28, 2022, 02:47:25 PMThe brilliant part was mine, it was ironic.  :P

Just out of curiosity, in which particular issues do you think the "cultural left" has moved since 2008-2012?

Identity politics.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on April 28, 2022, 03:38:28 PM
I'm not sure that Musk is making calculated moves, but if someone has a bunch of politically sensitive businesses around scientific exploration and renewable energy that republicans don't give a shit about, and anticipates that the democrats are about to get obliterated in the midterm elections, getting team republican to love you by getting trump back on twitter or something would be really savvy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 28, 2022, 03:52:14 PM
Good of Musk to confirm that the perception of him is accurate.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on April 28, 2022, 05:42:15 PM
Yes Elon you have stood still as a rock and every other single American left of center has moved. 

Way to disprove that you are the exemplar of the self-absorbed billionaire.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on April 28, 2022, 06:07:26 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 28, 2022, 02:56:32 PM
Quote from: The Larch on April 28, 2022, 02:47:25 PMThe brilliant part was mine, it was ironic.  :P

Just out of curiosity, in which particular issues do you think the "cultural left" has moved since 2008-2012?
Abandonment of principles around the value of free expression.
that was never there.  They were simply overshadowed by the conservatives.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on April 28, 2022, 06:31:29 PM
My problem is that for years now, apart from the occasional questionable Guardian editorial, my only source of supposed terrible woke far leftism has been reports by the right.

So I suspect this is not as big a deal as the reactionaries are making it out to be.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on April 28, 2022, 07:22:54 PM
Quote from: Tamas on April 28, 2022, 06:31:29 PMMy problem is that for years now, apart from the occasional questionable Guardian editorial, my only source of supposed terrible woke far leftism has been reports by the right.

So I suspect this is not as big a deal as the reactionaries are making it out to be.
I think in the UK the vast majority of it is basically in the pages of the Guardian, Independent, left alternative media on one side and the Spectator, Telegraph, tabloids etc on the other.

I'm not really sure how much there are actual arguments about this in the real world - outside, perhaps, political activist circles (on both sides).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on April 28, 2022, 10:20:58 PM
Quote from: viper37 on April 28, 2022, 06:07:26 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 28, 2022, 02:56:32 PM
Quote from: The Larch on April 28, 2022, 02:47:25 PMThe brilliant part was mine, it was ironic.  :P

Just out of curiosity, in which particular issues do you think the "cultural left" has moved since 2008-2012?
Abandonment of principles around the value of free expression.
that was never there.  They were simply overshadowed by the conservatives.


Yeah, as usual Berkut's crybaby nonsense about leftist "cancel culture" is hilariously off point. The left have never been free speech diehards. The free speech diehards have always been a small niche faction that tend to straddle both sides of the aisle, but the core conservative and the core liberal base have always been more or less antagonistic to speech that they dislike. This has manifested in many ways for many years, long before Joe Rogan and Sam Harris told Berkut to get upset about it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on April 28, 2022, 11:24:52 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 28, 2022, 10:20:58 PMThis has manifested in many ways for many years,

See: Colin Kapernick. Or - during Bush II - the Dixie Chicks who were canceled by the right and pretty much had their career shut down for a while for criticizing the Iraq War.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 29, 2022, 03:36:34 AM
The evidence that Kaepernick got cut because he took a knee is not overwhelming.  He had already lost his starting job IIRC, and plenty of guys kept taking the knee after he got cut and continued to play.

The Dixie Chicks got cancelled from country and western stations but kept on playing to indie crowds afterwards.  They showed up in O Brother Where Art Thou after that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: frunk on April 29, 2022, 06:42:34 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 29, 2022, 03:36:34 AMThe evidence that Kaepernick got cut because he took a knee is not overwhelming.  He had already lost his starting job IIRC, and plenty of guys kept taking the knee after he got cut and continued to play.

Kaepernick was a top 20 player his last year of playing, and easily top 10 within the past two years before that.  In a 32 team league that should be a starting job.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on April 29, 2022, 07:02:15 AM
Quote from: The Larch on April 28, 2022, 02:32:35 PMMore "brilliant" political takes by Musk:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FRcu9TeXEAMjvTM?format=jpg&name=medium)

:bleeding:
Jesus. Its literally the complete opposite of the truth.
The sad thing is you often get fascy types who seeriously believe this.
I checked twitter just to see and thankfully the top reply lays down the facts:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FNvkpskXEAMtFXh?format=jpg&name=900x900)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on April 29, 2022, 07:23:04 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 29, 2022, 03:36:34 AMThe evidence that Kaepernick got cut because he took a knee is not overwhelming.  He had already lost his starting job IIRC, and plenty of guys kept taking the knee after he got cut and continued to play.

The Dixie Chicks got cancelled from country and western stations but kept on playing to indie crowds afterwards.  They showed up in O Brother Where Art Thou after that.
That movie was made in 2000.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 29, 2022, 09:50:02 AM
That cartoon is a good illustration of just how far hard right US and increasingly Canadian right wing politics have become.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 09:53:41 AM
It's amazing how hard people will work to not understand something they don't want to understand.

The cartoon is not trying to say something about the right, it is saying something about the left. That can be true even while the right has ran off into crazy land itself (and then kept right on going).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 09:56:32 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 29, 2022, 07:02:15 AM
Quote from: The Larch on April 28, 2022, 02:32:35 PMMore "brilliant" political takes by Musk:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FRcu9TeXEAMjvTM?format=jpg&name=medium)

:bleeding:
Jesus. Its literally the complete opposite of the truth.
The sad thing is you often get fascy types who seeriously believe this.
I checked twitter just to see and thankfully the top reply lays down the facts:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FNvkpskXEAMtFXh?format=jpg&name=900x900)
The cartoon is not talking about congress though. At least, it isn't necessarily talking about Congress.

Nor is the point of the cartoon the right, but rather why people in the middle are being vilified by the left. The cartoon is not about the guy standing there - it is about the left wing calling people bigots.

The right can in fact be as absolutely fucked up as everyone here believes it to be - that doesn't make the point of the cartoon somehow invalid. Just because the right is REALLY REALLY fucked up doesn't mean anything the left does must be ok. Like calling people bigots for not agreeing with every absurd detail of left wing culture warriors.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on April 29, 2022, 09:58:30 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 09:53:41 AMIt's amazing how hard people will work to not understand something they don't want to understand.

The cartoon is not trying to say something about the right, it is saying something about the left. That can be true even while the right has ran off into crazy land itself (and then kept right on going).

Yes, a lie. That's what it is saying. A lie.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on April 29, 2022, 10:03:09 AM
How can it be a lie when the description is entirely subjective?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on April 29, 2022, 10:53:33 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 09:56:32 AMThe cartoon is not talking about congress though. At least, it isn't necessarily talking about Congress.

Nor is the point of the cartoon the right, but rather why people in the middle are being vilified by the left. The cartoon is not about the guy standing there - it is about the left wing calling people bigots.

The right can in fact be as absolutely fucked up as everyone here believes it to be - that doesn't make the point of the cartoon somehow invalid. Just because the right is REALLY REALLY fucked up doesn't mean anything the left does must be ok. Like calling people bigots for not agreeing with every absurd detail of left wing culture warriors.
Speaking as someone on the left... most of us don't vilify the centre.
Some do of course.
But as many as you get on the right? Not really.
As many in position of power as you get in positions of the power on the right? Fuck no.

As I've said before "You just call everyone who disagrees with you a nazi!!!11" is something I see far more than anyone actually displaying this behaviour. I have had more than a few interactions with fascy sorts however who try to defend their views with "Its not actually that right wing. Its just the world is so crazily left these days"- their world presumably being Mars.

The cartoon is attacking the left whilst defending the right at the same time. It would be easy enough to change it to make the point you want of the far left not being helpful when the right is getting crazy, but thats not what its saying.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 29, 2022, 11:00:34 AM
On the Musk cartoon:

First of all I absolutely feel this way as someone who always identified as right-wing.  I believe all the same things I sued to believe in: importance of tradition, self-reliance, family, cautious of government over-reach.  But even removed from the US/Trumpy perspective, suddenly right-wingers in this country are embracing crypto-currency, ridiculous covid conspiracies, and abject hatred of government.


But I've heard the same sentiment expressed by those who identified as left-wing.  Whereas before it was left-wing to support gay marriage, now you have to support giving cross-sex hormones to children.  Before you didn't judge people by the colour of their skin, now that's the important way to identify.  Before you might want more government help for the less fortunate, now suddenly full-on government ownership of the means of production is being discussed.


For lack of a better target I blame social media.  But there's definitely something weird going on in our political discourse these days.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on April 29, 2022, 11:01:51 AM
It's not what Musk is talking about - but the whole "centrist dad" abusing, Novara side of the left dished out a lot of abuse to people on the centre left in support of Corbyn's leadership.

It was also broadly endorsed by his leadership team who listed their MPs into "core group", "core group plus", "neutral but not hostile", "core group negative" and "hostile group". They were actively trying to make life very difficult/uncomfortable for centre left MPs and activists in local parties so they could replace them.

It may be more of a thing with the hard left in this country but the left can be a pretty hostile place to be. And it's always been that way - it's sort of the joke in Life of Brian. But even if you go back to Tony Benn's deputy leadership run it was marked by the left diruptinig events and being really aggressive.

It isn't aimed at the centre, but I think the whole spitting on delegates to the Tory conference, "Tory scum", "lower than vermin", "never kissed a Tory" stuff is not great and I think it has an impact on people in the centre.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 11:12:09 AM
I think your perceptions about left and right moving away from you depend a whole lot on the company you keep.  If you hang around with mostly left-wing people, and identify as left wing, then you're more perceptive to how they're becoming more extreme.

This is definitely the case for me.  I don't hang around with right wing people, or at least the ones I hang around with don't talk politics.  Intellectually I understand how far off the deep end they went, but I don't see individual people that I used to respect now sound crazy and detached from reality.  The few times I do, I am shocked, but that happens rarely. 

What happens much more often is seeing previously rational left-wingers go all woke commissar and lose all sense of reason, where the original good cause they were fighting for has long been lost in zeal and groupthink.  That I get to experience personally much more often.  Therefore, it may be a fact that the right wing went more right than the left wing went more left, which this cartoon doesn't represent at all, but it's nevertheless understandable to focus on how the left wing is departing from you.  The closer the objects are to you, the easier it is to spot them moving away from you.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 29, 2022, 11:14:40 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on April 29, 2022, 09:58:30 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 09:53:41 AMIt's amazing how hard people will work to not understand something they don't want to understand.

The cartoon is not trying to say something about the right, it is saying something about the left. That can be true even while the right has ran off into crazy land itself (and then kept right on going).

Yes, a lie. That's what it is saying. A lie.

Berkut is just performing a parody.  He did not mean to be taken seriously - obviously.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 29, 2022, 11:20:33 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 29, 2022, 11:01:51 AMIt's not what Musk is talking about - but the whole "centrist dad" abusing, Novara side of the left dished out a lot of abuse to people on the centre left in support of Corbyn's leadership.

It was also broadly endorsed by his leadership team who listed their MPs into "core group", "core group plus", "neutral but not hostile", "core group negative" and "hostile group". They were actively trying to make life very difficult/uncomfortable for centre left MPs and activists in local parties so they could replace them.

It may be more of a thing with the hard left in this country but the left can be a pretty hostile place to be. And it's always been that way - it's sort of the joke in Life of Brian. But even if you go back to Tony Benn's deputy leadership run it was marked by the left diruptinig events and being really aggressive.

It isn't aimed at the centre, but I think the whole spitting on delegates to the Tory conference, "Tory scum", "lower than vermin", "never kissed a Tory" stuff is not great and I think it has an impact on people in the centre.

You should move to Canada  :)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 11:45:27 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on April 29, 2022, 09:58:30 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 09:53:41 AMIt's amazing how hard people will work to not understand something they don't want to understand.

The cartoon is not trying to say something about the right, it is saying something about the left. That can be true even while the right has ran off into crazy land itself (and then kept right on going).

Yes, a lie. That's what it is saying. A lie.
Except that it isn't a lie.

It might be a shitty cartoon, that does a bad job of making its point. 

But its point is not a lie. 

It's point might not even be important compared to the point of how fucked up the right is these days. That would be a fair critique.

But it isn't a lie, and it does have a point - if you want to actually understand the message that someone is trying to tell you.

If you just want to be outrage, offended, and call the messenger a lying asshole, well...ironically that is kind of the point as well.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 11:45:56 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 29, 2022, 11:20:33 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 29, 2022, 11:01:51 AMIt's not what Musk is talking about - but the whole "centrist dad" abusing, Novara side of the left dished out a lot of abuse to people on the centre left in support of Corbyn's leadership.
It was also broadly endorsed by his leadership team who listed their MPs into "core group", "core group plus", "neutral but not hostile", "core group negative" and "hostile group". They were actively trying to make life very difficult/uncomfortable for centre left MPs and activists in local parties so they could replace them.
It may be more of a thing with the hard left in this country but the left can be a pretty hostile place to be. And it's always been that way - it's sort of the joke in Life of Brian. But even if you go back to Tony Benn's deputy leadership run it was marked by the left diruptinig events and being really aggressive.
It isn't aimed at the centre, but I think the whole spitting on delegates to the Tory conference, "Tory scum", "lower than vermin", "never kissed a Tory" stuff is not great and I think it has an impact on people in the centre.

You should move to Canada  :)
Shelf is just performing a parody.  He did not mean to be taken seriously - obviously.
 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 29, 2022, 11:48:51 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 11:45:56 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 29, 2022, 11:20:33 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 29, 2022, 11:01:51 AMIt's not what Musk is talking about - but the whole "centrist dad" abusing, Novara side of the left dished out a lot of abuse to people on the centre left in support of Corbyn's leadership.
It was also broadly endorsed by his leadership team who listed their MPs into "core group", "core group plus", "neutral but not hostile", "core group negative" and "hostile group". They were actively trying to make life very difficult/uncomfortable for centre left MPs and activists in local parties so they could replace them.
It may be more of a thing with the hard left in this country but the left can be a pretty hostile place to be. And it's always been that way - it's sort of the joke in Life of Brian. But even if you go back to Tony Benn's deputy leadership run it was marked by the left diruptinig events and being really aggressive.
It isn't aimed at the centre, but I think the whole spitting on delegates to the Tory conference, "Tory scum", "lower than vermin", "never kissed a Tory" stuff is not great and I think it has an impact on people in the centre.

You should move to Canada  :)
Shelf is just performing a parody.  He did not mean to be taken seriously - obviously.
 

I think most people would realize what he is saying is making sense.

Your posts were comedy gold.  Keep it up.  Highly enjoyable.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on April 29, 2022, 11:56:23 AM
Quote from: Barrister on April 29, 2022, 11:00:34 AMFirst of all I . . . I believe all the same things I sued to believe in: importance of tradition, self-reliance, family, cautious of government over-reach.

Great slip :)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on April 29, 2022, 12:07:55 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 09:56:32 AMThe cartoon is not talking about congress though. At least, it isn't necessarily talking about Congress.

But Congress does not exist in a vacuum; it is a representative body that reflects the expressed preferences of the people.  When GOP reps in Congress are moving the right, it is fair to infer that is because GOP primary voters are selecting more right-wing candidates, and it is fair to infer from that fact that GOP primary voters are themselves veering sharply to the right.

But when we see that Dem reps are not moving significantly to the left, we cannot make those same inferences.  And while it is not impossible to explain a significant leftward drift among large numbers of Americans that has virtually no impact on the ideological position of representatives of the left party, something more than anecdote is required to make the case.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 29, 2022, 12:12:56 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on April 29, 2022, 12:07:55 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 09:56:32 AMThe cartoon is not talking about congress though. At least, it isn't necessarily talking about Congress.

But Congress does not exist in a vacuum; it is a representative body that reflects the expressed preferences of the people.  When GOP reps in Congress are moving the right, it is fair to infer that is because GOP primary voters are selecting more right-wing candidates, and it is fair to infer from that fact that GOP primary voters are themselves veering sharply to the right.

But when we see that Dem reps are not moving significantly to the left, we cannot make those same inferences.  And while it is not impossible to explain a significant leftward drift among large numbers of Americans that has virtually no impact on the ideological position of representatives of the left party, something more than anecdote is required to make the case.

But if you're just looking at congress...

WHen Trump was in power he certainly had a difference in tone, but what was his only legislative achievement?  A tax cut that almost any republican president would have passed.  Beyond that they didn't have much of a legislative agenda to speak of.

Biden though?  Spent pretty much his entire first year trying to pass the massive Build Back Better bill, which was an enormous expansion of government.  It was far more left-wing than the centrist vision he campaigned on.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on April 29, 2022, 01:12:32 PM
Here is the thing, I have functionally no respect for Berkut's position because Berkut isn't a pod person. I think basically everyone is in agreement that there's an annoying, whiny element to the far left, particularly amongst the "very online" crowd, university campuses etc that do annoying and censorious things. By the way, that element was always there, it was definitely there on campuses in the 90s, 80s, 70s and 60s.

To me, that isn't actually the meat of the issue. The meat is that the actual elected Democratic party hasn't moved toward being a far left party, it is basically still a centrist party. The areas where the Democratic party has actually moved left, are basically policy areas where the whole country has moved left. Basically the entire Dem party supports gay marriage now--as does a big majority of the country, as one example. The Democrats are not meaningfully more far left versus the "national baseline" than they were in 2005 or 1995.

The Republican party absolutely is.

Because Berkut is not a pod person, and Languish is not a Twitter battle, I would think this is a place where we could be honest--the whiny, stupid lefties who do whiny stupid things are being deliberately weaponized by far right propaganda, they are "Flooding the zone." They are making the Democrats pay the price for "having a far left", when that is something intrinsic to the nature of big tent parties, and largely unavoidable it also largely has nothing to do with the policies Democrats promote or how they impact people's lives.

Back when I was a Republican, it would be the equivalent of trying to hold me accountable for like, Pat Buchanan or David Duke. Those guys were extremists who happened to also run as Republicans, something I had no control over. Back in 2010, I would completely genuinely have said the same thing about the Tea Party--that they are nutty extremists, but don't represent the party. I left the party because the extreme became the party, I could no longer say "in the two party system we will both have a stupid fringe, that fringe isn't my whole party", the fringe did become the whole party in the GOP.

This simply did not happen with the left. The fringe of the right, that now controls the party, wants you to think so. Because Berkut isn't a pod person, I expect him to be smart enough to realize this, but instead he is repeating pod person lines straight out of Ben Shapiro's ass. It's unbecoming.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on April 29, 2022, 01:15:38 PM
Given the vast disparity between the active harm the Republicans are causing, the fact their extremists have taken over, the fact they are passing tons of unconstitutional laws aimed at hurting minorities so that people can get on Fox News, the fact they are creating hate campaigns against transgender people (who whatever you think of them, they don't seem to live easy lives, and they are a vanishingly small part of the population--they don't deserve to be the victims of a national pogrom), the fact they are creating fascist institutions within their parties and attempting to implement them in actual State legislatures and governments as well--anyone among sane people who sits around repeating their propaganda, must be seen as part of the problem.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on April 29, 2022, 01:26:35 PM
Quote from: Barrister on April 29, 2022, 12:12:56 PMWHen Trump was in power he certainly had a difference in tone, but what was his only legislative achievement?  A tax cut that almost any republican president would have passed.  Beyond that they didn't have much of a legislative agenda to speak of.

Biden though?  Spent pretty much his entire first year trying to pass the massive Build Back Better bill, which was an enormous expansion of government.  It was far more left-wing than the centrist vision he campaigned on.

I think this does more to show the extreme nature of the ideological divergence on the right.  Not only did the the 2016-18 GOP - will full control of all branches of government - do nothing of substance other than a tax cut, but post-2018, it has dispensed entirely with any legislative agenda at all, culminating in the 2020 non-platform and the renunciation of any legislative agenda for 2022.  What is left is commitment to rhetorical culture war as an instrument of mass mobilization for the sole purpose of seizing and exercising power and control over the instruments of the state, power for the sake of power alone.  It signals a rejection of the substance of representative democratic government at the same time as the party increasingly estranges itself from the forms.  Thus, the lack of a legislative agenda does not signal lack of ideological commitment or tactical flexibility but rather is a sign that the GOP is veering so far to the right that it is drifting outside the spectrum of constitutional government in the US. It is becoming in the Weimar era sense an anti-democratic party of the right.

As for the Democrats, I would disagree about the characterization of BBB as I don't think "leftiness" is determined by the top line price tag of an omnibus bill but what the bill does. The BBB's substantive components - additional funding for child care and pre school education, for solar credits, expanded health care benefits etc were mostly pretty mainstream stuff.  But that debate doesn't matter because BBB didn't pass and it didn't pass because it didn't get enough *Democrats* to vote for it.  So in evaluating where the Democrats actually *are* today in terms of legislative agenda, it is the infrastructure bill, an eptiome of sensible centrism.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 01:27:47 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on April 29, 2022, 12:07:55 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 09:56:32 AMThe cartoon is not talking about congress though. At least, it isn't necessarily talking about Congress.

But Congress does not exist in a vacuum; it is a representative body that reflects the expressed preferences of the people.  When GOP reps in Congress are moving the right, it is fair to infer that is because GOP primary voters are selecting more right-wing candidates, and it is fair to infer from that fact that GOP primary voters are themselves veering sharply to the right.

But when we see that Dem reps are not moving significantly to the left, we cannot make those same inferences.  And while it is not impossible to explain a significant leftward drift among large numbers of Americans that has virtually no impact on the ideological position of representatives of the left party, something more than anecdote is required to make the case.
I think it is pretty easy to explain that difference. Trivial even, and not even particularly controversial.

The GOP let itself be captured by the right wing crazies. The Tea Party and such. As such, the composition of the political representation of the "right" reflects to most extreme members of the right.

The left has avoided that, thank god. The left has NOT let the Democratic Party get captured by its most radical elements. This is a good thing, and something we should continue to resist, and part of that involves not kidding ourselves about their existence and desire to do to the Democrats what the Tea Party did to the GOP.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 29, 2022, 01:27:57 PM
https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2022/04/25/why-social-psychologist-jonathan-haidt-says-americas-institutions-are-in-trouble

I listened to this interview on NPR the other day, about squashing dissent and the resulting structural stupidity.

TLDNR: Democrats are not the stupid party, Republicans are the stupid party.  But important segments of Democrat aligned society--universities, media, Hollywood--are structurally stupid.  These institutions are important because they generate knowledge.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 01:28:21 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 29, 2022, 01:12:32 PMHere is the thing, I have functionally no respect for Berkut's position because Berkut isn't a pod person. I think basically everyone is in agreement that there's an annoying, whiny element to the far left, particularly amongst the "very online" crowd, university campuses etc that do annoying and censorious things. By the way, that element was always there, it was definitely there on campuses in the 90s, 80s, 70s and 60s.

To me, that isn't actually the meat of the issue. The meat is that the actual elected Democratic party hasn't moved toward being a far left party, it is basically still a centrist party. The areas where the Democratic party has actually moved left, are basically policy areas where the whole country has moved left. Basically the entire Dem party supports gay marriage now--as does a big majority of the country, as one example. The Democrats are not meaningfully more far left versus the "national baseline" than they were in 2005 or 1995.

The Republican party absolutely is.

Because Berkut is not a pod person, and Languish is not a Twitter battle, I would think this is a place where we could be honest--the whiny, stupid lefties who do whiny stupid things are being deliberately weaponized by far right propaganda, they are "Flooding the zone." They are making the Democrats pay the price for "having a far left", when that is something intrinsic to the nature of big tent parties, and largely unavoidable it also largely has nothing to do with the policies Democrats promote or how they impact people's lives.

Back when I was a Republican, it would be the equivalent of trying to hold me accountable for like, Pat Buchanan or David Duke. Those guys were extremists who happened to also run as Republicans, something I had no control over. Back in 2010, I would completely genuinely have said the same thing about the Tea Party--that they are nutty extremists, but don't represent the party. I left the party because the extreme became the party, I could no longer say "in the two party system we will both have a stupid fringe, that fringe isn't my whole party", the fringe did become the whole party in the GOP.

This simply did not happen with the left. The fringe of the right, that now controls the party, wants you to think so. Because Berkut isn't a pod person, I expect him to be smart enough to realize this, but instead he is repeating pod person lines straight out of Ben Shapiro's ass. It's unbecoming.
The extreme elements of left are not represented in political bodies for the most part, but they're definitely influential.  Just a few days ago, NASCAR forced Denny Hamlin to undergo sensitivity training because he mocked Kyle Larson's bad move in the last race with a tweet (or retweet) of cartoon from a show that's currently running on Fox.  The problem?  The person depicted in the cartoon was Asian, and Kyle Larson is of partial Japanese ancestry as well, so that was deemed to be the insensitive part.

Let's think this through:  NASCAR, hardly a liberal college on the woke scale, feels enough pressure to do something incredibly stupid.  It's not because some congresspeople passed a law forcing it to do that, it's because the general situation is perceived as such that corporate suits feel like they have to abandon all reason and common sense when dealing with certain issues.  People don't just get subjected to power projected by the government, there are more sources of power in people's life.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on April 29, 2022, 01:32:27 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 01:28:21 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 29, 2022, 01:12:32 PMHere is the thing, I have functionally no respect for Berkut's position because Berkut isn't a pod person. I think basically everyone is in agreement that there's an annoying, whiny element to the far left, particularly amongst the "very online" crowd, university campuses etc that do annoying and censorious things. By the way, that element was always there, it was definitely there on campuses in the 90s, 80s, 70s and 60s.

To me, that isn't actually the meat of the issue. The meat is that the actual elected Democratic party hasn't moved toward being a far left party, it is basically still a centrist party. The areas where the Democratic party has actually moved left, are basically policy areas where the whole country has moved left. Basically the entire Dem party supports gay marriage now--as does a big majority of the country, as one example. The Democrats are not meaningfully more far left versus the "national baseline" than they were in 2005 or 1995.

The Republican party absolutely is.

Because Berkut is not a pod person, and Languish is not a Twitter battle, I would think this is a place where we could be honest--the whiny, stupid lefties who do whiny stupid things are being deliberately weaponized by far right propaganda, they are "Flooding the zone." They are making the Democrats pay the price for "having a far left", when that is something intrinsic to the nature of big tent parties, and largely unavoidable it also largely has nothing to do with the policies Democrats promote or how they impact people's lives.

Back when I was a Republican, it would be the equivalent of trying to hold me accountable for like, Pat Buchanan or David Duke. Those guys were extremists who happened to also run as Republicans, something I had no control over. Back in 2010, I would completely genuinely have said the same thing about the Tea Party--that they are nutty extremists, but don't represent the party. I left the party because the extreme became the party, I could no longer say "in the two party system we will both have a stupid fringe, that fringe isn't my whole party", the fringe did become the whole party in the GOP.

This simply did not happen with the left. The fringe of the right, that now controls the party, wants you to think so. Because Berkut isn't a pod person, I expect him to be smart enough to realize this, but instead he is repeating pod person lines straight out of Ben Shapiro's ass. It's unbecoming.
The extreme elements of left are not represented in political bodies for the most part, but they're definitely influential.  Just a few days ago, NASCAR forced Denny Hamlin to undergo sensitivity training because he mocked Kyle Larson's bad move in the last race with a tweet (or retweet) of cartoon from a show that's currently running on Fox.  The problem?  The person depicted in the cartoon was Asian, and Kyle Larson is of partial Japanese ancestry as well, so that was deemed to be the insensitive part.

Let's think this through:  NASCAR, hardly a liberal college on the woke scale, feels enough pressure to do something incredibly stupid.  It's not because some congresspeople passed a law forcing it to do that, it's because the general situation is perceived as such that corporate suits feel like they have to abandon all reason and common sense when dealing with certain issues.  People don't just get subjected to power projected by the government, there are more sources of power in people's life.

Public figures whose wealth is based on their public persona have had to play Kabuki theater on all kinds of shit for my entire life. It's not new. Some of the topics are new, which maybe that's what scares this group of graying whites in this forum to death, dunno.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 01:34:47 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 29, 2022, 01:12:32 PMHere is the thing, I have functionally no respect for Berkut's position because Berkut isn't a pod person. I think basically everyone is in agreement that there's an annoying, whiny element to the far left, particularly amongst the "very online" crowd, university campuses etc that do annoying and censorious things. By the way, that element was always there, it was definitely there on campuses in the 90s, 80s, 70s and 60s.

To me, that isn't actually the meat of the issue. The meat is that the actual elected Democratic party hasn't moved toward being a far left party, it is basically still a centrist party. The areas where the Democratic party has actually moved left, are basically policy areas where the whole country has moved left. Basically the entire Dem party supports gay marriage now--as does a big majority of the country, as one example. The Democrats are not meaningfully more far left versus the "national baseline" than they were in 2005 or 1995.

The Republican party absolutely is.

Because Berkut is not a pod person, and Languish is not a Twitter battle, I would think this is a place where we could be honest--the whiny, stupid lefties who do whiny stupid things are being deliberately weaponized by far right propaganda, they are "Flooding the zone." They are making the Democrats pay the price for "having a far left", when that is something intrinsic to the nature of big tent parties, and largely unavoidable it also largely has nothing to do with the policies Democrats promote or how they impact people's lives.

Back when I was a Republican, it would be the equivalent of trying to hold me accountable for like, Pat Buchanan or David Duke. Those guys were extremists who happened to also run as Republicans, something I had no control over. Back in 2010, I would completely genuinely have said the same thing about the Tea Party--that they are nutty extremists, but don't represent the party. I left the party because the extreme became the party, I could no longer say "in the two party system we will both have a stupid fringe, that fringe isn't my whole party", the fringe did become the whole party in the GOP.

This simply did not happen with the left. The fringe of the right, that now controls the party, wants you to think so. Because Berkut isn't a pod person, I expect him to be smart enough to realize this, but instead he is repeating pod person lines straight out of Ben Shapiro's ass. It's unbecoming.

Horsehit.  I do not at all repeat anything put of Shapiros ass, or Rogans for that matter.

The Dems have NOT been captured by the whiny ass leftys you are talking about, but that is not because they are not *trying* to capture it, it is because us assholes in the middle fight against it.

What I don't get is that you think you are some kind of hero for holding the exact same views that I do about " whiny element to the far left, particularly amongst the "very online" crowd, university campuses etc that do annoying and censorious things."

The only difference is that you think we should pretend they don't exist just because the right weaponizes them, and I think that just because the right weaponizes them, we shouldn't pretend they don't exist and they have an agenda of their own that is worth resisting.

I don't want the left to become dominated by the CC crowd of left wing culture warriors who think shouting down anyone who disagrees with them with accusations of bigotry is desirable, and I also didn't think the right wing dumbass Tea Party people would ever succeed in doing what they did to the GOP.

You and CC can call me names and insult me all you like, but that doesn't change anything. Disagreeing with the radical left doesn't make me a pawn of the radical right, even if it is a convenient way to ignore my arguments.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on April 29, 2022, 01:35:46 PM
"Not part of the radical right", but "chooses to spend most of his time crying about the same things they cry about." Mhm.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 01:36:14 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 29, 2022, 01:15:38 PMGiven the vast disparity between the active harm the Republicans are causing, the fact their extremists have taken over, the fact they are passing tons of unconstitutional laws aimed at hurting minorities so that people can get on Fox News, the fact they are creating hate campaigns against transgender people (who whatever you think of them, they don't seem to live easy lives, and they are a vanishingly small part of the population--they don't deserve to be the victims of a national pogrom), the fact they are creating fascist institutions within their parties and attempting to implement them in actual State legislatures and governments as well--anyone among sane people who sits around repeating their propaganda, must be seen as part of the problem.
Given what the radical right has achieved in destroying the Republican Party, anyone who insists that we must ignore the radical left and their efforts to radicalize the Dems must be seen as part of the problem.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 01:37:25 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 29, 2022, 01:32:27 PMPublic figures whose wealth is based on their public persona have had to play Kabuki theater on all kinds of shit for my entire life. It's not new. Some of the topics are new, which maybe that's what scares this group of graying whites in this forum to death, dunno.
The normalization of "you think that because you're white" argument is another irritant that makes people perceive the influence of extreme left.  Not only is that a horrible argument when it comes to the power of convincing people, but it's also racist.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 01:39:12 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 29, 2022, 01:35:46 PM"Not part of the radical right", but "chooses to spend most of his time crying about the same things they cry about." Mhm.
That is just a fucking lie. 

I do no at all spend most of my time, or most of my posting talking about the radical left at all. To the extent that I do spend time on it, it is because I think it is important - incredibly important - that the left stay the adult in the room, seeing as their isn't another option.

I post about a lot of shit, and I think anyone who has paid any attention to my views know exactly where I stand in regards to whether I am "part of the radical right"

So please feel free to go fuck yourself. What an asshole.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on April 29, 2022, 01:43:11 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 01:28:21 PMLet's think this through:  NASCAR, hardly a liberal college on the woke scale, feels enough pressure to do something incredibly stupid.

Here's an example where context and nuance matters.  If say a stand-up comedian wants to crack some stereotypical jokes I don't see a huge problem; if you choose to attend a Don Rickles show or the living equivalent you know what you're getting. But I easily see why NASCAR as an institution - and one that is increasingly focusing on international expansion - might think it's a bad look for their drivers to be cracking stupid Asian driver jokes.  That's just common sense business. It's not like the driver was "cancelled", he has to spend a couple of hours watching videos.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on April 29, 2022, 01:53:46 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on April 29, 2022, 09:58:30 AM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 09:53:41 AMIt's amazing how hard people will work to not understand something they don't want to understand.

The cartoon is not trying to say something about the right, it is saying something about the left. That can be true even while the right has ran off into crazy land itself (and then kept right on going).

Yes, a lie. That's what it is saying. A lie.

All good cartoons are lies.  An honest series of drawings is just a series of drawings.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 01:54:03 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on April 29, 2022, 01:43:11 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 01:28:21 PMLet's think this through:  NASCAR, hardly a liberal college on the woke scale, feels enough pressure to do something incredibly stupid.

Here's an example where context and nuance matters.  If say a stand-up comedian wants to crack some stereotypical jokes I don't see a huge problem; if you choose to attend a Don Rickles show or the living equivalent you know what you're getting. But I easily see why NASCAR as an institution - and one that is increasingly focusing on international expansion - might think it's a bad look for their drivers to be cracking stupid Asian driver jokes.  That's just common sense business. It's not like the driver was "cancelled", he has to spend a couple of hours watching videos.
The fact that you're factually stating in passing that Denny Hamlin was cracking stupid Asian driver jokes is another indication of the general mindset.  It seems like once someone is accused of using stereotypes, speaking about it as anything other than a proven fact feels inappropriate.  In actuality it's highly unlikely that the Asian part was on the minds of anyone involved, until professional complainers started complaining.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on April 29, 2022, 01:56:57 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 29, 2022, 01:12:32 PMHere is the thing, I have functionally no respect for Berkut's position because Berkut isn't a pod person. I think basically everyone is in agreement that there's an annoying, whiny element to the far left, particularly amongst the "very online" crowd, university campuses etc that do annoying and censorious things. By the way, that element was always there, it was definitely there on campuses in the 90s, 80s, 70s and 60s.

To me, that isn't actually the meat of the issue. The meat is that the actual elected Democratic party hasn't moved toward being a far left party, it is basically still a centrist party. The areas where the Democratic party has actually moved left, are basically policy areas where the whole country has moved left. Basically the entire Dem party supports gay marriage now--as does a big majority of the country, as one example. The Democrats are not meaningfully more far left versus the "national baseline" than they were in 2005 or 1995.

The Republican party absolutely is.

Because Berkut is not a pod person, and Languish is not a Twitter battle, I would think this is a place where we could be honest--the whiny, stupid lefties who do whiny stupid things are being deliberately weaponized by far right propaganda, they are "Flooding the zone." They are making the Democrats pay the price for "having a far left", when that is something intrinsic to the nature of big tent parties, and largely unavoidable it also largely has nothing to do with the policies Democrats promote or how they impact people's lives.

Back when I was a Republican, it would be the equivalent of trying to hold me accountable for like, Pat Buchanan or David Duke. Those guys were extremists who happened to also run as Republicans, something I had no control over. Back in 2010, I would completely genuinely have said the same thing about the Tea Party--that they are nutty extremists, but don't represent the party. I left the party because the extreme became the party, I could no longer say "in the two party system we will both have a stupid fringe, that fringe isn't my whole party", the fringe did become the whole party in the GOP.

This simply did not happen with the left. The fringe of the right, that now controls the party, wants you to think so. Because Berkut isn't a pod person, I expect him to be smart enough to realize this, but instead he is repeating pod person lines straight out of Ben Shapiro's ass. It's unbecoming.

Please skip the bloviation in your ad hom argument.  It's unbecoming.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on April 29, 2022, 01:59:29 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 01:54:03 PMThe fact that you're factually stating in passing that Denny Hamlin was cracking stupid Asian driver jokes is another indication of the general mindset. 

I'm stating it as fact because after looking at (and listening to) the tweet, I don't see any other reasonable interpretation.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on April 29, 2022, 02:03:46 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 01:37:25 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 29, 2022, 01:32:27 PMPublic figures whose wealth is based on their public persona have had to play Kabuki theater on all kinds of shit for my entire life. It's not new. Some of the topics are new, which maybe that's what scares this group of graying whites in this forum to death, dunno.
The normalization of "you think that because you're white" argument is another irritant that makes people perceive the influence of extreme left.  Not only is that a horrible argument when it comes to the power of convincing people, but it's also racist.

Then explain it to me, I think we're mostly middle age white dudes here, other than maybe Yi who is Chinese and grumbler who is a senior citizen, I didn't cry myself to sleep (as a conservative white man) about the far left during the Clinton or Obama Presidencies, largely because they were powerless idiots. They appear to still be powerless idiots.

What is the reason I should be losing sleep over them today? When I see that behavior, I have to question, what changed. Is it the racial justice shit? If so then yeah, I think discomfort with that does speak to racism. But again, I don't actually know why so many middle aged white dudes appear to be literally shaking in fear at the thought of AOC Tweeting things they don't like, or some bastion of far leftism like UC-Berkeley canceling an appearance by Milo or Shapiro.

Particularly when any sane person sees we're literally in the midst of an assault on our democracy fueled massively by right wing propaganda, and a chief concern of yours is...the things right wing propaganda wants you to be concerned about? Nah, fuck that. I'm not letting them set my narrative.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on April 29, 2022, 02:10:37 PM
musk.jpg
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 29, 2022, 02:14:08 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on April 29, 2022, 01:59:29 PMI'm stating it as fact because after looking at (and listening to) the tweet, I don't see any other reasonable interpretation.

A reasonable interpretation to me is that the culprit was just talking smack.  I've enjoyed friendly smack most of my life.  That's one way the world has become less pleasant for me.

However I'm just going off what has been posted here.  Haven't seen the tweet.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 02:18:13 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 29, 2022, 02:03:46 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 01:37:25 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 29, 2022, 01:32:27 PMPublic figures whose wealth is based on their public persona have had to play Kabuki theater on all kinds of shit for my entire life. It's not new. Some of the topics are new, which maybe that's what scares this group of graying whites in this forum to death, dunno.
The normalization of "you think that because you're white" argument is another irritant that makes people perceive the influence of extreme left.  Not only is that a horrible argument when it comes to the power of convincing people, but it's also racist.

Then explain it to me, I think we're mostly middle age white dudes here, other than maybe Yi who is Chinese and grumbler who is a senior citizen, I didn't cry myself to sleep (as a conservative white man) about the far left during the Clinton or Obama Presidencies, largely because they were powerless idiots. They appear to still be powerless idiots.

What is the reason I should be losing sleep over them today? When I see that behavior, I have to question, what changed. Is it the racial justice shit? If so then yeah, I think discomfort with that does speak to racism. But again, I don't actually know why so many middle aged white dudes appear to be literally shaking in fear at the thought of AOC Tweeting things they don't like, or some bastion of far leftism like UC-Berkeley canceling an appearance by Milo or Shapiro.

Particularly when any sane person sees we're literally in the midst of an assault on our democracy fueled massively by right wing propaganda, and a chief concern of yours is...the things right wing propaganda wants you to be concerned about? Nah, fuck that. I'm not letting them set my narrative.
That assault came about because a lot of people on the right said things like "...you are worried about tax pledges and the christians taking over the party while Clinton lets people die in Libya?????".

The "right wing propaganda" was always there. The fact that they leveraged their bullshit into a political movement that absolutely and primarily targeted anyone in their own party not deemed sufficiently loyal to be excised as public enemy #1 is not a coincidence to what came afterwards. 

Just ditch the bullshit ad homs. Nobody is quaking in fear, we are just having a discussion. Your inability to do so without layering in insults doesn't help your argument.

And I am perfectly fine acknowledging your point. I made *the exact same point* myself when I steelmanned the lefty argument for them. How much we should pay attention to the left wing nutjobs is a very valid point. There is room to disagree without accusing people who disagree with you of being secret members of the radical right Shapiro Fan Club.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 02:18:37 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 29, 2022, 02:03:46 PMThen explain it to me, I think we're mostly middle age white dudes here, other than maybe Yi who is Chinese and grumbler who is a senior citizen, I didn't cry myself to sleep (as a conservative white man) about the far left during the Clinton or Obama Presidencies, largely because they were powerless idiots. They appear to still be powerless idiots.
The simplest explanation is that they're not powerless idiots now.  They're very powerful on a corporate level.  I'm sure the CEOs golfing in their private clubs are not themselves woke, but they know they may have problems if they don't pay the right kind of lip service.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on April 29, 2022, 02:20:27 PM
Here's the thing right, NASCAR is a business that wants desperately to not be racing of the Confederacy. Formula 1 is growing massively in the United States and among all the demographics NASCAR can't pull in no matter how hard it tries. Formula 1's somewhat dramatized documentary series on American Netflix has been hugely popular.

NASCAR thus has a series of desires for itself as a business, and whatever the intent, due to the public reaction, one of their drivers was being hit with unsavory allegations. They just chose a very fluff, non-meaningful way to try and deal with it to get it off the news. I don't think this is materially different from face saving business decisions shows have been running with for as long as we've had shows. You can literally read about shit like this as far back as the Silent movie era.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on April 29, 2022, 02:21:07 PM
https://twitter.com/heebygeebies/status/1518949693644062721
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 02:23:25 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 29, 2022, 02:14:08 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on April 29, 2022, 01:59:29 PMI'm stating it as fact because after looking at (and listening to) the tweet, I don't see any other reasonable interpretation.

A reasonable interpretation to me is that the culprit was just talking smack.  I've enjoyed friendly smack most of my life.  That's one way the world has become less pleasant for me.

However I'm just going off what has been posted here.  Haven't seen the tweet.
I saw the tweet before it was deleted, and before I was aware of the controversy.  It didn't even occur to me that the character was Asian (though admittedly when I watched it the second time after the controversy, it does seem clear if you start off knowing that). 

However, the second part of the necessary connection is Kyle Larson.  Simply put, while most people know that he has Japanese ancestry, that knowledge is really a biographical detail as far as his public image is concerned.  I don't think anyone thinks of him as an Asian driver, and NASCAR never heavily promoted him as that (and certainly not after the N word incident made him a problematic symbol of diversity).  It's just not part of his public image or identity.  I would think that in order for a joke on someone to be stereotypical, it has to be on people's minds that the target of the joke belongs to the stereotyped race, and I really don't think that's the case with Larson.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on April 29, 2022, 02:24:32 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 02:18:37 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 29, 2022, 02:03:46 PMThen explain it to me, I think we're mostly middle age white dudes here, other than maybe Yi who is Chinese and grumbler who is a senior citizen, I didn't cry myself to sleep (as a conservative white man) about the far left during the Clinton or Obama Presidencies, largely because they were powerless idiots. They appear to still be powerless idiots.
The simplest explanation is that they're not powerless idiots now.  They're very powerful on a corporate level.  I'm sure the CEOs golfing in their private clubs are not themselves woke, but they know they may have problems if they don't pay the right kind of lip service.

They are not nearly as powerful as say, Christians, or even far right Christians. It probably isn't the healthiest thing, but corporations deciding your "group" matters enough to engage in their kabuki theater to assuage your angst is probably a sign that a group now "matters" enough to be played to--which frankly I have no issue with for marginalized people. A healthier world might be one in which corporations don't act so stupid, but look at how many times corporations have caved to far right religious interests in our lifetimes alone, the stuff being done to quiet down the anti-racists and such is very small in comparison, and when I don't remember much talk about the many, many ways corporations have caved to right-cultural influences being posted about on these forums but it's "problematic" when they do it to left-cultural influences...that shows that you're choosing to care about it for some reason over other similar things.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on April 29, 2022, 02:26:26 PM
I mean I dunno dude, after watching Minsky's clip do you not see that the woman is speaking in the stereotypical "first generation Asian immigrant" voice? And even I'm aware that "Asians are awful drivers" is a pretty huge cultural meme.

I feel like that was what he was playing off of, in a way that I certainly wouldn't find very offensive and mostly funny. But it definitely was making a joke about ethnicity, which again--I'm fine with, particularly when IMO it isn't really mean-spirited, but I don't think you can credibly say the dude had no idea it was making fun of Asianness.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 02:30:29 PM
What can I say, I didn't realize she was Asian until I knew she was Asian.  Maybe I'm just unnaturally oblivious.  I just focused on the joke itself, which was Kyle Larson's poor driving decision. 

I also know that Denny Hamlin is a pretty prolific memer, I recall him posting a video of a car driving into a storefront after another incident (though now that I think of it, it may be ageist).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on April 29, 2022, 02:40:50 PM
DG did you listen to the audio?

The comments on the thing I posted are divided between it's stereotypical but not a big deal/get a sense of humor and it's stereotypical but true (so ok?). No one seems to think it isn't a stereotype joke
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on April 29, 2022, 02:41:22 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 01:27:47 PMThe GOP let itself be captured by the right wing crazies. The Tea Party and such. As such, the composition of the political representation of the "right" reflects to most extreme members of the right.

The left has avoided that, thank god. The left has NOT let the Democratic Party get captured by its most radical elements. This is a good thing, and something we should continue to resist, and part of that involves not kidding ourselves about their existence and desire to do to the Democrats what the Tea Party did to the GOP.

I agree, but this is the exact opposite of what that cartoon implied.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 02:42:58 PM
Quote from: Tamas on April 29, 2022, 02:41:22 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 01:27:47 PMThe GOP let itself be captured by the right wing crazies. The Tea Party and such. As such, the composition of the political representation of the "right" reflects to most extreme members of the right.

The left has avoided that, thank god. The left has NOT let the Democratic Party get captured by its most radical elements. This is a good thing, and something we should continue to resist, and part of that involves not kidding ourselves about their existence and desire to do to the Democrats what the Tea Party did to the GOP.

I agree, but this is the exact opposite of what that cartoon implied.
It's a cartoon. They aren't exactly nuanced.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on April 29, 2022, 02:44:22 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 02:42:58 PM
Quote from: Tamas on April 29, 2022, 02:41:22 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 01:27:47 PMThe GOP let itself be captured by the right wing crazies. The Tea Party and such. As such, the composition of the political representation of the "right" reflects to most extreme members of the right.

The left has avoided that, thank god. The left has NOT let the Democratic Party get captured by its most radical elements. This is a good thing, and something we should continue to resist, and part of that involves not kidding ourselves about their existence and desire to do to the Democrats what the Tea Party did to the GOP.

I agree, but this is the exact opposite of what that cartoon implied.
It's a cartoon. They aren't exactly nuanced.

You seemed to miss its point though. :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 02:44:36 PM
Actually, never mind, that particular tweet was about Denny Hamlin, not from Denny Hamlin.  The tweet was in response to Denny promising to get Kurt Busch flowers as an apology for a crash he caused.

https://twitter.com/KurtBusch/status/1374142268098117638?s=20&t=-GVyy13yjLruLCsGVHGiwQ

Nevertheless, memeing seems to be a pretty common way for one NASCAR driver to roast another after a wreck, so I was approaching that tweet from that expectation.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 02:47:39 PM
Quote from: Tamas on April 29, 2022, 02:44:22 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 02:42:58 PM
Quote from: Tamas on April 29, 2022, 02:41:22 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 01:27:47 PMThe GOP let itself be captured by the right wing crazies. The Tea Party and such. As such, the composition of the political representation of the "right" reflects to most extreme members of the right.

The left has avoided that, thank god. The left has NOT let the Democratic Party get captured by its most radical elements. This is a good thing, and something we should continue to resist, and part of that involves not kidding ourselves about their existence and desire to do to the Democrats what the Tea Party did to the GOP.

I agree, but this is the exact opposite of what that cartoon implied.
It's a cartoon. They aren't exactly nuanced.

You seemed to miss its point though. :P
No, I think I exactly got its point, because I didn't start from the presumption that I was trying to interpret its point in the mos negative light possible. 

I find that really does help actual discussion. If you start with the presumption that the person you are trying to communicate with is not some stick figure two dimensional asshole and the goal is to find out how to not understand what they are trying to say.

YMMV, of course.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on April 29, 2022, 02:52:01 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 02:47:39 PM
Quote from: Tamas on April 29, 2022, 02:44:22 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 02:42:58 PM
Quote from: Tamas on April 29, 2022, 02:41:22 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 01:27:47 PMThe GOP let itself be captured by the right wing crazies. The Tea Party and such. As such, the composition of the political representation of the "right" reflects to most extreme members of the right.

The left has avoided that, thank god. The left has NOT let the Democratic Party get captured by its most radical elements. This is a good thing, and something we should continue to resist, and part of that involves not kidding ourselves about their existence and desire to do to the Democrats what the Tea Party did to the GOP.

I agree, but this is the exact opposite of what that cartoon implied.
It's a cartoon. They aren't exactly nuanced.

You seemed to miss its point though. :P
No, I think I exactly got its point, because I didn't start from the presumption that I was trying to interpret its point in the mos negative light possible.

I find that really does help actual discussion. If you start with the presumption that the person you are trying to communicate with is not some stick figure two dimensional asshole and the goal is to find out how to not understand what they are trying to say.

YMMV, of course.

You seemed to focus on its "left went left-way" point, but I think it was equally an important point it tried to make with the "conservative" view point not moving an iota. Which is of course a ridiculous notion, as we have established.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 02:59:04 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on April 29, 2022, 02:40:50 PMDG did you listen to the audio?

The comments on the thing I posted are divided between it's stereotypical but not a big deal/get a sense of humor and it's stereotypical but true (so ok?). No one seems to think it isn't a stereotype joke
The comments all came after the controversy came out, in fact there wouldn't even be this tweet if the original weren't deleted.  The comments do not represent the contemporaneous interpretation of the meme.  When I watched it the first time, I didn't come to the tweet with expectations already set.  I personally had no idea there was anything Asian about it, that's all I can say, but I concede that the cartoon part would probably be obviously Asian to enough people even without coming to it with biased expectations.

Again, I'm going to stress on the other part.  In order for this to be an Asian driver joke, Kyle Larson has to be viewed as an Asian driver.  He simply isn't viewed that way.  It would be very different with Bubba Wallace, who most definitely is viewed as a black driver, and the fact that he's a black driver would be on the minds of everyone.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 29, 2022, 04:23:59 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 01:37:25 PMThe normalization of "you think that because you're white" argument is another irritant that makes people perceive the influence of extreme left.  Not only is that a horrible argument when it comes to the power of convincing people, but it's also racist.

"You think so because you're white" is annoying, yes, and usually put forward in bad faith (or lack of thinking things through). I don't see it as a particularly big deal. Nor do I see some public person having to take some sensitivity training because they retweeted something racist as being a fucking deal... especially when compared to the radical right agenda of undermining democracy, waging war on truth, and hurting minorities because it makes them feel good to be bullies.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 29, 2022, 04:25:50 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 29, 2022, 02:03:46 PMParticularly when any sane person sees we're literally in the midst of an assault on our democracy fueled massively by right wing propaganda, and a chief concern of yours is...the things right wing propaganda wants you to be concerned about? Nah, fuck that. I'm not letting them set my narrative.

So far you've been 100% on the money in this thread :cheers:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on April 29, 2022, 04:29:00 PM
I must say again though "You think that because you're white" is the sort of argument I hear more from the right, though they don't say white and rather some variant on liberal metropolitan elite (ABSOLUTELY NOT JEW) or the like.

I'll totally believe there are idiots on the left saying this stuff too, but lets not pretend they're alone or even that they're the main problem.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 29, 2022, 04:29:50 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 02:18:37 PMThe simplest explanation is that they're not powerless idiots now.  They're very powerful on a corporate level.  I'm sure the CEOs golfing in their private clubs are not themselves woke, but they know they may have problems if they don't pay the right kind of lip service.

How does this express itself?

Yeah, CEOs of big corporations (and small ones, for that matter) have to be in favour of inclusivity and diversity, not tolerate sexual harrassment, discrimination, and bullying and things like that... even if they'd prefer not to care. Sometimes, some folks use that to play clever politics, which is annoying and different when the clever politics relied on other tools... is that what you mean? And if so, how is it a big deal?

And if that's not what you mean, what do you mean?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 29, 2022, 04:30:15 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 01:39:12 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 29, 2022, 01:35:46 PM"Not part of the radical right", but "chooses to spend most of his time crying about the same things they cry about." Mhm.
That is just a fucking lie.

I do no at all spend most of my time, or most of my posting talking about the radical left at all. To the extent that I do spend time on it, it is because I think it is important - incredibly important - that the left stay the adult in the room, seeing as their isn't another option.

I post about a lot of shit, and I think anyone who has paid any attention to my views know exactly where I stand in regards to whether I am "part of the radical right"

So please feel free to go fuck yourself. What an asshole.

You are then unwittingly spouting their lines. Which might even be worse than doing it intentionally.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 29, 2022, 04:36:15 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 29, 2022, 04:29:50 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 02:18:37 PMThe simplest explanation is that they're not powerless idiots now.  They're very powerful on a corporate level.  I'm sure the CEOs golfing in their private clubs are not themselves woke, but they know they may have problems if they don't pay the right kind of lip service.

How does this express itself?

Yeah, CEOs of big corporations (and small ones, for that matter) have to be in favour of inclusivity and diversity, not tolerate sexual harrassment, discrimination, and bullying and things like that... even if they'd prefer not to care. Sometimes, some folks use that to play clever politics, which is annoying and different when the clever politics relied on other tools... is that what you mean? And if so, how is it a big deal?

And if that's not what you mean, what do you mean?

I actually hope CEO's are woke.  I know quite a few who are.  Not in the way the right has attacked the meaning of the word.  In the sense the word was intended to be used.  In fact there is a national conference being organized by such people right now to address what the right wing knuckle draggers would call being woke, and the benefits it brings to their businesses.

I know I am a broken record on this, but buying into their rhetoric enables the agenda of the extremists of the right.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 29, 2022, 04:41:11 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 02:23:25 PMI saw the tweet before it was deleted, and before I was aware of the controversy.  It didn't even occur to me that the character was Asian (though admittedly when I watched it the second time after the controversy, it does seem clear if you start off knowing that). 

However, the second part of the necessary connection is Kyle Larson.  Simply put, while most people know that he has Japanese ancestry, that knowledge is really a biographical detail as far as his public image is concerned.  I don't think anyone thinks of him as an Asian driver, and NASCAR never heavily promoted him as that (and certainly not after the N word incident made him a problematic symbol of diversity).  It's just not part of his public image or identity.  I would think that in order for a joke on someone to be stereotypical, it has to be on people's minds that the target of the joke belongs to the stereotyped race, and I really don't think that's the case with Larson.

I think it's fine to have a "it's not that big a deal" reaction to the course of events.

It's definitely something that back in the day would've been fine. "Look, here's an Asian character who's shit at driving and I'm saying you drive like her. Hahaha!" and maybe they're slyly referencing that the person they're pointing at has Asian ancestry (which in the old days would've made it funnier), or maybe they're ignorant.

Yeah, a few decades ago this'd be something you'd just brush off and if you felt hurt by it - or someone else did - you'd be told to man up / not be a pussy / quit whining. And it wouldn't be a big deal. And now a bunch of people think it is a big deal, and as a result the guy who made the tweet has to be punished by... watching some videos, maybe talk to someone who'll tell him to be more aware, and he'll say "yeah, I didn't think it through I'll be more thoughtful in the future...". And that's an example of "the radical left wing running amuck and being out of control?"

I dunno if I'm misunderstanding the argument, but the whole thing seems pretty trivial to me. I get that it may seem annoying, and even a bit stressful ("what if I say something and everyone calls me a racist and my whole life is ruined")... but compared to labelling people who are supportive of their gay kids "groomers" and threatening them with jail, compared to criminalizing abortion, compared to supporting police killing black folks with impunity, and compared to attempting to storm congress and overthrowing an election... I dunno... it just doesn't seem particularly extreme.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 04:41:20 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 29, 2022, 04:23:59 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 01:37:25 PMThe normalization of "you think that because you're white" argument is another irritant that makes people perceive the influence of extreme left.  Not only is that a horrible argument when it comes to the power of convincing people, but it's also racist.

"You think so because you're white" is annoying, yes, and usually put forward in bad faith (or lack of thinking things through). I don't see it as a particularly big deal. Nor do I see some public person having to take some sensitivity training because they retweeted something racist as being a fucking deal... especially when compared to the radical right agenda of undermining democracy, waging war on truth, and hurting minorities because it makes them feel good to be bullies.
Why do we always have to compare to the far right?  Besides, from a pragmatic perspective, I do think that woke left is enabling the fascist right.  I think more often than not people get annoyed at woke left not because the far right convinced them to be annoyed at them, but because the woke left convinced them to be annoyed at them.  And, by the way, saying that you're annoyed at woke left because the far right duped you into that is also not that persuasive.  It is possible for people who disagree with you to form their own thoughts independently.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 29, 2022, 04:44:46 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 02:59:04 PMThe comments all came after the controversy came out, in fact there wouldn't even be this tweet if the original weren't deleted.  The comments do not represent the contemporaneous interpretation of the meme.  When I watched it the first time, I didn't come to the tweet with expectations already set.  I personally had no idea there was anything Asian about it, that's all I can say, but I concede that the cartoon part would probably be obviously Asian to enough people even without coming to it with biased expectations.

Again, I'm going to stress on the other part.  In order for this to be an Asian driver joke, Kyle Larson has to be viewed as an Asian driver.  He simply isn't viewed that way.  It would be very different with Bubba Wallace, who most definitely is viewed as a black driver, and the fact that he's a black driver would be on the minds of everyone.

The character in the meme is:

1) A shit driver.
2) Asian.

The meme itself is already trading in "Asian drivers are shit." That's the thing that makes it funny, if you're partial to that type of humour.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 29, 2022, 04:47:29 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 04:41:20 PMWhy do we always have to compare to the far right?  Besides, from a pragmatic perspective, I do think that woke left is enabling the fascist right.  I think more often than not people get annoyed at woke left not because the far right convinced them to be annoyed at them, but because the woke left convinced them to be annoyed at them.  And, by the way, saying that you're annoyed at woke left because the far right duped you into that is also not that persuasive.  It is possible for people who disagree with you to form their own thoughts independently.

Would you even be aware of 99% of what the woke left did if we didn't have Fox and the far-right social media sphere screaming about how awful the woke left is?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 29, 2022, 04:48:40 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 29, 2022, 04:23:59 PM"You think so because you're white" is annoying, yes, and usually put forward in bad faith (or lack of thinking things through). I don't see it as a particularly big deal. Nor do I see some public person having to take some sensitivity training because they retweeted something racist as being a fucking deal... especially when compared to the radical right agenda of undermining democracy, waging war on truth, and hurting minorities because it makes them feel good to be bullies.

Whereas it's an absolutely monumental deal when compare with the Johnny Depp Amber Heard trial.

What is the purpose of this comparison other than to deflect attention from people you want to protect from scrutiny?  It's not an either/or choice.  People can think and talk about two things at the same time.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 04:58:10 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 29, 2022, 04:29:50 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 02:18:37 PMThe simplest explanation is that they're not powerless idiots now.  They're very powerful on a corporate level.  I'm sure the CEOs golfing in their private clubs are not themselves woke, but they know they may have problems if they don't pay the right kind of lip service.

How does this express itself?

Yeah, CEOs of big corporations (and small ones, for that matter) have to be in favour of inclusivity and diversity, not tolerate sexual harrassment, discrimination, and bullying and things like that... even if they'd prefer not to care. Sometimes, some folks use that to play clever politics, which is annoying and different when the clever politics relied on other tools... is that what you mean? And if so, how is it a big deal?

And if that's not what you mean, what do you mean?
I don't know if I meant that, what you said can mean many different things.  I agree with the general sense that it's a good thing if CEOs are in favor of good things, and that it's a bad thing if CEOs are in favor of bad things.

What exactly does "diversity and inclusion" mean?  It could mean anything from "don't use the N word in public" to hiring quotas to company policies devoid of nuance and sense.  What does not tolerating sexual harassment mean?  It could mean not shielding people proven to sexually harass from any responsibility, or it could mean zero tolerance for things that someone could perceive as harassment, no proof of intent required.  And so on.

One thing that I do mean is that corporations will almost never stick with a person who's a target of a Twitter mob, for example.  If Twitter thinks you're a racist, you're so fucking gone from whatever company you work for, and the company will put out a statement patting itself on the back for never tolerating making Twitter mad.  You can say that doesn't actually happen all that often, but you don't need to destroy that many individuals to intimidate millions.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 05:15:13 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 29, 2022, 04:44:46 PMWould you even be aware of 99% of what the woke left did if we didn't have Fox and the far-right social media sphere screaming about how awful the woke left is?
I think I would be aware of close to everything I'm currently aware of without Fox, for the reason that I think I'm very well insulated from Fox and their satellites.  Not only do I not watch them, I don't interact with people who do, and I try to block them out from any feed I'm subjected to.  I think my blockade of Fox is fairly effective, because it inevitably shocks my system whenever I do get exposed to whatever fantastical reality they're spinning.  All of my frustrations with the woke leftism, insofar as I can remember it, comes from my personal exposure to the woke left.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 29, 2022, 05:16:52 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 04:58:10 PMWhat exactly does "diversity and inclusion" mean?  It could mean anything from "don't use the N word in public" to hiring quotas to company policies devoid of nuance and sense.  What does not tolerating sexual harassment mean?  It could mean not shielding people proven to sexually harass from any responsibility, or it could mean zero tolerance for things that someone could perceive as harassment, no proof of intent required.  And so on.

These things actually have pretty clear meanings.  I don't know what you mean by policies devoid of nuance and sense.  Do you have something particular in mind?

Not tolerating sexual harrassment means no sexual harrassment.  I am not sure what you are questioning there. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 29, 2022, 05:17:39 PM
Quote from: DGuller on April 29, 2022, 05:15:13 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 29, 2022, 04:44:46 PMWould you even be aware of 99% of what the woke left did if we didn't have Fox and the far-right social media sphere screaming about how awful the woke left is?
I think I would be aware of close to everything I'm currently aware of without Fox, for the reason that I think I'm very well insulated from Fox and their satellites.  Not only do I not watch them, I don't interact with people who do, and I try to block them out from any feed I'm subjected to.  I think my blockade of Fox is fairly effective, because it inevitably shocks my system whenever I do get exposed to whatever fantastical reality they're spinning.  All of my frustrations with the woke leftism, insofar as I can remember it, comes from my personal exposure to the woke left.

What is the woke left if you are leaving behind how Fox has defined it?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on April 29, 2022, 06:00:50 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 29, 2022, 04:30:15 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 01:39:12 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 29, 2022, 01:35:46 PM"Not part of the radical right", but "chooses to spend most of his time crying about the same things they cry about." Mhm.
That is just a fucking lie.

I do no at all spend most of my time, or most of my posting talking about the radical left at all. To the extent that I do spend time on it, it is because I think it is important - incredibly important - that the left stay the adult in the room, seeing as their isn't another option.

I post about a lot of shit, and I think anyone who has paid any attention to my views know exactly where I stand in regards to whether I am "part of the radical right"

So please feel free to go fuck yourself. What an asshole.

You are then unwittingly spouting their lines. Which might even be worse than doing it intentionally.



It's funny to watch you spout all of the climate-change deniers' arguments, just in a different context.

The split in the US left is a huge problem when it convinces hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters to stay hoe on election day in Virginia, giving the governor's mansion and state House into Republican hands.

The left wing of the Democratic Party certainly has legitimate complaints about how the party is run and how policies are made, but they can't let better be the enemy of good enough.  The current Democratic party leadership is crap, but time will quickly solve that problem without a civil war in the party.  The focus has to be on winning races, not winning debates.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 06:07:07 PM
Quote from: Tamas on April 29, 2022, 02:52:01 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 02:47:39 PM
Quote from: Tamas on April 29, 2022, 02:44:22 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 02:42:58 PM
Quote from: Tamas on April 29, 2022, 02:41:22 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 01:27:47 PMThe GOP let itself be captured by the right wing crazies. The Tea Party and such. As such, the composition of the political representation of the "right" reflects to most extreme members of the right.

The left has avoided that, thank god. The left has NOT let the Democratic Party get captured by its most radical elements. This is a good thing, and something we should continue to resist, and part of that involves not kidding ourselves about their existence and desire to do to the Democrats what the Tea Party did to the GOP.

I agree, but this is the exact opposite of what that cartoon implied.
It's a cartoon. They aren't exactly nuanced.

You seemed to miss its point though. :P
No, I think I exactly got its point, because I didn't start from the presumption that I was trying to interpret its point in the mos negative light possible.

I find that really does help actual discussion. If you start with the presumption that the person you are trying to communicate with is not some stick figure two dimensional asshole and the goal is to find out how to not understand what they are trying to say.

YMMV, of course.

You seemed to focus on its "left went left-way" point, but I think it was equally an important point it tried to make with the "conservative" view point not moving an iota. Which is of course a ridiculous notion, as we have established.
That is ridiculous, but I don't think that was the point of his sharing it, or of the comic generally.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 29, 2022, 06:17:44 PM
Quote from: grumbler on April 29, 2022, 06:00:50 PMIt's funny to watch you spout all of the climate-change deniers' arguments, just in a different context.

Are you feeling ok?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 06:30:52 PM
It' fascinating to watch the strategy play itself out. If you don't agree with the most radical left of ideas, why, you are either a secret Trumper, or a useful tool of them.

It is the exact point the stupid cartoon is making, playing out right here.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on April 29, 2022, 07:05:32 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 06:30:52 PMIt' fascinating to watch the strategy play itself out. If you don't agree with the most radical left of ideas, why, you are either a secret Trumper, or a useful tool of them.

It is the exact point the stupid cartoon is making, playing out right here.

Actively embracing hard right ideas  ! = falling afoul of intolerant anyone who disagrees with me is Hitler attitudes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 07:20:35 PM
Quote from: Josquius on April 29, 2022, 07:05:32 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 06:30:52 PMIt' fascinating to watch the strategy play itself out. If you don't agree with the most radical left of ideas, why, you are either a secret Trumper, or a useful tool of them.

It is the exact point the stupid cartoon is making, playing out right here.

Actively embracing hard right ideas  ! = falling afoul of intolerant anyone who disagrees with me is Hitler attitudes.

Nobody in this thread is embracing "hard right ideas". Nobody.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on April 29, 2022, 07:22:45 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 07:20:35 PM
Quote from: Josquius on April 29, 2022, 07:05:32 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 06:30:52 PMIt' fascinating to watch the strategy play itself out. If you don't agree with the most radical left of ideas, why, you are either a secret Trumper, or a useful tool of them.

It is the exact point the stupid cartoon is making, playing out right here.

Actively embracing hard right ideas  ! = falling afoul of intolerant anyone who disagrees with me is Hitler attitudes.

Nobody in this thread is embracing "hard right ideas". Nobody.

So I'm imagining it when you're going on about the woke menace being the most important of issues?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 29, 2022, 07:28:21 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 06:30:52 PMIt' fascinating to watch the strategy play itself out. If you don't agree with the most radical left of ideas, why, you are either a secret Trumper, or a useful tool of them.

It is the exact point the stupid cartoon is making, playing out right here.

It is fascinating to see what you think of as "the most radical left of ideas".
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 29, 2022, 07:29:49 PM
Quote from: Josquius on April 29, 2022, 07:22:45 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 07:20:35 PM
Quote from: Josquius on April 29, 2022, 07:05:32 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 06:30:52 PMIt' fascinating to watch the strategy play itself out. If you don't agree with the most radical left of ideas, why, you are either a secret Trumper, or a useful tool of them.

It is the exact point the stupid cartoon is making, playing out right here.

Actively embracing hard right ideas  ! = falling afoul of intolerant anyone who disagrees with me is Hitler attitudes.

Nobody in this thread is embracing "hard right ideas". Nobody.

So I'm imagining it when you're going on about the woke menace being the most important of issues?

Berkut simply cannot imagine a world where his views do not represent the moderate middle and everyone to his left is a radical lefty.  It is why he thinks Musk has a point.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 07:38:42 PM
Quote from: Josquius on April 29, 2022, 07:22:45 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 07:20:35 PM
Quote from: Josquius on April 29, 2022, 07:05:32 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 06:30:52 PMIt' fascinating to watch the strategy play itself out. If you don't agree with the most radical left of ideas, why, you are either a secret Trumper, or a useful tool of them.

It is the exact point the stupid cartoon is making, playing out right here.

Actively embracing hard right ideas  ! = falling afoul of intolerant anyone who disagrees with me is Hitler attitudes.

Nobody in this thread is embracing "hard right ideas". Nobody.

So I'm imagining it when you're going on about the woke menace being the most important of issues?
Correct
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 07:40:09 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 29, 2022, 07:29:49 PM
Quote from: Josquius on April 29, 2022, 07:22:45 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 07:20:35 PM
Quote from: Josquius on April 29, 2022, 07:05:32 PM
Quote from: Berkut on April 29, 2022, 06:30:52 PMIt' fascinating to watch the strategy play itself out. If you don't agree with the most radical left of ideas, why, you are either a secret Trumper, or a useful tool of them.

It is the exact point the stupid cartoon is making, playing out right here.

Actively embracing hard right ideas  ! = falling afoul of intolerant anyone who disagrees with me is Hitler attitudes.

Nobody in this thread is embracing "hard right ideas". Nobody.

So I'm imagining it when you're going on about the woke menace being the most important of issues?

Berkut simply cannot imagine a world where his views do not represent the moderate middle and everyone to his left is a radical lefty.  It is why he thinks Musk has a point.
CC propping up another strawman?

Say it isn't so!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 30, 2022, 07:20:32 AM
I wish Dan Snow was in Languish.  His comment on Twitter:

The left have moved so far left that they wish to see the richest people pay as much income tax as they would have under Eisenhower and Churchill.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 30, 2022, 10:45:44 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 30, 2022, 07:20:32 AMI wish Dan Snow was in Languish.  His comment on Twitter:

The left have moved so far left that they wish to see the richest people pay as much income tax as they would have under Eisenhower and Churchill.
Nobody disagrees with that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on April 30, 2022, 10:47:53 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 29, 2022, 06:17:44 PM
Quote from: grumbler on April 29, 2022, 06:00:50 PMIt's funny to watch you spout all of the climate-change deniers' arguments, just in a different context.

Are you feeling ok?

Maybe a little dizzy from laughing so hard at your "arguments," but I'll recover by just not reading your posts for a bit.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on April 30, 2022, 03:00:11 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 30, 2022, 07:20:32 AMI wish Dan Snow was in Languish.  His comment on Twitter:

The left have moved so far left that they wish to see the richest people pay as much income tax as they would have under Eisenhower and Churchill.
But I think that is disingenuous, tricksy nonsense and he probably knows it.

I don't know if I'd say the left has become more extreme or even that the right has in the US. I think the right turned crazy - they've gone fully into the conspiratorial, paranoid undertow (which always exists in American politics - but I think there's a lot of continuity between Trump and strands of the GOP). But I think the left has turned cultural.

It is bullshit to say that the left's position is the same as it was in the 1950s, or in 2005 - especially on cultural or social issues. It's equally untrue to say that conservatives haven't moved. I'm not sure that whether or not they've moved equally is even a useful metric. The right have moved into very dangerous territory - they are telling us what they're planning to do, we can see in the "state of emergency" rhetoric what they are giving themselves permission to do. That should be the focus because I don't think the left have moved into dangeorous territory - despite an actual state of emergency.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on April 30, 2022, 04:21:06 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 30, 2022, 03:00:11 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 30, 2022, 07:20:32 AMI wish Dan Snow was in Languish.  His comment on Twitter:

The left have moved so far left that they wish to see the richest people pay as much income tax as they would have under Eisenhower and Churchill.
But I think that is disingenuous, tricksy nonsense and he probably knows it.

I don't know if I'd say the left has become more extreme or even that the right has in the US. I think the right turned crazy - they've gone fully into the conspiratorial, paranoid undertow (which always exists in American politics - but I think there's a lot of continuity between Trump and strands of the GOP). But I think the left has turned cultural.

It is bullshit to say that the left's position is the same as it was in the 1950s, or in 2005 - especially on cultural or social issues. It's equally untrue to say that conservatives haven't moved. I'm not sure that whether or not they've moved equally is even a useful metric. The right have moved into very dangerous territory - they are telling us what they're planning to do, we can see in the "state of emergency" rhetoric what they are giving themselves permission to do. That should be the focus because I don't think the left have moved into dangeorous territory - despite an actual state of emergency.

I agree with this 100%. This is exactly what I am saying.

Hell, Trumpers aren't even really further "right". They are just...well, delusional. For them it isn't even really about right-left. 

I think CC knows it is disingenuous, tricksy nonsense as well.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on April 30, 2022, 11:01:39 PM
Except the left have always been about defending minority rights whilst the right seeks to employ all manner of dodgy tricks to deny them. This is nothing new.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on May 01, 2022, 02:49:53 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 30, 2022, 11:01:39 PMExcept the left have always been about defending minority rights whilst the right seeks to employ all manner of dodgy tricks to deny them. This is nothing new.

Sure, that's the issue.  Do minority rights always trump?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on May 01, 2022, 03:02:52 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 01, 2022, 02:49:53 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 30, 2022, 11:01:39 PMExcept the left have always been about defending minority rights whilst the right seeks to employ all manner of dodgy tricks to deny them. This is nothing new.

Sure, that's the issue.  Do minority rights always trump?

Trump what?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on May 01, 2022, 03:12:41 AM
Quote from: Josquius on May 01, 2022, 03:02:52 AMTrump what?

Other people's rights and privileges.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on May 01, 2022, 03:19:23 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 01, 2022, 03:12:41 AM
Quote from: Josquius on May 01, 2022, 03:02:52 AMTrump what?

Other people's rights and privileges.

A false dichotomy.
There isn't a finite amount of freedom to go round.
Treating black people, gay people etc.... With decency doesn't mean you have to start being a dick to straight white guys.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on May 01, 2022, 03:35:56 AM
Quote from: Josquius on May 01, 2022, 03:19:23 AMA false dichotomy.
There isn't a finite amount of freedom to go round.
Treating black people, gay people etc.... With decency doesn't mean you have to start being a dick to straight white guys.

Letting trans women compete with cis women in sports means you have to start being a dick to the cis women that would prefer not to compete with them.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on May 01, 2022, 03:54:15 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 01, 2022, 03:35:56 AM
Quote from: Josquius on May 01, 2022, 03:19:23 AMA false dichotomy.
There isn't a finite amount of freedom to go round.
Treating black people, gay people etc.... With decency doesn't mean you have to start being a dick to straight white guys.

Letting trans women compete with cis women in sports means you have to start being a dick to the cis women that would prefer not to compete with them.

:lol:
I somehow guessed you'd go onto this one.
Something which is really just absolutely not an issue in any way for more than a fraction of a percent of people. Something which sports governing bodies have been grappling with for the better part of a century without the public throwing a fit.

But yet, since its a complex issue which on the surface can have a simple answer and is one of the few examples in the history of the universe where it could be twisted that  minority rights might hurt the majority, the loony right has decided to politicise and turn into a wedge which it can use to push back minority rights in other  ways.

And please don't hide behind the "it's about women's rights" rhetoric. I know you're smarter than that. Time and again research shows women tend to be far more chill about trans women being allowed to get on with their lives than men are.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on May 01, 2022, 03:57:32 AM
Could be twisted?  Anything could be twisted.  It's either a reasonable moral perspective or it's not.

If you show me data that says a majority of cis women who compete in sports are in favor of trans participation, I'll say it's a done deal.  Otherwise not.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on May 01, 2022, 07:18:11 AM
Quote from: Josquius on May 01, 2022, 03:19:23 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 01, 2022, 03:12:41 AM
Quote from: Josquius on May 01, 2022, 03:02:52 AMTrump what?

Other people's rights and privileges.

A false dichotomy.
There isn't a finite amount of freedom to go round.
Treating black people, gay people etc.... With decency doesn't mean you have to start being a dick to straight white guys.
The practical reality is that the effort to even the playing field does mean that you can (and probably ought to) do some things that will be seen as being a dick to straight white guys.

Or whatever group it is that you are NOT giving preferential treatment towards.

Example: Asian Americans are suing universities because they are being selected against their merits in order to create space for other minorities.

Also - language like "straight white guys" is not useful. It implies that the people you are arguing with are not doing so from principle, but rather to protect their own privilege. And while plenty of push back against equality comes from precisely that, it isn't all, and assuming that those you are arguing with are coming from that perspective is a waste of time. Either it isn't true, in which case you are the asshole for assuming they have shitty motives, or it IS true, in which case they are not being rational so you might as well stop talking to them.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on May 01, 2022, 10:56:40 AM
Seems to me that the right is pushing against minority rights in a whole bunch of areas that don't have anything to do with transwomen in sport.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on May 01, 2022, 01:27:46 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 01, 2022, 03:57:32 AMCould be twisted?  Anything could be twisted.  It's either a reasonable moral perspective or it's not.

Not really. Little in life is such a binary.
In this case science is the important factor and it doesn't care about anyones feelings.
Sex isn't a binary though culturally we treat it as one and defining just who lands on which side in a situation where there's a statistical advantage in pushing the boundary is something that has long been a struggle for sports governing bodies.

QuoteIf you show me data that says a majority of cis women who compete in sports are in favor of trans participation, I'll say it's a done deal.  Otherwise not.
As Jacob says trans women in sports isn't the only area the attack is taking place. Really this is just an area they're using as it is so complicated and outside of most people's interest so easy to pretend it's a simple issue with only two extreme answers possible.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on May 01, 2022, 01:28:16 PM
Quote from: Jacob on May 01, 2022, 10:56:40 AMSeems to me that the right is pushing against minority rights in a whole bunch of areas that don't have anything to do with transwomen in sport.

True, but that is the issue that gains the most traction with the public.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on May 01, 2022, 02:04:44 PM
Quote from: Josquius on May 01, 2022, 01:27:46 PMAs Jacob says trans women in sports isn't the only area the attack is taking place. Really this is just an area they're using as it is so complicated and outside of most people's interest so easy to pretend it's a simple issue with only two extreme answers possible.

What the right is attacking is not relevant to our discussion.  They have removed themselves from the debate by their wackiness.

Fine, if you say it's more complex than two extreme answers, that suggests to me you think *some* trans women should not be allowed to compete.  I am willing to hear your argument about which should be allowed and which should not.

You mentioned science being important, and the science is saying people who have gone through puberty as a male, regardless of the hormone blockers they might take after puberty, have a significant advantage in sports.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on May 01, 2022, 02:45:59 PM
Well, you have to appreciate that they have come around to the despised Sam Harris position that the science and data matters, and there is more talk about beyond "trans-women are women full stop and there is nothing to discuss!"

It's weird to see how now there is this pretend idea that that was their position all along...?

"It's complicated, and lets let the scientists and controlling bodies within the sports figure it out!" is exactly what should have been the answer all along.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on May 02, 2022, 12:55:01 AM
Quote from: Berkut on May 01, 2022, 02:45:59 PMWell, you have to appreciate that they have come around to the despised Sam Harris position that the science and data matters, and there is more talk about beyond "trans-women are women full stop and there is nothing to discuss!"

It's weird to see how now there is this pretend idea that that was their position all along...?

It was.
Thats why this is such an effective item for right wing identity politics. They spin that there is only two possible full on nuclear answers of all trans people completely banned from women's sports or its a complete free for all and Rafael Nadal can show up the day of the women's Wimbledon final say "Oh, I'm Rafaela today. I need to buy a new Ferrari see.".
Outside of the anti-woke strawman NOBODY* wants it to be a complete free for all.

As I've said a bunch of times however and nobody ever wants to pay attention to the fact that trans women aren't even the important part of it if you're looking at it in good faith, sports authorities have been grappling with defining women for the better part of a century.

Quote"It's complicated, and lets let the scientists and controlling bodies within the sports figure it out!" is exactly what should have been the answer all along.
Which it had been.
But in recent years the anti-woke cult have seen an opportunity to profit by pushing in their feelings instead. They've discovered this is a really useful issue where they get to present the reasonable "Just let people be themselves and get on with their life" view as the irrational crazy one and scream gotcha.


*in the world today you'll find SOMEBODY who believes anything. Non-literal nobody.


Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 01, 2022, 02:04:44 PM
Quote from: Josquius on May 01, 2022, 01:27:46 PMAs Jacob says trans women in sports isn't the only area the attack is taking place. Really this is just an area they're using as it is so complicated and outside of most people's interest so easy to pretend it's a simple issue with only two extreme answers possible.

What the right is attacking is not relevant to our discussion.  They have removed themselves from the debate by their wackiness.

Fine, if you say it's more complex than two extreme answers, that suggests to me you think *some* trans women should not be allowed to compete.  I am willing to hear your argument about which should be allowed and which should not.

You mentioned science being important, and the science is saying people who have gone through puberty as a male, regardless of the hormone blockers they might take after puberty, have a significant advantage in sports.

Science says otherwise.

I'm not going to pretend to have more knowledge on this topic than people who have devoted their life to it. It is worth noting however that the definition keeps shifting as they're basically trying to define a multiple variable "Analogue" thing according to a strict digital binary.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on May 02, 2022, 01:37:05 AM
Not the science I've been reading.

So you seem to be saying that your non-extreme, non-endpoint solution is to allow all trans women to compete but block obvious cis men who are faking. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on May 02, 2022, 03:39:57 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 02, 2022, 01:37:05 AMNot the science I've been reading.

You haven't seen the most well known study on this topic?
https://blogs.bmj.com/bjsm/2021/01/22/testosterone-and-transgender-athletic-performance-finding-a-path-for-inclusion-for-transgender-athletes/

QuoteSo you seem to be saying that your non-extreme, non-endpoint solution is to allow all trans women to compete but block obvious cis men who are faking. 
That's the ideal world outcome. Probably not possible in every situation with current technology however.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on May 02, 2022, 08:09:23 AM
Quote from: Josquius on May 02, 2022, 12:55:01 AM
Quote from: Berkut on May 01, 2022, 02:45:59 PMWell, you have to appreciate that they have come around to the despised Sam Harris position that the science and data matters, and there is more talk about beyond "trans-women are women full stop and there is nothing to discuss!"

It's weird to see how now there is this pretend idea that that was their position all along...?

It was.
Thats why this is such an effective item for right wing identity politics. They spin that there is only two possible full on nuclear answers of all trans people completely banned from women's sports or its a complete free for all and Rafael Nadal can show up the day of the women's Wimbledon final say "Oh, I'm Rafaela today. I need to buy a new Ferrari see.".
Outside of the anti-woke strawman NOBODY* wants it to be a complete free for all.
I don't think that is the case at all. 

Ignoring the right wing bullshit, because they are all morons on this stuff.

But the stance on the far left WAS in fact that if you were a trans woman, you should be allowed to compete. Full stop.

There would be no debate with Harris or myself for that matter if the stance was that its complicated, and we should let science and data and governing bodies figure it out - but that means it is likely that there will in fact be trans women who are not allowed to compete in some sports at some levels.

I was called a bigot for that position, and Harris was identified as being anti-LBTQ for it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on May 02, 2022, 08:43:07 AM
Quote from: Josquius on May 02, 2022, 03:39:57 AMYou haven't seen the most well known study on this topic?
https://blogs.bmj.com/bjsm/2021/01/22/testosterone-and-transgender-athletic-performance-finding-a-path-for-inclusion-for-transgender-athletes/

I had not.  Eye opening.  I will have to square that with the other things I've been reading, but until I do I will have to put my lobbying on this issue on hold.

QuoteThat's the ideal world outcome. Probably not possible in every situation with current technology however.

FYI Squeeze, not many people are going to see this as a particularly nuanced, subtle solution that threads its way between two extremes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on May 02, 2022, 08:59:06 AM
The trannies in women's sports thing is a pretty bad example because it perfectly highlights how the right is good at making you upset about things that affect such a small portion of society it is almost mind-boggling.

Transgender people participating in sports has no easy, fair answer. That means whatever answer you go with is going to be a "best case scenario" from a list of options none of which is great. The actual sports organizations that run international sport have been gradually building out things for this, based on testosterone levels, how long a person has been on hormone treatments etc. Lia Thomas may demonstrate that those protocols (which the NCAA essentially copied from America's governing body that regulates American Olympic Swimming) still don't quite get it right. It could be the right answer is, given you only get 4 years of eligibility, you just pass a rule in NCAA swimming that if anyone has ever competed as a male, that is the only division of the sport they can compete in.

At the High School level, it's much less serious an issue--the stakes are lower and it is quite rare for people to be undergoing hormone treatments at that age (although it is becoming more common.) The Republican Governor of Utah vetoed a bill aimed at transgender kids in part because he said it would affect like 3 kids in the entire State of Utah. His point was this was not a sweeping issue, and laws that seem almost cruel in their intent, aimed at three kids who are probably some flavor of mentally unhealthy and going through identity-shattering emotional/psychological issues related to gender dysphoria, maybe isn't what we need to do as a society--even if Sam Harris and Tucker Carlson get Yi and Berkut's blood pressure up about it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on May 02, 2022, 09:08:33 AM
Nobodies blood pressure is up about it - it is just a discussion.

You seem to be the one who gets worked up over the chance to engage in yet more personal attacks because people want to talk about things that they find relevant and interesting. Why is that?

You are right - this is like a corner issue of a corner issue of a corner issue.

But it does in fact affect a lot of people. Lia Thomas effects every single swimmer she competes against in the NCAA, and even swimmers she has never competed against (in that she could establish records that remove records from others, and make new records harder to obtain). It is an interesting issue, at least I find it interesting.

It is also interesting because the right does blow it out of proportion. I contend that their ability to do so is, in part, assisted by the fact that so many on the left refuse to acknowledge that there is in fact nuance, and accuse anyone who says there is nuance a bigot. Indeed, you post is identical in content to what Harris has said - so why is him saying it some great crime against humanity, but you saying the exact same thing somehow fine? Why are you getting your blood pressure up about it?

What is a more interesting issue is why you are so compelled to be such an asshole about simply discussing things. 

I am confident that you watch a hell of a lot more Tucker Carlson then I do. You sure know a lot more than I do about what he has to say.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on May 02, 2022, 09:22:32 AM
Quote from: Berkut on May 02, 2022, 09:08:33 AMNobodies blood pressure is up about it - it is just a discussion.

You seem to be the one who gets worked up over the chance to engage in yet more personal attacks because people want to talk about things that they find relevant and interesting. Why is that?

You are right - this is like a corner issue of a corner issue of a corner issue.

But it does in fact affect a lot of people. Lia Thomas effects every single swimmer she competes against in the NCAA, and even swimmers she has never competed against (in that she could establish records that remove records from others, and make new records harder to obtain). It is an interesting issue, at least I find it interesting.

It is also interesting because the right does blow it out of proportion. I contend that their ability to do so is, in part, assisted by the fact that so many on the left refuse to acknowledge that there is in fact nuance, and accuse anyone who says there is nuance a bigot. Indeed, you post is identical in content to what Harris has said - so why is him saying it some great crime against humanity, but you saying the exact same thing somehow fine? Why are you getting your blood pressure up about it?

What is a more interesting issue is why you are so compelled to be such an asshole about simply discussing things.

I am confident that you watch a hell of a lot more Tucker Carlson then I do. You sure know a lot more than I do about what he has to say.

Because I'm about tired of my country trying to turn into Hungary, fed by white nationalist grievance politics. I'm tired of people that, despite your perception I'm "going after you", I actually know is smarter than that, largely aping their talking points. I do believe in your mind you think you're just "exploring the issue", but you're exploring it from a perspective in which you've already let the foundation and a good bit of the framework of the issue get defined by right wing propaganda.

I don't know if it's age, lack of media awareness or what have you--but this right wing propaganda is pernicious. Just because you never personally consume things like Tucker's show, Breitbart, DailyCaller, etc, a lot of the influence of these shows is virality on social media, short videos, tweets etc. Eventually they cross over into being talked about by figures like Maher, Rogan et al. who are not really right wingers, but who have a tendency to want to talk about their talking points and agree with good portions of them. While it might seem like this is healthy, it is not. Because, again, we are starting with a premise where we've allowed right wing propaganda to build out the foundation of the debate.

I actually don't think there is much good at all for pro-democratic forces to talk about these issues. Talking about these issues essentially mean the fascists have already won, we're being actively manipulated, and we're in a civil war, it needs to be recognized for what it is.

Nuance no longer has value in American society.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on May 02, 2022, 09:45:23 AM
I disgree. I think talking about issues is absolutely necessary BECAUSE the right will own them otherwise. Has pretending CRT is a non-issue (and it is, in any rational sense, a non-issue) helped keep the right from taking over school boards across the country?

I don't think sticking our heads in the sand will work. Or at least it hasn't worked.

I think we should win the battle, and that means being willing to have open and honest discussion about the merits, and being willing to actually contest the right wing bullshit.

You cannot do that if every time you talk about it you get attacked from the right (of course) but ALSO immediately attacked from the left as a bigot or "middle aged white bro" for not embracing every absurd take on it that some twitter dumbass or journalist puts forth.

And of course the right is going to latch onto the more absurd things. They are assholes, they aren't stupid. If the left spouts off about some topic that is 98% perfectly reasonable, of course they are going to latch onto the 2% and attack the entirety on that basis. Both sides do that, all the time.

And I think if you want to not let the right wing propaganda universe "build out the foundation of the debate" don't you have to propose your own foundation? Doesn't that demand a discussion, and an effort within the left to demand that the foundation NOT be defined by our own silly squad? Because if we don't, we know how that works. The loudest and most extreme define the terms. 

I don't want the left to go the route of the right. And I think it is a real danger if the adults aren't willing to stand up and make the sane argument. I think this is exactly what happened in the GOP over the last several decades of my own life. People ignored the crazies, then woke up one day and they were running the show.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on May 02, 2022, 09:53:38 AM
"If you're explaining, you're losing", is an old political axiom and I see little compelling argument against it. Mitch McConnell hilariously uttered a paraphrasing of it openly not that long ago when talking about Republican strategy.

I don't think Dems should stick their heads in the sand, but I don't think you counter propaganda with "open discussion" and "learning sessions." You largely have to find a way to contest it by flooding the common square with your own propaganda that riles up people against your enemies.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on May 02, 2022, 10:04:50 AM
But we have to define what our own propaganda *is*. 

And that means we have to discuss it within the left wing universe. 

I am not saying we should have nuanced discussions as our message, that obviously won't work.

I am saying when we all sit around arguing about what our message ought to be, we should not be accusing anyone who challenges the demand from the far left that the message reflect the most extreme version of being right wing middle aged white bro bigots who are regurgitating Tucker Carlson.

Otherwise, the "your own propaganda" is going to be stupid shit like "Defund the Police!" that nobody but the most radical supports, yet somehow seems to be the left wing message anyway. It will be Bernie Bros throwing temper tantrums because their guy lost. 

The moderate/centrist/independent part of the Dem coalition cannot be afraid to stake and defend their position. They are actually the people who actually represent most American's actual views on most issues. The strategy, so nicely illustrated by you, of accusing them of racial motivation every time they say anything is fucking bullshit. *And it isn't working*
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on May 02, 2022, 10:23:41 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on May 02, 2022, 09:22:32 AMI actually don't think there is much good at all for pro-democratic forces to talk about these issues. Talking about these issues essentially mean the fascists have already won, we're being actively manipulated, and we're in a civil war, it needs to be recognized for what it is.

The fascists win by electing more people than we do.  If I talk about transgender women in sports not a single additional Republican gets elected to office.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PJL on May 02, 2022, 10:35:26 AM
Right-wing extremism is like a virus. But the solution is not to ignore it, but to propose moderate versions of their ideas, like a vaccine. But unfortunately many on the far left are the anti-vaxxers, any possible hint of adapting ideas from the right is seen as heretical.


Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on May 02, 2022, 10:43:06 AM
The moderate wing of the Democratic coalition has staked and defended their position; they are in fact dominant in the party.  That's why we have an infrastructure plan and no BBB.  "Defund the police" is actually a good example: it was rejected overwhelmingly by the national party.  Clyburn basically made the 2020 primary a referendum on defund the police and assorted snowflakery and once defined that way, Biden cruised.  Even though notably, the most leftist candidate - Bernie Sanders - also flatly rejected defund the police.  On a national level, the policy has as much support among Democrats as using a military coup to reinstall Trump as President has in the GOP.

The right is running against schools teaching that white people are inherently evil racists and "grooming" first graders.  There is literally no one advocating this; it is invented hysteria.  The moderate left can stand up, sit down, sway side to side or do the hokey-pokey: it will make not one bit of difference.  When the right talks about the "radical left" they don't mean the actual people and positions on the left wing of the Democratic party, they are referring to something completely made up.  That's why GOP talkers can speak with a straight face about Joe "No Busing" Biden as being "radical left"; the other day someone was tarring Liz Cheney as "radical left."

Sure there are excesses on the left - there are people on the left that say or do foolish or anti-liberal things that will be grist for the Limbaughs and the Carlsons.  In a country of 330 million people there always will be such people and there will always be episodes that feed the other side's propaganda.  Just as there have always been John Birchers on the right ranting lunacy about precious bodily fluids.  The difference is that the snowflake left has little clout beyond a few city councils whereas the loony right has effectively taken over the GOP.



Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on May 02, 2022, 11:23:57 AM
Quote from: PJL on May 02, 2022, 10:35:26 AMRight-wing extremism is like a virus. But the solution is not to ignore it, but to propose moderate versions of their ideas, like a vaccine. But unfortunately many on the far left are the anti-vaxxers, any possible hint of adapting ideas from the right is seen as heretical.

While this is true, I think there's the flip-side as well. Many on the centre-left are willing to do the right's work by relentlessly attacking their supposed allies further to the left of them using the rhetoric and logic of the right.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on May 02, 2022, 11:33:27 AM
Quote from: Jacob on May 02, 2022, 11:23:57 AM
Quote from: PJL on May 02, 2022, 10:35:26 AMRight-wing extremism is like a virus. But the solution is not to ignore it, but to propose moderate versions of their ideas, like a vaccine. But unfortunately many on the far left are the anti-vaxxers, any possible hint of adapting ideas from the right is seen as heretical.

While this is true, I think there's the flip-side as well. Many on the centre-left are willing to do the right's work by relentlessly attacking their supposed allies further to the left of them using the rhetoric and logic of the right.
We've already had a couple of rounds debating the truthfulness and usefulness of "you're using the Fox talking points" line, but let's look at it in a different way. 

Let's say that the center left is using the rhetoric and logic of the right; could it be an indication of why the rhetoric and logic of the right hits the spot?  Again, I disagree with the premise, but even if you accept the premise, wouldn't the latter be a more useful conclusion to think about? 

Why isn't the hard left concerned that they can't even keep the center left from using the right wing rhetoric?  Sure, you can say that the center left is also stupid, but whether that's correct or not, thinking of people as stupid doesn't help you win at politics.  In fact, it helps you become even more disconnected.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on May 02, 2022, 11:43:31 AM
Quote from: PJL on May 02, 2022, 10:35:26 AMRight-wing extremism is like a virus. But the solution is not to ignore it, but to propose moderate versions of their ideas, like a vaccine. But unfortunately many on the far left are the anti-vaxxers, any possible hint of adapting ideas from the right is seen as heretical.




What is an example of a moderate version of their ideas?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on May 02, 2022, 11:44:45 AM
Quote from: Jacob on May 02, 2022, 11:23:57 AM
Quote from: PJL on May 02, 2022, 10:35:26 AMRight-wing extremism is like a virus. But the solution is not to ignore it, but to propose moderate versions of their ideas, like a vaccine. But unfortunately many on the far left are the anti-vaxxers, any possible hint of adapting ideas from the right is seen as heretical.

While this is true, I think there's the flip-side as well. Many on the centre-left are willing to do the right's work by relentlessly attacking their supposed allies further to the left of them using the rhetoric and logic of the right.
I think you are phrasing that wrong, and very unfairly.

I don't think *anyone* in the center-left "are willing to do the rights work". That is just flat out untrue, and implies a motive that is simply wrong, and pretty obviously so. If it were true, those people would not be "center-left" they would be the right pretending to be center-left. Logic does not have a allegiance. Logic is logical or it is not. Logic that someone on the right uses is either valid, or not valid. 

I think the center does not "relentless attack" the further left at all. I think the center would love to ignore the crazy left. But that isn't possible. It wasn't possible when the center-right tried to ignore the Tea Party right up until they all were standing around wondering how they all just got primaried out of office.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on May 02, 2022, 11:49:28 AM
Quote from: DGuller on May 02, 2022, 11:33:27 AMWe've already had a couple of rounds debating the truthfulness and usefulness of "you're using the Fox talking points" line, but let's look at it in a different way. 

Let's say that the center left is using the rhetoric and logic of the right; could it be an indication of why the rhetoric and logic of the right hits the spot?  Again, I disagree with the premise, but even if you accept the premise, wouldn't the latter be a more useful conclusion to think about? 

Why isn't the hard left concerned that they can't even keep the center left from using the right wing rhetoric?  Sure, you can say that the center left is also stupid, but whether that's correct or not, thinking of people as stupid doesn't help you win at politics.  In fact, it helps you become even more disconnected.

I think folks are very concerned that the Fox machine's talking points are so effective.

And yes, maybe you're right, maybe it means that Murdoch, Carlson, de Santis, and the right wing's general messaging operation is correct. That is one possibility that should be considered.

Let's then for argument's sake posit that where right-wing media agrees with you (IIRC that the hard left is a danger to society due to BLM / Defund the Police, Antifa, supporting Trans women in sport, making it inconvenient or impossible for some folks to speak on university campuses some time, and making it so some folks are worried about mispeaking about political correct topics and thus ruining their lives for ever).

What do we do with this? Eject the far left from the Democrat party? Abandon the Democrat party and join the GOP in the hopes of moderating it, leaving the Democratic party to the far left? Expect that the far left comes to its senses and becomes moderate because you and I have reached this agreement (and that Right Wing media won't find something new to find fault with)?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on May 02, 2022, 12:04:35 PM
Quote from: Jacob on May 02, 2022, 11:49:28 AMWhat do we do with this? Eject the far left from the Democrat party? Abandon the Democrat party and join the GOP in the hopes of moderating it, leaving the Democratic party to the far left? Expect that the far left comes to its senses and becomes moderate because you and I have reached this agreement (and that Right Wing media won't find something new to find fault with)?

Why do we have to do anything with it?  If we continue to disagree with some of their ideas, and at times those positions are the same or close to the far right's, so what?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on May 02, 2022, 12:11:34 PM

Since there is no such thing as a woke menace, I guess this is totally fine:
Trop blanche pour interviewer Angela Davis (https://www.lapresse.ca/arts/chroniques/2022-04-29/trop-blanche-pour-interviewer-angela-davis.php)

Too white to interview Angela Davis (https://www-lapresse-ca.translate.goog/arts/chroniques/2022-04-29/trop-blanche-pour-interviewer-angela-davis.php?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp)

QuoteLast Monday, the 78-year-old African-American essayist was invited to the Royal Circus in Brussels to come and debate in front of young people, artists, citizen movements and militant associations. The meeting was to take place at the National Theater, but as the demand was too strong, it was moved to a room that can accommodate 1700 people.
A few days before his arrival, a group of "black feminist and queer activists  " published a text on social networks demanding that the moderator of this discussion, Safia Kessas, Belgian-Algerian journalist for RTBF, be removed from its functions.
Reason: the journalist is white.
In the published text, the ten signatories affirm that the choice of a "non-black person to dialogue" with Angela Davis represents a "new spit in the face of black activists".
I'll make a clarification here: Angela Davis saw no problem with a white journalist interviewing her.


See, there's absolutely nothing to worry about.  Integrism and fanatism are simple mindsets.  Nothing to worry about.  Want to force you wife to walk 2 paces behind you, covered from head to toe in black garment during a hot summer day?  Freedom of religion.  Want to sacrifice a goat in your backyard?  Freedom of religion.  Want biological men to decide that they should compete with female athletes by pretending they are now women?  Sure, let's do it!  It means nothing after all, it's just a simple trophy.  Can't get a job as a university teacher?  Use some pills to darken your skin and pretend to black.  No outcry, it'll be the same.  Or invent yourself some First Nations roots.  It worked for some.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on May 02, 2022, 12:14:31 PM

So what you're all saying is because the cause is part of a more global far right movement seeking to discriminate individuals who falls out of societal norms, we should absolutely do nothing and pretend there is no problem at all as it is the only way to fight this real injustice the Republicans are committing?

It's kind of like climate change, isn't it?  Since there are extremists who recommends who do not eat meat at all, or that we should stop reproducing, we should absolutely deny there's such a thing as climate change/global warming because the cause is defended by far left extremists?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on May 02, 2022, 12:21:08 PM
Quote from: viper37 on May 02, 2022, 12:11:34 PMSee, there's absolutely nothing to worry about.  Integrism and fanatism are simple mindsets.  Nothing to worry about.  Want to force you wife to walk 2 paces behind you, covered from head to toe in black garment during a hot summer day?  Freedom of religion.  Want to sacrifice a goat in your backyard?  Freedom of religion.  Want biological men to decide that they should compete with female athletes by pretending they are now women?  Sure, let's do it!  It means nothing after all, it's just a simple trophy.  Can't get a job as a university teacher?  Use some pills to darken your skin and pretend to black.  No outcry, it'll be the same.  Or invent yourself some First Nations roots.  It worked for some.

Thanks for the near-complete presentation of strawman arguments, I can use this in my classes as an example of easy-to-recognize bullshit before we work up to bullshit that isn't moronic.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on May 02, 2022, 12:30:30 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 02, 2022, 12:04:35 PMWhy do we have to do anything with it?  If we continue to disagree with some of their ideas, and at times those positions are the same or close to the far right's, so what?

Well, if you're interested in winning you may want to consider ways to move away from circular execution squads within your own side. And while the people on the other side of the circle surely are to blame, you primarily have control over where you're aiming and where you source your ammunition.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on May 02, 2022, 12:44:09 PM
I have no idea what viper is even talking about.  I don't think Angela Davis is pretending to be black or sacrificing goats.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on May 02, 2022, 01:09:04 PM
Quote from: Berkut on May 02, 2022, 09:45:23 AMI disgree. I think talking about issues is absolutely necessary BECAUSE the right will own them otherwise. Has pretending CRT is a non-issue (and it is, in any rational sense, a non-issue) helped keep the right from taking over school boards across the country?

I don't think sticking our heads in the sand will work. Or at least it hasn't worked.

I think we should win the battle, and that means being willing to have open and honest discussion about the merits, and being willing to actually contest the right wing bullshit.

You cannot do that if every time you talk about it you get attacked from the right (of course) but ALSO immediately attacked from the left as a bigot or "middle aged white bro" for not embracing every absurd take on it that some twitter dumbass or journalist puts forth.

And of course the right is going to latch onto the more absurd things. They are assholes, they aren't stupid. If the left spouts off about some topic that is 98% perfectly reasonable, of course they are going to latch onto the 2% and attack the entirety on that basis. Both sides do that, all the time.

And I think if you want to not let the right wing propaganda universe "build out the foundation of the debate" don't you have to propose your own foundation? Doesn't that demand a discussion, and an effort within the left to demand that the foundation NOT be defined by our own silly squad? Because if we don't, we know how that works. The loudest and most extreme define the terms.

I don't want the left to go the route of the right. And I think it is a real danger if the adults aren't willing to stand up and make the sane argument. I think this is exactly what happened in the GOP over the last several decades of my own life. People ignored the crazies, then woke up one day and they were running the show.

Well, you - and I do mean you - could start by not copying the language of the right when you attack the left - or at least those you perceive as far left.

"Woke" is now almost exclusively used by those who seek to deride it, those who chafe at the activism from which it sprang. Opponents to the idea are seeking to render it toxic. They use it to stand in for change itself, for evolution, for an accurate assessment of history and society that makes them uncomfortable and deflates their hagiographic view of American history.

And you regularly use it in this way, which is a perfect example of what Otto is talking about.

It might be that Otto and I view this the same way because we are of a certain age and we can see the pernicious effect the internet has had on how discussion has changed over time.  But I doubt we are the only ones who see the effects.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on May 02, 2022, 01:15:23 PM
Quote from: viper37 on May 02, 2022, 12:11:34 PMSee, there's absolutely nothing to worry about.

Based on the story you quoted, you are correct - there is absolutely nothing to worry about.

A couple thousand people were interested in seeing Angela Davis.  10 nutters wrote a letter.  That Angela Davis completely ignored.

It's zero, wrapped in a void, inside a nothingbuger, hold the lettuce, tomato, and cheese.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on May 02, 2022, 01:24:13 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 02, 2022, 01:09:04 PMWell, you - and I do mean you - could start by not copying the language of the right when you attack the left - or at least those you perceive as far left.

You get that this is the very definition of an ad hominem attack, right?

You're not engaging with what Berkut said - just that what he is saying [copies] the language of the right".

Ah heck, who am I kidding.  Of course you don't realize that.  Either that or you realize it and don't care.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on May 02, 2022, 01:28:01 PM
If he hasn't read your signature already, he's probably not interested.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on May 02, 2022, 01:38:06 PM
Quote from: Barrister on May 02, 2022, 01:24:13 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 02, 2022, 01:09:04 PMWell, you - and I do mean you - could start by not copying the language of the right when you attack the left - or at least those you perceive as far left.

You get that this is the very definition of an ad hominem attack, right?

You're not engaging with what Berkut said - just that what he is saying [copies] the language of the right".

Ah heck, who am I kidding.  Of course you don't realize that.  Either that or you realize it and don't care.

Or he realizes it, cares, but cannot stop compulsively doing it.  CC's frothing posts are just that; froth.  He couldn't possibly survive in the real world if he was personally as nasty and dense as he acts here.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on May 02, 2022, 02:19:40 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 02, 2022, 01:09:04 PM
Quote from: Berkut on May 02, 2022, 09:45:23 AMI disgree. I think talking about issues is absolutely necessary BECAUSE the right will own them otherwise. Has pretending CRT is a non-issue (and it is, in any rational sense, a non-issue) helped keep the right from taking over school boards across the country?

I don't think sticking our heads in the sand will work. Or at least it hasn't worked.

I think we should win the battle, and that means being willing to have open and honest discussion about the merits, and being willing to actually contest the right wing bullshit.

You cannot do that if every time you talk about it you get attacked from the right (of course) but ALSO immediately attacked from the left as a bigot or "middle aged white bro" for not embracing every absurd take on it that some twitter dumbass or journalist puts forth.

And of course the right is going to latch onto the more absurd things. They are assholes, they aren't stupid. If the left spouts off about some topic that is 98% perfectly reasonable, of course they are going to latch onto the 2% and attack the entirety on that basis. Both sides do that, all the time.

And I think if you want to not let the right wing propaganda universe "build out the foundation of the debate" don't you have to propose your own foundation? Doesn't that demand a discussion, and an effort within the left to demand that the foundation NOT be defined by our own silly squad? Because if we don't, we know how that works. The loudest and most extreme define the terms.

I don't want the left to go the route of the right. And I think it is a real danger if the adults aren't willing to stand up and make the sane argument. I think this is exactly what happened in the GOP over the last several decades of my own life. People ignored the crazies, then woke up one day and they were running the show.

Well, you - and I do mean you - could start by not copying the language of the right when you attack the left - or at least those you perceive as far left.


I don't, so I don't see any reason to respond to yet another ad hom.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on May 02, 2022, 04:36:53 PM
Quote from: Barrister on May 02, 2022, 01:24:13 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 02, 2022, 01:09:04 PMWell, you - and I do mean you - could start by not copying the language of the right when you attack the left - or at least those you perceive as far left.

You get that this is the very definition of an ad hominem attack, right?

You're not engaging with what Berkut said - just that what he is saying [copies] the language of the right".

Ah heck, who am I kidding.  Of course you don't realize that.  Either that or you realize it and don't care.

Have you not been reading Berkut's posts and his use of the word "woke"?  Its a lot like how Pollivre is starting all his campaign rallies where is first line is to attack those who are woke.  Which is of course simply copying the Fox talking points.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on May 02, 2022, 04:37:58 PM
Quote from: Berkut on May 02, 2022, 02:19:40 PMI don't, so I don't see any reason to respond to yet another ad hom.

If I was commenting on who you are rather than what you do, that would be an ad hom. But I am expressly calling you out on what you do.  That is called a fact.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on May 02, 2022, 05:04:34 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on May 02, 2022, 12:44:09 PMI have no idea what viper is even talking about.  I don't think Angela Davis is pretending to be black or sacrificing goats.
It's ok Raz, I know you're fine with this concept too.  As long as it's from the left, intolerance is a-ok. :)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on May 02, 2022, 05:07:30 PM



Yes, we're all crazy Fox News viewers.  There is zero problem with wokism in our society.  No university teacher has ever been disciplined for discussing historical and contemporary subjects, no journalist has ever been suspended for reading a book's title, no one ever has been accused of being "too white" for something.  It's all our collective imagination, derived of watching too much of Fox News, even when we don't subscribe to this particular channel.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on May 02, 2022, 05:11:09 PM
Quote from: viper37 on May 02, 2022, 05:07:30 PMYes, we're all crazy Fox News viewers.  There is zero problem with wokism in our society.  No university teacher has ever been disciplined for discussing historical and contemporary subjects, no journalist has ever been suspended for reading a book's title, no one ever has been accused of being "too white" for something.  It's all our collective imagination, derived of watching too much of Fox News, even when we don't subscribe to this particular channel.


:secret:

It's not that those things don't happen - they do.  But if you mention them you're secretly helping the political right, so you need to ignore these things.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on May 02, 2022, 05:17:50 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 02, 2022, 04:36:53 PM
Quote from: Barrister on May 02, 2022, 01:24:13 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 02, 2022, 01:09:04 PMWell, you - and I do mean you - could start by not copying the language of the right when you attack the left - or at least those you perceive as far left.

You get that this is the very definition of an ad hominem attack, right?

You're not engaging with what Berkut said - just that what he is saying [copies] the language of the right".

Ah heck, who am I kidding.  Of course you don't realize that.  Either that or you realize it and don't care.

Have you not been reading Berkut's posts and his use of the word "woke"?  Its a lot like how Pollivre is starting all his campaign rallies where is first line is to attack those who are woke.  Which is of course simply copying the Fox talking points.


Its funny, because I don't actually use the word woke. At least, it isn't any real part of my arguments, and I've even made it a point to simply avoid using the term. 

Not that "facts" matter to you, of course.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on May 02, 2022, 05:18:48 PM
Quote from: Barrister on May 02, 2022, 05:11:09 PM
Quote from: viper37 on May 02, 2022, 05:07:30 PMYes, we're all crazy Fox News viewers.  There is zero problem with wokism in our society.  No university teacher has ever been disciplined for discussing historical and contemporary subjects, no journalist has ever been suspended for reading a book's title, no one ever has been accused of being "too white" for something.  It's all our collective imagination, derived of watching too much of Fox News, even when we don't subscribe to this particular channel.


:secret:

It's not that those things don't happen - they do.  But if you mention them you're secretly helping the political right, so you need to ignore these things.
Is "woke" now one of those forbidden words you cannot say?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on May 02, 2022, 05:26:31 PM
Quote from: viper37 on May 02, 2022, 05:04:34 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on May 02, 2022, 12:44:09 PMI have no idea what viper is even talking about.  I don't think Angela Davis is pretending to be black or sacrificing goats.
It's ok Raz, I know you're fine with this concept too.  As long as it's from the left, intolerance is a-ok. :)
I'm fine with Angela Davis sacrificing goats?  What in the hell are you talking about?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on May 02, 2022, 05:51:00 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on May 02, 2022, 10:43:06 AMThe moderate wing of the Democratic coalition has staked and defended their position; they are in fact dominant in the party.  That's why we have an infrastructure plan and no BBB.  "Defund the police" is actually a good example: it was rejected overwhelmingly by the national party.  Clyburn basically made the 2020 primary a referendum on defund the police and assorted snowflakery and once defined that way, Biden cruised.  Even though notably, the most leftist candidate - Bernie Sanders - also flatly rejected defund the police.  On a national level, the policy has as much support among Democrats as using a military coup to reinstall Trump as President has in the GOP.

The right is running against schools teaching that white people are inherently evil racists and "grooming" first graders.  There is literally no one advocating this; it is invented hysteria.  The moderate left can stand up, sit down, sway side to side or do the hokey-pokey: it will make not one bit of difference.  When the right talks about the "radical left" they don't mean the actual people and positions on the left wing of the Democratic party, they are referring to something completely made up.  That's why GOP talkers can speak with a straight face about Joe "No Busing" Biden as being "radical left"; the other day someone was tarring Liz Cheney as "radical left."

Sure there are excesses on the left - there are people on the left that say or do foolish or anti-liberal things that will be grist for the Limbaughs and the Carlsons.  In a country of 330 million people there always will be such people and there will always be episodes that feed the other side's propaganda.  Just as there have always been John Birchers on the right ranting lunacy about precious bodily fluids.  The difference is that the snowflake left has little clout beyond a few city councils whereas the loony right has effectively taken over the GOP.





Minsky summarised it perfectly and y'all ignored it so you could continue arguing.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on May 02, 2022, 05:53:37 PM
Quote from: Jacob on May 02, 2022, 12:30:30 PMWell, if you're interested in winning you may want to consider ways to move away from circular execution squads within your own side. And while the people on the other side of the circle surely are to blame, you primarily have control over where you're aiming and where you source your ammunition.

Fair enough.

Of course, in the US system you can't kick someone out of the party.  Voters are free to choose party affiliation and vote in whichever primary they want, and AFAIK no candidate can be blocked from running in a Democratic primary as a Democratic candidate.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PJL on May 02, 2022, 06:10:43 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 02, 2022, 05:53:37 PM
Quote from: Jacob on May 02, 2022, 12:30:30 PMWell, if you're interested in winning you may want to consider ways to move away from circular execution squads within your own side. And while the people on the other side of the circle surely are to blame, you primarily have control over where you're aiming and where you source your ammunition.

Fair enough.

Of course, in the US system you can't kick someone out of the party.  Voters are free to choose party affiliation and vote in whichever primary they want, and AFAIK no candidate can be blocked from running in a Democratic primary as a Democratic candidate.

A grave, maybe even fatal weakness in the US system IMO.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on May 02, 2022, 06:13:13 PM
Quote from: PJL on May 02, 2022, 06:10:43 PMA grave, maybe even fatal weakness in the US system IMO.

Make your case.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on May 02, 2022, 06:24:10 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on May 02, 2022, 05:26:31 PM
Quote from: viper37 on May 02, 2022, 05:04:34 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on May 02, 2022, 12:44:09 PMI have no idea what viper is even talking about.  I don't think Angela Davis is pretending to be black or sacrificing goats.
It's ok Raz, I know you're fine with this concept too.  As long as it's from the left, intolerance is a-ok. :)
I'm fine with Angela Davis sacrificing goats?  What in the hell are you talking about?

Freedom of religion?  :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PJL on May 02, 2022, 06:24:43 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 02, 2022, 06:13:13 PM
Quote from: PJL on May 02, 2022, 06:10:43 PMA grave, maybe even fatal weakness in the US system IMO.

Make your case.

It all seems very decentralised to me, which is a mistake IMO. There should be a mechanism whereby the national  leadership can suspend & expel party members at the federal level & local state leaders do the same at state level if they break a code of conduct drawn up by the party. Also party candidates for local/state/federal elections should be elected by party members only.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on May 02, 2022, 08:13:16 PM
Quote from: PJL on May 02, 2022, 06:24:43 PMIt all seems very decentralised to me, which is a mistake IMO. There should be a mechanism whereby the national  leadership can suspend & expel party members at the federal level & local state leaders do the same at state level if they break a code of conduct drawn up by the party. Also party candidates for local/state/federal elections should be elected by party members only.


It would grind my gears to have a tiny in group decide who can and can't run and what positions are kosher and which aren't.  I'm comfortable with the US's bottom up system.  What is beyond the pale should be decided by voters, not handed down at Mt. Sinai.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on May 02, 2022, 09:33:50 PM
Quote from: viper37 on May 02, 2022, 05:07:30 PMThere is zero problem with wokism in our society.

No you've proven there is a problem.  Out of 1700 people far enough to the Left to turn out for the Communist Party USA's Presidential candidate, there are 10 reverse racists.  That's more than the total number of good people in Sodom, so sound the alarms.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on May 03, 2022, 04:57:38 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 02, 2022, 05:53:37 PMFair enough.

Of course, in the US system you can't kick someone out of the party.  Voters are free to choose party affiliation and vote in whichever primary they want, and AFAIK no candidate can be blocked from running in a Democratic primary as a Democratic candidate.
I think the Republicans are pretty good at party discipline/disciplining people who step out of line with party opinion.

QuoteIt would grind my gears to have a tiny in group decide who can and can't run and what positions are kosher and which aren't.  I'm comfortable with the US's bottom up system.  What is beyond the pale should be decided by voters, not handed down at Mt. Sinai.
The origin of those sort of controls - at least in the UK, and I imagine the rest of Europe - is protecting political parties from anti-democratic entryists of one form or other. On the left there have been consistent attempts for the last 70 years for Trots with a party-within-a-party discipline to infiltrate the mainstream party. There have been similar, though normally less organised (because if there's one thing Trots love it's a committee) attempts from the far-right in right-wing parties.

It has been one of the main firewalls against anti-democratic politics - but in Europe in the 20th century our system was party democracy which I don't think has ever been true in the US. Party democracy has now largely declined and we're another phase (since the 90s), which I'm not sure what is yet.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on May 03, 2022, 06:39:09 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 02, 2022, 08:43:07 AM
Quote from: Josquius on May 02, 2022, 03:39:57 AMYou haven't seen the most well known study on this topic?
https://blogs.bmj.com/bjsm/2021/01/22/testosterone-and-transgender-athletic-performance-finding-a-path-for-inclusion-for-transgender-athletes/

I had not.  Eye opening.  I will have to square that with the other things I've been reading, but until I do I will have to put my lobbying on this issue on hold.

QuoteThat's the ideal world outcome. Probably not possible in every situation with current technology however.

FYI Squeeze, not many people are going to see this as a particularly nuanced, subtle solution that threads its way between two extremes.

Which is where the true reasons the right are keen on pushing this comes out. Its not about protecting women or anything like that, its purely about punishing people who are different. Protecting women is just a handy shield that lets them scream "No you're the bigot!" and win over moderates.
If we assume a magic pill that instantly flips your gender in every way then there'd be simply no reason to exclude trans people other than bigotry.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on May 03, 2022, 08:33:08 AM
Quote from: PJL on May 02, 2022, 06:24:43 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 02, 2022, 06:13:13 PM
Quote from: PJL on May 02, 2022, 06:10:43 PMA grave, maybe even fatal weakness in the US system IMO.

Make your case.

It all seems very decentralised to me, which is a mistake IMO. There should be a mechanism whereby the national  leadership can suspend & expel party members at the federal level & local state leaders do the same at state level if they break a code of conduct drawn up by the party. Also party candidates for local/state/federal elections should be elected by party members only.


If we had a big multy party system I would probably be ok with this. In our system this would be a disaster.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on May 03, 2022, 12:30:24 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on May 02, 2022, 05:26:31 PM
Quote from: viper37 on May 02, 2022, 05:04:34 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on May 02, 2022, 12:44:09 PMI have no idea what viper is even talking about.  I don't think Angela Davis is pretending to be black or sacrificing goats.
It's ok Raz, I know you're fine with this concept too.  As long as it's from the left, intolerance is a-ok. :)
I'm fine with Angela Davis sacrificing goats?  What in the hell are you talking about?
Come on, stop playing idiot and we can discuss.  You value freedom of religion above everything else, when it comes from non Christians.  When Christians are the intolerant ones, you suddenly become against their freedom to discriminate.  At least try to be consistent.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on May 03, 2022, 01:08:31 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on May 03, 2022, 04:57:38 AMI think the Republicans are pretty good at party discipline/disciplining people who step out of line with party opinion.

I assume you're talking about Lynn Cheney?  AFAIK she's still free to register as a Republican voter and still free to run as a candidate in the Republican primary.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on May 03, 2022, 01:34:11 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 03, 2022, 01:08:31 PMI assume you're talking about Lynn Cheney?  AFAIK she's still free to register as a Republican voter and still free to run as a candidate in the Republican primary.
There's informal and formal party discipline - I think the US has no formal discipline, but the Republicans are very good at the informal type. It's one of the ways I think they are basically a parliamentary party in a non-parliamentary system and that's a huge source of strength for them.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on May 03, 2022, 01:35:55 PM
Please elaborate.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on May 03, 2022, 01:37:18 PM
Which bit? :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on May 03, 2022, 01:38:10 PM
Republicans are good at informal discipline.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on May 03, 2022, 01:41:53 PM
Formal = rule book etc. Formal internal controls, choosing to caucus with someone, in the UK context withdrawing the whip etc.

Informal = primaries etc. Mechanisms for exerting control and keeping people loyal to the party line (whatever that is) that don't operate formally but through other mechanisms.

The Republicans seem really good at getting rid of dissenters, RINOs, people who buck the party line (with a couple of relatively unique exceptions) - to keep politicians in line with what the party wants even if there are no formal controls (which would probably operate in the opposite direction getting rid of trouble-makers etc).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on May 03, 2022, 01:43:11 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on May 03, 2022, 01:41:53 PMInformal = primaries etc. Mechanisms for exerting control and keeping people loyal to the party line (whatever that is) that don't operate formally but through other mechanisms.

Isn't that simply because they just let the next brand of crazy takeover? :huh:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on May 03, 2022, 01:45:56 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on May 03, 2022, 01:41:53 PMFormal = rule book etc. Formal internal controls, choosing to caucus with someone, in the UK context withdrawing the whip etc.

Informal = primaries etc. Mechanisms for exerting control and keeping people loyal to the party line (whatever that is) that don't operate formally but through other mechanisms.

The Republicans seem really good at getting rid of dissenters, RINOs, people who buck the party line (with a couple of relatively unique exceptions) - to keep politicians in line with what the party wants even if there are no formal controls (which would probably operate in the opposite direction getting rid of trouble-makers etc).

But I think that just shows how poor and powerless the political parties are.

In Canada keeping party discipline is just as much about keeping the fringe in line as it is about keeping the squishy moderates in control.  But in the US it's the fringe running the show half the time, and the moderates getting ejected from the party.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on May 03, 2022, 01:48:55 PM
Quote from: garbon on May 03, 2022, 01:43:11 PMIsn't that simply because they just let the next brand of crazy takeover? :huh:
Well I suppose it depends on who is the "party" - if it's the leadership then, yes.

But given that they don't have much formal control and can't really determine who's in or out, or what the platform is etc - it would seem weird to me to define them as the party. Though I think they clearly have influence through endorsements, fundraising, networks and the whole "the party decides" theory.

I think the party is probably better understand as the voters who are defining its candidates and shaping the direction it goes.

I don't think they left the next brand of crazy takeover; I think the next brand of crazy is the party and they're doing pretty well at whipping dissenters into line.

Edit: Basically I think party = leadership works in some ways in the US, but not generally (and less and less in recent years - probaby since 68) and is more suitable for Europe or Canada or Australia; because the US has such a decentralised system I think it's more accurate that generally party = base and this also occasionally happens in European systems (for example Labour under Corbyn with Momentum and mass movement politics).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on May 05, 2022, 03:30:40 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on April 27, 2022, 01:26:44 PMLast three years was: 1.4B, -1.1B, -0.2B.  They haven't run one since 2019.
That year they got the benefit of a $1 billion tax credit.

Conversely, the loss in 2021 was driven by taking a $727MM special charge in Q3 for settling a shareholder lawsuit.  Our other quarters showed a net profit, and Q3 also would have absent the settlement charge.

That said, Q1 was kinda rough and would have been a loss without the sale of MoPub (and the $970MM in revenue from that).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on May 06, 2022, 05:40:18 PM
SEC rules and procedures bite Musk in the ass once again, possibly delaying his acquisition of Twitter until 2025.

QuoteElon Musk and Twitter hit with lawsuit from shareholder to delay $44bn takeover


Elon Musk and Twitter Inc have been sued by a Florida pension fund seeking to block the Telsa CEO from quickly completing his planned $44bn takeover of the platform.

In a complaint filed in Delaware Chancery Court on Friday, the Orlando Police Pension Fund said that under Delaware law Mr Musk cannot complete the takeover until at least 2025 unless holders of two-thirds of shares not "owned" by him approved, according to Reuters.

The lawsuit said Mr Musk became an "interested stockholder" after taking a more than 9 per cent Twitter stake, requiring the delay.

Twitter and its board, including Chief Executive Parag Agrawal, are also named as defendants.

The lawsuit seeks to delay the merger's closing until at least 2025, declare that Twitter directors breached their fiduciary duties, and recoup legal fees and costs.

Twitter declined to comment. A lawyer for Mr Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This isn't the first time Mr Musk's planned takeover has been targeted in court. Last month, a group of Twitter shareholders sued Mr Musk claiming that he failed to disclose his 9.2 per cent stake in the company in the proper timeframe.

Federal law requires investors to inform the Securities and Exchance Commission about stakes exceeding 5 percent within 10 days of the purchase.

According to the earlier suit, Mr Musk hit the 5 per cent milestone on 14 March and thus needed to alert the SEC by 24 March. However, he did not do so until 4 April.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on May 10, 2022, 04:46:34 PM
So he has said he would reverse Trump's ban.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on May 10, 2022, 05:11:13 PM
Quote from: garbon on May 10, 2022, 04:46:34 PMSo he has said he would reverse Trump's ban.

As expected, unfortunately.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: CountDeMoney on May 10, 2022, 05:42:07 PM
Moose and Squirrel will have to eliminate their account.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on May 10, 2022, 06:04:38 PM
Hopefully that would make Twitter go the way of Parler, which would be a good thing for society for many different reasons.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on May 11, 2022, 07:51:11 AM
Quote from: DGuller on May 10, 2022, 06:04:38 PMHopefully that would make Twitter go the way of Parler, which would be a good thing for society for many different reasons.

The appeal of twitter is that you can see what others, such as celebrities, journalists, politicians, institutions, etc. want to communicate real time. Parler was useless because those people/institutions weren't on Parler because twitter already existed and there was no point unless you were a right wing conservative. so it became a right wing cesspool (i assume, never saw it firsthand).

I doubt many users with 100k plus followers are going to be deleting their twitter accounts if Trump rejoins. Probably most regular twitter users were around when trump had his twitter account anyway.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on May 11, 2022, 11:26:38 AM
Yeah, I don't think Twitter is going to go away in one fell swoop like that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on May 11, 2022, 12:02:25 PM
I do wonder how much of a push it would be to see something else become the new twitter as twitter becomes tainted. Where the critical mass of celebrities jumping ship would be.
Whether it be a public "I'm leaving quitter" or more a facebook style "Nobody under 50 actually uses that anymore"
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on May 11, 2022, 12:06:13 PM
Quote from: Josquius on May 11, 2022, 12:02:25 PM"I'm leaving quitter"

Freudian slip?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on May 11, 2022, 12:49:49 PM
Quote from: Jacob on May 11, 2022, 11:26:38 AMYeah, I don't think Twitter is going to go away in one fell swoop like that.
I'll settle for several fell swoops if I have to.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on May 11, 2022, 12:58:34 PM
Quote from: DGuller on May 11, 2022, 12:49:49 PMI'll settle for several fell swoops if I have to.

I appreciate your flexibility :cheers:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on May 13, 2022, 06:04:16 AM
QuoteTwitter takeover temporarily on hold, says Elon Musk
Tesla owner says $44bn deal has been paused until he gets more information about fake accounts

Elon Musk has said his $44bn takeover of Twitter is "temporarily on hold" after the social media platform claimed that less than 5% of its users were spam or fake accounts.

The Tesla chief tweeted on Friday morning that the deal was being frozen while he awaited details behind Twitter's assertion.

Musk announced the move alongside a link to a Reuters article published on 2 May that referred to a filing with the US financial regulator, in which Twitter claimed that false or spam accounts represented less than 5% of its daily average users.

Musk has railed at automated Twitter accounts – which are not run manually – and said after announcing the takeover that he wanted to improve the platform by "authenticating all humans". He has agreed to pay a $1bn break fee to Twitter if he walks away from the deal.

The news sent Twitter's shares down about 23% in pre-market trading, on concerns that the deal could collapse.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on May 13, 2022, 06:06:07 AM
Tiens, tiens, tiens.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on May 13, 2022, 10:07:35 AM
Maybe he could buy Parler instead? Or TikTok?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on May 13, 2022, 10:29:05 AM
Quote from: Jacob on May 13, 2022, 10:07:35 AMMaybe he could buy Parler instead? Or TikTok?
He's buying Twitter instead.
Those that don't like it... well, they can make their own platform.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on May 13, 2022, 10:32:32 AM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on May 13, 2022, 10:29:05 AM
Quote from: Jacob on May 13, 2022, 10:07:35 AMMaybe he could buy Parler instead? Or TikTok?
He's buying Twitter instead.
Those that don't like it... well, they can make their own platform.

The reason for the hold on the sale is because he has run afoul of regulatory requirements.  Not this made up reason.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: CountDeMoney on May 13, 2022, 10:33:00 AM
(https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/397/971/1e6.jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on May 13, 2022, 10:34:46 AM
I don't know if that's more insulting to Musk or to Italians  :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: CountDeMoney on May 13, 2022, 10:35:44 AM
Quote from: celedhring on May 13, 2022, 10:34:46 AMI don't know if that's more insulting to Musk or to Italians  :lol:

Oooh, disruptiano!!!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on May 13, 2022, 10:40:24 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 13, 2022, 10:32:32 AM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on May 13, 2022, 10:29:05 AM
Quote from: Jacob on May 13, 2022, 10:07:35 AMMaybe he could buy Parler instead? Or TikTok?
He's buying Twitter instead.
Those that don't like it... well, they can make their own platform.

The reason for the hold on the sale is because he has run afoul of regulatory requirements.  Not this made up reason.
true, but the stung way in which so many on the left react(ed) to the news Musk buying Twitter has nothing to do with that.
Those appear more like what you get when the orthodoxy and dogmas are being challenged.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on May 13, 2022, 10:47:13 AM
What orthodoxy do you have in mind?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on May 13, 2022, 11:14:00 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 13, 2022, 10:47:13 AMWhat orthodoxy do you have in mind?

I think he is referring to the right-wing orthodoxy that all reactions from "many on the left" cannot be intellectually honest, and must instead be "what you get when the orthodoxy and dogmas are being challenged."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on May 13, 2022, 11:49:17 AM
I wonder whether this deal will fall through just for monetary reasons.  When Musk made his bid, the Twitter stock must've been worth much more than it would be worth today.  His bid offer sure seems to contain a lot more premium today than it did a month ago.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on May 16, 2022, 05:50:38 PM
QuoteMusk sends Twitter CEO poo emoji as relations go down the toilet
After Parag Agrawal offers detailed explanation of spam accounts, Musk replies with image

Elon Musk's relationship with Twitter's management has reached a new low after the social media company's would-be-owner tweeted a poo emoji at the platform's chief executive.

The Tesla CEO was responding on Monday to a lengthy and nuanced thread posted by his Twitter counterpart, Parag Agrawal, explaining the company's policy on spam accounts – an issue that had prompted Musk to announce on Friday that he was putting the $44bn (£36bn) deal on hold. Musk has disputed Twitter's assertion that less than 5% of its users are fake or spam accounts and has said he will carry out his own audit.

Agrawal explained that tackling automated spam accounts was a "dynamic" process that required fighting "sophisticated and hard to catch" actors. He added that some accounts that appear to be spam are in fact operated by real people.

"The hard challenge is that many accounts which look fake superficially are actually real people. And some of the spam accounts which are actually the most dangerous – and cause the most harm to our users – can look totally legitimate on the surface," he wrote. He added that estimating Twitter's fake account numbers could not be done externally because the process required access to sensitive data such as IP addresses and phone numbers.

Agrawal ended the thread with a link to a company blogpost on spam accounts, while revealing that Twitter had discussed how it estimated its spam number with Musk a week ago and that the company looked forward "to continuing the conversation with him".

Musk responded with a poo emoji, followed minutes later by asking how advertisers on Twitter knew what they were getting for their money.

"So how do advertisers know what they're getting for their money? This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter," he tweeted.

On Saturday Musk tweeted that Twitter's legal team had accused him of violating a non-disclosure agreement by revealing that the sample size for the social media platform's checks on automated users was 100. Last month, Musk engaged with tweets criticizing Twitter employees, despite the entrepreneur agreeing not to "disparage" the company or its representatives while he completes the deal to acquire the social media platform.

Musk's behavior has prompted speculation that he is laying the groundwork to reprice the deal or walk away from it, which would carry the cost of a $1bn break fee for the world's richest man. Some experts doubt whether the multibillionaire is serious about buying the company.

"I honestly don't know if Elon wants to buy Twitter," said Drew Pascarella, a senior lecturer on finance at Cornell University. "At first, I thought he wasn't serious. Then he paired with banks and financiers and came up with a legitimate acquisition plan. Now he's called a timeout about an issue that is both well known and should have no bearing on his future plan for the company. If it's attention he's seeking, he has it. But does he want to own Twitter? Did he ever?"
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on May 16, 2022, 06:48:45 PM
He's Trump but with less maturity.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on May 16, 2022, 07:49:53 PM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on May 16, 2022, 06:48:45 PMHe's Trump but with less maturity.

But with areas where is really is competent.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on June 01, 2022, 05:35:01 PM
Musk, apparently not a fan of working from home:

QuoteElon Musk tells employees to return to office or 'pretend to work' elsewhere
Neither Musk nor Tesla confirmed he sent memo with remark but the CEO tweeted: 'They should pretend to work somewhere else'

Elon Musk, the Tesla chief executive, has asked employees to return to the office or "pretend to work somewhere else", according to a memo sent to staff.

About 30% of US office workers are still working from home, according to Nick Bloom, a Stanford economics professor and co-founder of Working from Home Research Project. Many companies are moving to a hybrid work model where staff will come in two or three days a week.

But the world's richest man has apparently soured on the idea of his executives working from home. In a memo headlined "Remote work is no longer acceptble" [sic], Musk wrote that "anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla. This is less than we ask of factory workers."

Neither Musk nor Tesla have confirmed that he sent the memo but in a reply to a Twitter follower asking for "��additional comment to people who think coming into work is an antiquated concept", Musk wrote: "They should pretend to work somewhere else."

In the memo Musk said he would "review and approve" any cases where staff could not meet the minimum.

Tesla joins a wave of companies mandating a return to office for employees. While some big employers have embraced voluntary work-from-home policies permanently, others including Alphabet's Google are betting that it is best to push in-person interactions among colleagues.

The news comes as Musk continues to pursue a takeover of Twitter, whose San Francisco office, he has suggested, could be turned into a "homeless shelter since no one show up anyway".

The Twitter chief executive, Parag Agrawal, tweeted in March that Twitter offices would be reopening but employees could still work from home if they wanted to.

"Wherever you feel most productive and creative is where you will work and that includes working from home full-time forever," Agrawal said in a tweet.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on June 01, 2022, 08:39:47 PM
The thread title continues to be apt.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on June 01, 2022, 08:41:21 PM
Nokidding.

He has like the narrowest expertise, and in every other area he is just grossly inept.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on June 01, 2022, 09:28:08 PM
Quote from: Berkut on June 01, 2022, 08:41:21 PMNokidding.

He has like the narrowest expertise, and in every other area he is just grossly inept.

I guess Tesla pays well in salary and stock options that they can afford to be dicks to their talent. Maybe get a bit of a "true believer" thing going. But personally I wouldn't bet on it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on June 01, 2022, 09:32:30 PM
He's already lost some top executives over the last few years. Reasons why can be anything, but big earners are willing to leave.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on June 06, 2022, 11:25:36 AM
QuoteBREAKING: Elon Musk is threatening to end his $44 billion agreement to buy Twitter, accusing the company of refusing to give him information about spam bot accounts.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on June 06, 2022, 11:44:51 AM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on May 16, 2022, 06:48:45 PMHe's Trump but with less maturity.

Trump was an immigrant who founded companies like spacex and tesla? and with something of a commitment to solving problems like climate change?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on June 06, 2022, 11:49:11 AM
Trump was a con man who became president. Both have their unexpected talents. Both are immature vindictive assholes who should stay away from social media (and perhaps society in general)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on June 06, 2022, 11:56:14 AM
Move to Mars already, Elon. Get out of here.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on June 06, 2022, 11:58:52 AM
Quote from: The Larch on June 06, 2022, 11:25:36 AM
QuoteBREAKING: Elon Musk is threatening to end his $44 billion agreement to buy Twitter, accusing the company of refusing to give him information about spam bot accounts.

Despite his recent open solicitation for commando litigators, he is using Skadden Arps to write these letters.

Interesting legal issue - he is using the information rights under the merger agreement to request raw data as opposed to the usual company books and records.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on June 06, 2022, 12:06:47 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on June 06, 2022, 11:58:52 AM
Quote from: The Larch on June 06, 2022, 11:25:36 AM
QuoteBREAKING: Elon Musk is threatening to end his $44 billion agreement to buy Twitter, accusing the company of refusing to give him information about spam bot accounts.

Despite his recent open solicitation for commando litigators, he is using Skadden Arps to write these letters.

Interesting legal issue - he is using the information rights under the merger agreement to request raw data as opposed to the usual company books and records.

Okay, so this is going to show that A: I had some experience with high-ish end M&A legal work, but B: it was as an articling student 20+ years ago and it was on oil & gas deals.  (high-ish being tens or hundreds of millions of dollar deals, but not multi-billion dollars).

But in those deals we'd never be satisfied just trusting in the seller's summaries or reports - I spent many hours going through primary documents (namely oil and gas leases) in order to verify that what we were buying was exactly what they said we were buying.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on June 06, 2022, 12:07:39 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on June 06, 2022, 11:58:52 AMDespite his recent open solicitation for commando litigators, he is using Skadden Arps to write these letters.

Interesting legal issue - he is using the information rights under the merger agreement to request raw data as opposed to the usual company books and records.

I wouldn't trust Musk to not disclose this data publicly, or to use it / share it with potential competitors.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on June 06, 2022, 12:20:20 PM
Quote from: Jacob on June 06, 2022, 12:07:39 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on June 06, 2022, 11:58:52 AMDespite his recent open solicitation for commando litigators, he is using Skadden Arps to write these letters.

Interesting legal issue - he is using the information rights under the merger agreement to request raw data as opposed to the usual company books and records.

I wouldn't trust Musk to not disclose this data publicly, or to use it / share it with potential competitors.

But if you signed an agreement to make them available to him because he offered $54 per share and that was a condition of the purchase, it doesn't really matter if you trust him.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on June 06, 2022, 12:30:32 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on June 06, 2022, 12:20:20 PM
Quote from: Jacob on June 06, 2022, 12:07:39 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on June 06, 2022, 11:58:52 AMDespite his recent open solicitation for commando litigators, he is using Skadden Arps to write these letters.

Interesting legal issue - he is using the information rights under the merger agreement to request raw data as opposed to the usual company books and records.

I wouldn't trust Musk to not disclose this data publicly, or to use it / share it with potential competitors.

But if you signed an agreement to make them available to him because he offered $54 per share and that was a condition of the purchase, it doesn't really matter if you trust him.

Of course though the order of operations is all wrong here.

Normally you sign a NDA, then do your due diligence, then you execute the purchase.

Musk does have the aroma of having buyer's remorse and trying to get out of the deal he's already agreed to.  Of course the deal does allow him to do so - if he pays the $1 billion break fee.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on June 06, 2022, 12:34:51 PM
Quote from: Barrister on June 06, 2022, 12:30:32 PMOf course though the order of operations is all wrong here.

Normally you sign a NDA, then do your due diligence, then you execute the purchase.

Musk does have the aroma of having buyer's remorse and trying to get out of the deal he's already agreed to.  Of course the deal does allow him to do so - if he pays the $1 billion break fee.
Yeah the DD is normally staggered - although maybe less so in this case.

I also spent hours of my life - though I was reviewing commercial contracts and data, with a little bit of IP, rather than oil and gas leases :weep: But never on a hostile takeover. It was normally an auction sale so there'd be a tranche at round one, a tranche for the preferred bidder and a tranche between exchange and completion - you might ask specific questions on day 1 (and you always did) but wouldn't always really get an answer.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on June 06, 2022, 12:37:00 PM
The Twitter-Musk merger agreement has an information rights clause, but Twitter need not provide material that could cause them competitive harm.

The whole thing is publicly filed as an exhibit on Edgar.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on June 06, 2022, 12:48:49 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on June 06, 2022, 12:20:20 PMBut if you signed an agreement to make them available to him because he offered $54 per share and that was a condition of the purchase, it doesn't really matter if you trust him.

It seems to be an open question whether Twitter agreed to make that data available to him.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on June 06, 2022, 12:57:21 PM
Quote from: Jacob on June 06, 2022, 12:48:49 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on June 06, 2022, 12:20:20 PMBut if you signed an agreement to make them available to him because he offered $54 per share and that was a condition of the purchase, it doesn't really matter if you trust him.

It seems to be an open question whether Twitter agreed to make that data available to him.

An open question or a contract that is on edgar but no one is willing to read?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on June 06, 2022, 12:59:43 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on June 06, 2022, 11:44:51 AM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on May 16, 2022, 06:48:45 PMHe's Trump but with less maturity.

Trump was an immigrant who founded companies like spacex and tesla? and with something of a commitment to solving problems like climate change?

He did not found Tesla.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on June 06, 2022, 01:15:13 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on June 06, 2022, 12:57:21 PMAn open question or a contract that is on edgar but no one is willing to read?

Ahem.

QuoteSection 6.4 Access to Information; Confidentiality. Upon reasonable notice, the Company shall (and shall cause each of its Subsidiaries to) afford to the representatives, officers, directors, employees, agents, attorneys, accountants and financial advisors ("Representatives") of Parent reasonable access (at Parent's sole cost and expense), in a manner not disruptive in any material respect to the operations of the business of the Company and its Subsidiaries, during normal business hours and upon reasonable written notice throughout the period commencing on the date of this Agreement until the earlier of the Effective Time and the termination of this Agreement pursuant to Article VIII, to the properties, books and records of the Company and its Subsidiaries and, during such period, shall (and shall cause each of its Subsidiaries to) furnish promptly to such Representatives all information concerning the business, properties and personnel of the Company and its Subsidiaries as may reasonably be requested in writing, in each case, for any reasonable business purpose related to the consummation of the transactions contemplated by this Agreement; provided, however, that nothing herein shall require the Company or any of its Subsidiaries to disclose any information to Parent or Acquisition Sub if such disclosure would, in the reasonable judgment of the Company, (i) cause significant competitive harm to the Company or its Subsidiaries if the transactions contemplated by this Agreement are not consummated, (ii) violate applicable Law or the provisions of any agreement to which the Company or any of its Subsidiaries is a party, or (iii) jeopardize any attorney-client or other legal privilege. No investigation or access permitted pursuant to this Section 6.4 shall affect or be deemed to modify any representation or warranty made by the Company hereunder. Each of Parent and Acquisition Sub agrees that it will not, and will cause its Representatives not to, use any information obtained pursuant to this Section 6.4 (or otherwise pursuant to this Agreement) for any competitive or other purpose unrelated to the consummation of the transactions contemplated by this Agreement. Parent will use its reasonable best efforts to minimize any disruption to the respective business of the Company and its Subsidiaries that may result from requests for access under this Section 6.4 and, notwithstanding anything to the contrary herein, the Company may satisfy its obligations set forth above by electronic means if physical access is not reasonably feasible or would not be permitted under applicable Law as a result of COVID-19 or any COVID-19 Measures. Prior to any disclosure, the Company and Parent shall enter into a customary confidentiality agreement with respect to any information obtained pursuant to this Section 6.4 (or otherwise pursuant to this Agreement).

It would seem that twitter may have at least a colorable position.  Skadden only filed the last letter on Edgar, not the prior ones, so I don't know the specific of the info requests nor the basis articulated in twitter's response.

For a billion, it's worth paying some lawyers to squabble over.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on June 06, 2022, 01:19:40 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on June 06, 2022, 12:59:43 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on June 06, 2022, 11:44:51 AM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on May 16, 2022, 06:48:45 PMHe's Trump but with less maturity.

Trump was an immigrant who founded companies like spacex and tesla? and with something of a commitment to solving problems like climate change?

He did not found Tesla.


According to Tesla itself Musk is one of five co-founders.

https://www.cnet.com/culture/tesla-motors-founders-now-there-are-five/
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on June 06, 2022, 01:50:23 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on June 06, 2022, 12:57:21 PMAn open question or a contract that is on edgar but no one is willing to read?

It's an open question as far as I'm concerned. I mean, you seem confident in stating that Musk's position is the correct one, but Minsky seems less certain and has more domain expertise.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on June 06, 2022, 01:54:39 PM
Quote from: Barrister on June 06, 2022, 01:19:40 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on June 06, 2022, 12:59:43 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on June 06, 2022, 11:44:51 AM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on May 16, 2022, 06:48:45 PMHe's Trump but with less maturity.

Trump was an immigrant who founded companies like spacex and tesla? and with something of a commitment to solving problems like climate change?

He did not found Tesla.


According to Tesla itself Musk is one of five co-founders.

https://www.cnet.com/culture/tesla-motors-founders-now-there-are-five/

It's a lie that stems from a 2009 lawsuit settlement.

Right there in your link.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on June 06, 2022, 02:09:14 PM
Quote from: Jacob on June 06, 2022, 01:50:23 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on June 06, 2022, 12:57:21 PMAn open question or a contract that is on edgar but no one is willing to read?

It's an open question as far as I'm concerned. I mean, you seem confident in stating that Musk's position is the correct one, but Minsky seems less certain and has more domain expertise.

I'm definitely not confident; I don't even have an opinion.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on June 07, 2022, 11:32:13 AM
Quote from: Barrister on June 06, 2022, 12:30:32 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on June 06, 2022, 12:20:20 PM
Quote from: Jacob on June 06, 2022, 12:07:39 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on June 06, 2022, 11:58:52 AMDespite his recent open solicitation for commando litigators, he is using Skadden Arps to write these letters.

Interesting legal issue - he is using the information rights under the merger agreement to request raw data as opposed to the usual company books and records.

I wouldn't trust Musk to not disclose this data publicly, or to use it / share it with potential competitors.

But if you signed an agreement to make them available to him because he offered $54 per share and that was a condition of the purchase, it doesn't really matter if you trust him.

Of course though the order of operations is all wrong here.

Normally you sign a NDA, then do your due diligence, then you execute the purchase.

Musk does have the aroma of having buyer's remorse and trying to get out of the deal he's already agreed to.  Of course the deal does allow him to do so - if he pays the $1 billion break fee.
he was never really serious to begin with.  He's trying to get out of the deal without paying 1b$.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on June 07, 2022, 01:09:15 PM
Quote from: viper37 on June 07, 2022, 11:32:13 AMhe was never really serious to begin with.  He's trying to get out of the deal without paying 1b$.

If he wasn't serious it seems like he wouldn't have entered an agreement with a $1 billion termination fee. It would seem more likely he was serious but with market changes either:

-now wants to pull out, or
-wants to negotiate a lower price.

If the latter, it definitely makes sense to make people think the former.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on June 07, 2022, 01:56:03 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on June 07, 2022, 01:09:15 PM
Quote from: viper37 on June 07, 2022, 11:32:13 AMhe was never really serious to begin with.  He's trying to get out of the deal without paying 1b$.

If he wasn't serious it seems like he wouldn't have entered an agreement with a $1 billion termination fee. It would seem more likely he was serious but with market changes either:

-now wants to pull out, or
-wants to negotiate a lower price.

If the latter, it definitely makes sense to make people think the former.
He agreed to the 1b$ fee to avoid losing face.  Now he tries to avoid losing both face and the billion dollar.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on June 07, 2022, 03:23:22 PM
Isn't the simple explanation:
1) He wanted to buy twitter
2) He signed the merger agreement + break fee because that's how one buys a company
3) The market tanked and he figured the $1 billion worst case would be a cheap price to get out of the deal at the now unreasonably high price per share
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on June 07, 2022, 03:47:39 PM
I think it was a bit of a troll from the get go. Hoping he could get information from them about bots et al, score some shitty troll points and build his brand with the loopy right, fully intended to say this thing is broken and drop out from the get go.
That his offer was a pot joke (which I will never get) should be key here. Would be a mighty big coincidence for that to be what his calculations seriously said was fair.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on June 16, 2022, 07:32:46 PM

Looks like a lot of SpaceX employees are going to be laid off.


SpaceX employees draft open letter to company executives denouncing Elon Musk's behavior

https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23170228/spacex-elon-musk-internal-open-letter-behavior


Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on June 16, 2022, 07:43:55 PM
Elon Musk, SpaceX and Tesla sued for 258 billion$ in alleged Dogecoin pyramid scheme (https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2022/06/16/elon-musk-spacex-and-tesla-sued-for-258-billion-in-alleged-dogecoin-pyramid-scheme/?sh=7b636816981f)

QuoteElon Musk, SpaceX and Tesla were sued in federal court Thursday over claims that Musk directly "manipulated" the price of Dogecoin in a deliberate "crypto pyramid scheme" conducted over Twitter.

Plaintiff Keith Johnson – who purchased Dogecoin in 2021 – is seeking a class-action lawsuit in the Southern District of New York against Musk and his companies SpaceX and Tesla, for at least $86 billion in damages.

Johnson argues Musk drove up the price of Dogecoin with his tweets about it, but that the currency lacks "underlying value" and Musk promoted it for his own "profit, exposure, and amusement."

Johnson is also seeking court orders to prohibit Musk from promoting Dogecoin, and to declare Dogecoin trading a form of gambling, under federal and New York law.

The suit claims Dogecoin is an "illegal wire fraud enterprise" fueled by promotion and manipulation over Twitter.

SpaceX has not responded to a request for comment from Forbes.
Key Background

Dogecoin's value has been on the decline over the past year, dropping to $.057 per coin Thursday, from a peak of $.64 last May. The cryptocurrency launched in 2013 at $.0002 per coin. Musk started promoting Dogecoin in 2019 with a series of tweets that included "DOGE" and "Tesla merch buyable with Dogecoin," both of which increased the Dogecoin's value. In Feb. 2021, Musk walked back on his support, tweeting, "I will literally pay actual $" to people who void their Dogecoin accounts." The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission launched an investigation that month into Musk for his tweets related to Dogecoin. Musk then tweeted, "Doge will live forever." Musk has continued to support, or at least mention, Dogecoin on Twitter, as well as on a May, 2021 episode of Saturday Night Live.
Crucial Quote

The suit says Dogecoin is a "fraud whereby 'greater fools' are deceived into buying the coin at a higher price."

I would not deny any facts stated in this lawsuit about Elon's Tweets and behavior toward Dogecoin. 

I'm a little fuzzy on how the plaintiff aims to prove Elon Musks knew all along Dogecoin was a bust and he was artificially inflating its value to cash in on the profit while other suckers were left with the bill.  I am also at a loss as to how this is currently illegal, ie, to incite people to buy some crazy product without any intrinsic value so that its price will increase and you will make more money.  People have been doing with art for ages.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on June 17, 2022, 05:56:17 AM
Musk also explicitly stated many times that his Dogecoin tweets were all silly and not to be taken literally.

But Musk is an example of the truth of  the statement made about Lincoln that "to really test a man's character, give him power."  Sorry, Elon, you flunked the test.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on June 17, 2022, 07:25:23 AM
Maybe people should get over themselves. The world doesn't revolve around some losers' Dogecoin fetish.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on June 17, 2022, 07:46:01 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 17, 2022, 07:25:23 AMMaybe people should get over themselves. The world doesn't revolve around some losers' Dogecoin fetish.

Except if you were stupid enough to YOLO into doge coin just because Elon told you to, then still holding it despite the pump and dump long have finished.

It's like, there are a lot of people there still holding Gamestop stock hoping for the "Mother Of All Short Squeezes" as if that hasn't happened already the stock jumped from about $40 to $483 in a matter of a week last year before falling back, FFS.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on June 17, 2022, 09:51:47 AM
Quote from: grumbler on June 17, 2022, 05:56:17 AMMusk also explicitly stated many times that his Dogecoin tweets were all silly and not to be taken literally.

But Musk is an example of the truth of  the statement made about Lincoln that "to really test a man's character, give him power."  Sorry, Elon, you flunked the test.

Side note - I was surprised to learn recently that apparently that quote has been misattributed: https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-abrahamlincoln-power-idUSL1N2PA1V7
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on June 17, 2022, 10:19:22 AM
Quote from: Syt on June 17, 2022, 09:51:47 AM
Quote from: grumbler on June 17, 2022, 05:56:17 AMMusk also explicitly stated many times that his Dogecoin tweets were all silly and not to be taken literally.

But Musk is an example of the truth of  the statement made about Lincoln that "to really test a man's character, give him power."  Sorry, Elon, you flunked the test.

Side note - I was surprised to learn recently that apparently that quote has been misattributed: https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-abrahamlincoln-power-idUSL1N2PA1V7

Yes, as a history teacher I have been fighting that misattribution for years.  It appears in some pretty authoritative sources.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on June 17, 2022, 10:33:48 PM
Quote from: HVC on June 16, 2022, 07:32:46 PMLooks like a lot of SpaceX employees are going to be laid off.


SpaceX employees draft open letter to company executives denouncing Elon Musk's behavior

https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23170228/spacex-elon-musk-internal-open-letter-behavior




Seems like it: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/17/technology/spacex-employees-fired-musk-letter.html

I'm shocked, SHOCKED! that Mr Free Speech Absolutist or one of his companies would do such a thing. :o
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on June 18, 2022, 04:15:18 AM
Good thing he's not a hypocritical liberal, at least. :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on June 18, 2022, 05:10:11 AM
Quote from: HVC on June 18, 2022, 04:15:18 AMGood thing he's not a hypocritical liberal, at least. :P

He is not involved with a university so all is good.  The free speechers need to focus on the real enemy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on June 18, 2022, 07:02:12 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 18, 2022, 05:10:11 AM
Quote from: HVC on June 18, 2022, 04:15:18 AMGood thing he's not a hypocritical liberal, at least. :P

He is not involved with a university so all is good.  The free speechers need to focus on the real enemy.
You are such an asshole - you and Musk would get along great.

I don't see anyone here who cares about free speech defending Musk. Do you?

The hypocrisy is YOU. Why isn't ok for Musk to "exercise his free speech by shutting up those he doesn't like"?

Why isn't Elon allowed to cancel people with views he doesn't like?

Musk is a textbook example for those who actually care about free speech. Don't cheer cancelling people, because inevitable someone with power will start cancelling people you don't want them to cancel. 

This is why actual principals matter, not just caring about something only when your Drazi are the victims. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on June 18, 2022, 07:51:39 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 18, 2022, 07:02:12 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 18, 2022, 05:10:11 AM
Quote from: HVC on June 18, 2022, 04:15:18 AMGood thing he's not a hypocritical liberal, at least. :P

He is not involved with a university so all is good.  The free speechers need to focus on the real enemy.
You are such an asshole - you and Musk would get along great.

I don't see anyone here who cares about free speech defending Musk. Do you?

The hypocrisy is YOU. Why isn't ok for Musk to "exercise his free speech by shutting up those he doesn't like"?

Why isn't Elon allowed to cancel people with views he doesn't like?

Musk is a textbook example for those who actually care about free speech. Don't cheer cancelling people, because inevitable someone with power will start cancelling people you don't want them to cancel.

This is why actual principals matter, not just caring about something only when your Drazi are the victims.

People with power cancelling those they don't like has been the way since before we came down from the trees.

Less common but causing hurt feelings these days is the "cancel culture" of those with little power combining to slightly damage those with power.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on June 18, 2022, 08:10:09 AM
People who could foment mobs always had power.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on June 18, 2022, 08:25:12 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on June 18, 2022, 08:10:09 AMPeople who could foment mobs always had power.
Yes.
And these people aren't those getting most of the rants about cancel culture thrown their way.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on June 18, 2022, 09:43:23 AM
I must admit that I am amused by the arguments that, since people with power have always had a greater ability to stifle free speech than those without power, stifling free speech is okay because that's the way it has always been.  They don't want to reduce the stifling of free speech, they want to double it so that those without traditional power can do it as much as those with traditional power.

Irony is not just the opposite of wrinkly.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on June 18, 2022, 01:57:00 PM
Quote from: Josquius on June 18, 2022, 07:51:39 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 18, 2022, 07:02:12 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 18, 2022, 05:10:11 AM
Quote from: HVC on June 18, 2022, 04:15:18 AMGood thing he's not a hypocritical liberal, at least. :P

He is not involved with a university so all is good.  The free speechers need to focus on the real enemy.
You are such an asshole - you and Musk would get along great.

I don't see anyone here who cares about free speech defending Musk. Do you?

The hypocrisy is YOU. Why isn't ok for Musk to "exercise his free speech by shutting up those he doesn't like"?

Why isn't Elon allowed to cancel people with views he doesn't like?

Musk is a textbook example for those who actually care about free speech. Don't cheer cancelling people, because inevitable someone with power will start cancelling people you don't want them to cancel.

This is why actual principals matter, not just caring about something only when your Drazi are the victims.

People with power cancelling those they don't like has been the way since before we came down from the trees.

Less common but causing hurt feelings these days is the "cancel culture" of those with little power combining to slightly damage those with power.
...which is why we should be against anyone cancelling those they don't like through stifling free speech.

This isn't complicated.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on June 18, 2022, 02:26:06 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve5PlNrqG0E&t=88s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN__M-3sl6Y

Two examples of people I'm totally happy were cancelled.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on June 18, 2022, 02:29:10 PM
Quote from: Berkut on June 18, 2022, 01:57:00 PM[
...which is why we should be against anyone cancelling those they don't like through stifling free speech.

This isn't complicated.

So let hate preachers continue to do their thing, anti abortion extremists to hang around outside clinics screaming their nonsense, teachers to tell kids whatever they fancy, dodgy regimes to do whatever they want with zero consequences for their businesses etc...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on June 18, 2022, 07:50:11 PM
Quote from: Josquius on June 18, 2022, 02:29:10 PM
Quote from: Berkut on June 18, 2022, 01:57:00 PM[
...which is why we should be against anyone cancelling those they don't like through stifling free speech.

This isn't complicated.

So let hate preachers continue to do their thing, anti abortion extremists to hang around outside clinics screaming their nonsense, teachers to tell kids whatever they fancy, dodgy regimes to do whatever they want with zero consequences for their businesses etc...
Yes, yes (depending), no (is that a problem?), and I don't know what you mean by a "dodgy regime".
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on June 19, 2022, 01:43:39 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 18, 2022, 07:50:11 PM
Quote from: Josquius on June 18, 2022, 02:29:10 PM
Quote from: Berkut on June 18, 2022, 01:57:00 PM[
...which is why we should be against anyone cancelling those they don't like through stifling free speech.

This isn't complicated.

So let hate preachers continue to do their thing, anti abortion extremists to hang around outside clinics screaming their nonsense, teachers to tell kids whatever they fancy, dodgy regimes to do whatever they want with zero consequences for their businesses etc...
Yes, yes (depending), no (is that a problem?), and I don't know what you mean by a "dodgy regime".
Probably the best example of cancel culture in action - the apartheid South Africa boycott.

Or in more recent times those who make an effort to avoid Chinese products.

And I disagree. Hate speech is a very real and harmful thing. Cancel the hate preacher and you can stop a suicide bomber from killing hundreds.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on June 19, 2022, 07:19:02 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 19, 2022, 01:43:39 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 18, 2022, 07:50:11 PM
Quote from: Josquius on June 18, 2022, 02:29:10 PM
Quote from: Berkut on June 18, 2022, 01:57:00 PM[
...which is why we should be against anyone cancelling those they don't like through stifling free speech.

This isn't complicated.

So let hate preachers continue to do their thing, anti abortion extremists to hang around outside clinics screaming their nonsense, teachers to tell kids whatever they fancy, dodgy regimes to do whatever they want with zero consequences for their businesses etc...
Yes, yes (depending), no (is that a problem?), and I don't know what you mean by a "dodgy regime".
Probably the best example of cancel culture in action - the apartheid South Africa boycott.

Or in more recent times those who make an effort to avoid Chinese products.

And I disagree. Hate speech is a very real and harmful thing. Cancel the hate preacher and you can stop a suicide bomber from killing hundreds.

Neither of those are examples of the problems anyone is talking about. 

Notice when I posted the article about it, the article didn't say anything about people choosing not to buy particular products. It talked about students feeling that they could not speak freely about their views.

This is a textbook example of a red herring.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on June 19, 2022, 10:38:55 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 19, 2022, 07:19:02 AM]

Neither of those are examples of the problems anyone is talking about.

Notice when I posted the article about it, the article didn't say anything about people choosing not to buy particular products. It talked about students feeling that they could not speak freely about their views.

This is a textbook example of a red herring.

It's just a different implementation of the same basic thing.
Needless to say the south African governments views were very unwelcome at the time.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on June 19, 2022, 10:41:34 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 19, 2022, 10:38:55 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 19, 2022, 07:19:02 AM]

Neither of those are examples of the problems anyone is talking about.

Notice when I posted the article about it, the article didn't say anything about people choosing not to buy particular products. It talked about students feeling that they could not speak freely about their views.

This is a textbook example of a red herring.

It's just a different implementation of the same basic thing.
Needless to say the south African governments views were very unwelcome at the time.
So you are saying that if I want to be concerned that individuals are not free to speak their minds freely, then I have to also be concerned about people deciding not to shop from some particular place?

Interesting. What if I just refuse to agree to that? What if I decide I am going to find the first thing alarming, and refuse to find the second thing troubling at all?

Will I got to social justice warrior jail?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on June 19, 2022, 10:47:36 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 19, 2022, 10:41:34 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 19, 2022, 10:38:55 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 19, 2022, 07:19:02 AM]

Neither of those are examples of the problems anyone is talking about.

Notice when I posted the article about it, the article didn't say anything about people choosing not to buy particular products. It talked about students feeling that they could not speak freely about their views.

This is a textbook example of a red herring.

It's just a different implementation of the same basic thing.
Needless to say the south African governments views were very unwelcome at the time.
So you are saying that if I want to be concerned that individuals are not free to speak their minds freely, then I have to also be concerned about people deciding not to shop from some particular place?

Interesting. What if I just refuse to agree to that? What if I decide I am going to find the first thing alarming, and refuse to find the second thing troubling at all?

Will I got to social justice warrior jail?

More, marked as inconsistent.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on June 19, 2022, 11:26:12 AM
I suspect there is no inconstancy in my stance at all. I suspect you just can't figure out a better way to reconcile your support for stifling free speech in a liberal society then to insist that we have to do so or else tolerate apartheid.

Maybe you can throw some Nazis in as well? 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on June 19, 2022, 11:40:30 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 19, 2022, 11:26:12 AMI suspect there is no inconstancy in my stance at all. I suspect you just can't figure out a better way to reconcile your support for stifling free speech in a liberal society then to insist that we have to do so or else tolerate apartheid.

Maybe you can throw some Nazis in as well?

:lol:
Ah yes. The old "you just call anyone who disagrees with you a nazi"

The apartheid south Africa boycott is a very good example of collective people action to cancel a regime that was beyond the pale.
It's a perfect example for why its wrong to just say cancel culture is bad and leave it at that.
A truly free and liberal society has controls on free speech. Even America I believe.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on June 19, 2022, 11:48:18 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 19, 2022, 11:40:30 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 19, 2022, 11:26:12 AMI suspect there is no inconstancy in my stance at all. I suspect you just can't figure out a better way to reconcile your support for stifling free speech in a liberal society then to insist that we have to do so or else tolerate apartheid.

Maybe you can throw some Nazis in as well?

:lol:
Ah yes. The old "you just call anyone who disagrees with you a nazi"

The apartheid south Africa boycott is a very good example of collective people action to cancel a regime that was beyond the pale.
It's a perfect example for why its wrong to just say cancel culture is bad and leave it at that.
A truly free and liberal society has controls on free speech. Even America I believe.
I will keep that in mind next time I run into someone who says "cancel culture is bad and leave it at that".

Maybe you could have a discussion with those of us who are not saying that though?

Have you ever heard of the term "strawman" or "steelman"?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on June 19, 2022, 11:48:58 AM
For the record, I don't know of anyone who considers boycotting South Africa as "cancel culture". 

I certainly don't.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on June 19, 2022, 12:03:23 PM
Quote from: Berkut on June 19, 2022, 11:48:18 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 19, 2022, 11:40:30 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 19, 2022, 11:26:12 AMI suspect there is no inconstancy in my stance at all. I suspect you just can't figure out a better way to reconcile your support for stifling free speech in a liberal society then to insist that we have to do so or else tolerate apartheid.

Maybe you can throw some Nazis in as well?

:lol:
Ah yes. The old "you just call anyone who disagrees with you a nazi"

The apartheid south Africa boycott is a very good example of collective people action to cancel a regime that was beyond the pale.
It's a perfect example for why its wrong to just say cancel culture is bad and leave it at that.
A truly free and liberal society has controls on free speech. Even America I believe.
I will keep that in mind next time I run into someone who says "cancel culture is bad and leave it at that".

Maybe you could have a discussion with those of us who are not saying that though?

Have you ever heard of the term "strawman" or "steelman"?

I mean. You literally did just speak about stifling free speech being bad as an absolute, saying you were fine with generally undebatable examples when it is controlled such as with hate preachers.

Have you ever heard of the terms "example" or "precedent"?
It's awfully convenient if those which happen to go against one side can be just ignored.

Quote from: Berkut on June 19, 2022, 11:48:58 AMFor the record, I don't know of anyone who considers boycotting South Africa as "cancel culture".

I certainly don't.

Because cancel culture, woke, etc... Are bullshit fluffy terms that let people pretend they're speaking up against a new and dangerous menace, cherry picking at will due to the loose definition, when really they're not all that different to what has gone before; sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on June 19, 2022, 01:34:15 PM
I call bullshit.

I posted an article that was VERY specific. It had a study talking about the chilling effects on free expression in universities.

*You* are the one trying to turn that into something to do with Apartheid South Africa.

The label is irrelevant. The terms are "fluffy" because YOU make them so, because you insist that rather then talking about the very specfic cases that are being talked about, that we *have to* somehow defend these vague definition that equate apartheid with students in colleges being afraid to speak their minds.

I am not cherry picking anything, I am talking about very specific principles and the effect that the intolerant lefts decision that those prinicples just don't matter anymore is having. I think stifling free expression IS a menace - it isn't a new menace, your position has many, many historical precedents. There have been many, many times throughout history where the desire to force conformity of thought into narrow acceptable boundaries has manifested itself - you have lots of company.

And it isn't the anti-apartheid movement.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on June 19, 2022, 02:04:55 PM
Quote from: Berkut on June 19, 2022, 11:48:58 AMFor the record, I don't know of anyone who considers boycotting South Africa as "cancel culture".

I certainly don't.

People who have no idea how to intellectually support cancel culture but who are emotionally unable to acknowledge its perils use the apartheid example, even though it predates cancel culture by almost 25 years.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on June 19, 2022, 02:37:19 PM
Quote from: Berkut on June 19, 2022, 01:34:15 PMI call bullshit.

I posted an article that was VERY specific. It had a study talking about the chilling effects on free expression in universities.

*You* are the one trying to turn that into something to do with Apartheid South Africa.

The label is irrelevant. The terms are "fluffy" because YOU make them so, because you insist that rather then talking about the very specfic cases that are being talked about, that we *have to* somehow defend these vague definition that equate apartheid with students in colleges being afraid to speak their minds.

I am not cherry picking anything, I am talking about very specific principles and the effect that the intolerant lefts decision that those prinicples just don't matter anymore is having. I think stifling free expression IS a menace - it isn't a new menace, your position has many, many historical precedents. There have been many, many times throughout history where the desire to force conformity of thought into narrow acceptable boundaries has manifested itself - you have lots of company.

And it isn't the anti-apartheid movement.

Except we aren't speaking about any specific example here. We are speaking about the entire concept of cancelling.
I pointed out this has happened since forever and the only difference is in recent times more and more powerless people have been able to do it rather than just the ruling classes.
Apartheid South Africa is an excellent example of this. It perfectly highlights how you can't just boil it down to a black and white (no pun intended) cancelling is bad.
It's precisely because it's a pretty uncontroversial issue where I'd have thought everyone would be in agreement that its such a good example.
And you try to twist this into a debate about apartheid South Africa where I'm accusing you of being for it?

The world doesnt work on simple binaries. Suppression of free speech has been used for negative purposes in the past. However in more modern times it is successfully used for positive purposes. Words have power and can very directly lead to people dying.
The US has history of controlling free speech - the difference in the modern day is people want this to be done to protect the weak rather than the strong, as is the way in most other free countries.

Talking about specific examples on their own merits is what should be done. But that's not the discussion we are having here.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on June 19, 2022, 02:53:07 PM
My recollection of the 80s is that the South African regime was shunned because it was oppressing non-whites. Not because of any opinions it had expressed.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on June 19, 2022, 06:24:10 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 18, 2022, 02:26:06 PMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve5PlNrqG0E&t=88s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN__M-3sl6Y

Two examples of people I'm totally happy were cancelled.
that second guy has to be a Canadian expat. ;) :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on June 19, 2022, 06:26:09 PM
Quote from: Berkut on June 18, 2022, 07:50:11 PM
Quote from: Josquius on June 18, 2022, 02:29:10 PM
Quote from: Berkut on June 18, 2022, 01:57:00 PM[
...which is why we should be against anyone cancelling those they don't like through stifling free speech.

This isn't complicated.

So let hate preachers continue to do their thing, anti abortion extremists to hang around outside clinics screaming their nonsense, teachers to tell kids whatever they fancy, dodgy regimes to do whatever they want with zero consequences for their businesses etc...
Yes, yes (depending), no (is that a problem?), and I don't know what you mean by a "dodgy regime".
I'm not sure I'm following you now...  Are you saying the guys showing up at military funerals to protest gay marriage should be allowed unhindered because they exercise their right to free speech?

what about those in Yi videos?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on June 19, 2022, 06:27:14 PM
Quote from: Josquius on June 19, 2022, 01:43:39 AMAnd I disagree. Hate speech is a very real and harmful thing. Cancel the hate preacher and you can stop a suicide bomber from killing hundreds.
but then, you will be accused of islamophobia and be cancelled yourself...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on June 19, 2022, 06:32:24 PM
I've been thinking a lot about this whole cancel culture thing recently - which maybe makes sense given it's a social and political (and thus languish) fault line.

Here's where I'm at:

Societies - and social groups within societies - always have rules about what can and cannot be said, and an understanding what sort of price someone might have to pay for transgressing against them.

These rules are highly contextual. The same statement can be inside or outside the rules depending on who the speaker is, who or what the subject is, who the audience is, and where it is spoken. I think we can all imagine situations - present-day or in the past - where someone saying they're attracted to someone else and wants to fuck them could lead to social bonding, could lead to minor negative social repercussions, could lead to job loss, and in some cases could even result death - depending on context.

While some of the rules are enforced legally, many of them are informal but still pretty clearly understood. And if someone doesn't know the rules, they typically learn pretty quickly through experience.

Defining what the rules are - and who is subject to them, who gets to be excused transgressing against them and who suffers the most severe consequences - is an expression of power. Whether to morally good or bad ends, successfully defining and enforcing "this line shouldn't be crossed" or "there is no line here" or "this is the correct consequence for this action" is to exercise power.

Where the rules are informal, they're usually defined and enforced by a form of social consensus. That consensus could be directed by a few charismatic individuals or it could be more amorphous, but in either case - those who direct it are wielding power.

Where the rules of what can be said and what cannot be said are legal - or matters of clearly stated policy - it's easy enough to understand who wields the formal power. It's those who make the law or policy. But typically there's another layer of informal power being wielded in how the law or policy is being enforced. Again, I think we can all think of examples where policy or law is enforced unevenly, to the benefit of some groups or individuals and not others. Again this is an exercise of power.

I think all that is a fairly non-controversial if generalized description on how limits on speech are enforced in groups and societies.

Now we have the internet and social media which makes it possible for statements - or reports of other people making statements - to be very widely circulated. Something that might be fine in one context easily gains another context in which it may not be fine (e.g. it's exposed to people who are unaware of some of the context which makes it fine, or to people who think it's not fine no matter context).

At the same time the internet also allows a wide array of people to attempt to marshal other people to exact consequences against people who transgress against what they think the rules are (or what the rules should be). The rules - that is who gets to exercise power on whom and to what consequence - is more dynamic and uncertain at the moment than it used to be.

Again, I hope this is a fairly non-controversial argument that the internet has affected how speech is judged and controlled on a societal level because the boundaries and enforcement mechanisms have been changing rapidly.

At this point I'm not intending to argue that cancel culture (or its cousin woke culture) is real/ not real, nor whether it's benign/ malign/ morally neutral. What I do think, however, is that the debate about it is about who draws the lines, and where, when it comes to speech in the social media and internet age.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on June 19, 2022, 06:50:03 PM
Quote from: Josquius on June 19, 2022, 11:40:30 AM
Quote from: Berkut on June 19, 2022, 11:26:12 AMI suspect there is no inconstancy in my stance at all. I suspect you just can't figure out a better way to reconcile your support for stifling free speech in a liberal society then to insist that we have to do so or else tolerate apartheid.

Maybe you can throw some Nazis in as well?

:lol:
Ah yes. The old "you just call anyone who disagrees with you a nazi"

The apartheid south Africa boycott is a very good example of collective people action to cancel a regime that was beyond the pale.
It's a perfect example for why its wrong to just say cancel culture is bad and leave it at that.
A truly free and liberal society has controls on free speech. Even America I believe.
Let's get some definitions involved, shall we?

When we talk of cancel-culture, we talk of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture
QuoteCancel culture or call-out culture is a contemporary phrase used to refer to a form of ostracism in which someone is thrust out of social or professional circles – whether it be online, on social media, or in person.

First, it talks of a person.  And individual, not a corporation, not a country/state/organization.  You can't "cancel" NRA because you disagree with them.  You can call for a boycott, but it's not the same.

So, this would be cancel-culture:
https://youtu.be/TwGiU0rGgGI?t=57

This is not cancel culture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfTSrhzONJM

Some religious person who decides to leave their cult will become cutoff from all family and friends of that religious circle.  It's also a form a cancel-culture.  It's not the same as criticizing or boycotting scientology.

In your example, boycotting South Africa because of the Apartheid was not cancel-culture.  Ostracizing Charlize Theron because she's a white South African would be cancel culture, and profoundly unfair too, in her specific case.

If you can't see the difference between the too, if you can't see how profundly unfair cancel-culture has become for trivialities, you are as far gone on the opposite side as Berkut can be on his.

Limits on free speech should be limited to violent speech, or extremely racist speech that can incite to ostracization or violence of certain groups, irrelevant of their general status.  I won't make any difference between a black artist saying all whites are stupid and a white artist saying all blacks are stupids. 

But I won't cancel either of them.  I won't stage protests in front of their house, burn their cars, their garage, their barns, whatever.  I won't wish for that to happen either.  I won't call for someone to violently "solve their case".  I won't stage protests in front of every venue they play in the way Tipper Gore did in the 80s.  I certainly won't lobby local and national politicians to outlaw some forms of entertainment, specifically the ones of these artists.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on June 19, 2022, 07:55:37 PM
Quote from: viper37 on June 19, 2022, 06:24:10 PMthat second guy has to be a Canadian expat. ;) :P

Why is that? :unsure:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on June 19, 2022, 09:49:14 PM
Quote from: viper37 on June 19, 2022, 06:50:03 PMLet's get some definitions involved, shall we?

When we talk of cancel-culture, we talk of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture
QuoteCancel culture or call-out culture is a contemporary phrase used to refer to a form of ostracism in which someone is thrust out of social or professional circles – whether it be online, on social media, or in person.

First, it talks of a person.  And individual, not a corporation, not a country/state/organization.  You can't "cancel" NRA because you disagree with them.  You can call for a boycott, but it's not the same.

Thank you for that definition Viper37. It's good to get a bit of clarity in a discussion that often goes all over the map.

The first case of internet driven cancel culture in action that I'm aware of is GamerGate successfully cancelling Alison Rapp's job at Nintendo - and I believe her career in video games - my manufacturing spurious accusations of pedophilia (and there are other ones extant calling her a whore as well, just because I suppose) for her social justice and feminist aligned tweets

By the definition that you posted, I think it's fair to say that Colin Kaepernick was successfully cancelled as a result of his actions in favour of Black Lives Matter.

I'm aware of a number of instances where alt-right/ neo-Nazi activists engaged in violence and public disorder have been publicly identified and - apparently - their employers contacted resulting in job loss (and others where there's been no consequence for contacting the employer). I think that happened to some of the Jan 6th insurrectionists, for example.

I recall in incident a few years ago where an executive in Vancouver was filmed kicking a dog he was looking after (IIRC not enough to cause lasting harm, but definitely enough to cause it distress). People on the internet identified him and he lost his job over it.

Some of those examples I'm more okay with than others. Some I actively approve of, others I'm more like "yeah, that kind of sucks but I'm not upset", and others I think are pretty horrible. On reflection my reaction maps pretty well to my political beliefs, which I don't think is surprising. I'd be curious how other languishites feel about these incidents (or others).

I suppose there are many other examples out there, but it seems to me that a great number of attempted "cancellings" are unsuccessful and end up working out okay for the targets. It's my impression that there are a number of operators on the right wing side of the spectrum who are very effective at monetizing the appearance of left-wing attempts at cancelling them, for example. Maybe it goes the other way too?

On the other hand things, by your definition things like "deplatforming" is a separate (but probably related) concept. Objecting to - say - Jordan Peterson speaking at a campus does not particularly harm him, even if successful. It probably helps his brand, and his voice continues to be heard.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on June 19, 2022, 10:27:54 PM
I think the key distinction between cancel culture and the older forms of boycott protests is that the older forms were willing to stop when they won.  Cancel culture tries to wage total war even when the subject being cancelled apologizes or is shown to be correct.  That's what is so speech-dampening about cancel culture: the consequences of minor actions can be so severe and inescapable. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 04:13:53 AM
QuoteMy recollection of the 80s is that the South African regime was shunned because it was oppressing non-whites. Not because of any opinions it had expressed.
Which is what generally happens when the powerful have opinions- they're able to put them into action.

Quote from: viper37 on June 19, 2022, 06:27:14 PM
Quote from: Josquius on June 19, 2022, 01:43:39 AMAnd I disagree. Hate speech is a very real and harmful thing. Cancel the hate preacher and you can stop a suicide bomber from killing hundreds.
but then, you will be accused of islamophobia and be cancelled yourself...

Not really.
A lot of people who call for harsh judgement on hate preachers are Islamophobes. That their broken clock has for once hit a correct time doesn't change who they are.
But when a judge lays down the law on a actual hate preacher you don't see any massed up swelling of hate against him for being Islamophobic- except of course by the extremists themselves, desperately trying to staple the accoutrements of the left to their nurgle-infested far right bodies.

QuoteSome religious person who decides to leave their cult will become cutoff from all family and friends of that religious circle.  It's also a form a cancel-culture.  It's not the same as criticizing or boycotting scientology.

In your example, boycotting South Africa because of the Apartheid was not cancel-culture.  Ostracizing Charlize Theron because she's a white South African would be cancel culture, and profoundly unfair too, in her specific case.

If you can't see the difference between the too, if you can't see how profundly unfair cancel-culture has become for trivialities, you are as far gone on the opposite side as Berkut can be on his.

Limits on free speech should be limited to violent speech, or extremely racist speech that can incite to ostracization or violence of certain groups, irrelevant of their general status.  I won't make any difference between a black artist saying all whites are stupid and a white artist saying all blacks are stupids.

But I won't cancel either of them.  I won't stage protests in front of their house, burn their cars, their garage, their barns, whatever.  I won't wish for that to happen either.  I won't call for someone to violently "solve their case".  I won't stage protests in front of every venue they play in the way Tipper Gore did in the 80s.  I certainly won't lobby local and national politicians to outlaw some forms of entertainment, specifically the ones of these artists.
As I said- its not good or bad. Its just a natural part of being human. Some use it for bad purposes, some for good.
The difference we see in the modern day is that it is far more possible for the powerless to be able to use it whilst historically it has been quite restricted to the rich. Sometimes they use this for negative purposes, but more often than not for good.
We hear a lot in the press of people making a typo and losing everything in their life as they accidentally said a slur on twitter or some such... what you hear less of is the way in 2022 it is decidedly uncool to be a raging homophobe because this will destroy your career.

I disagree on people's reaction to apartheid not being cancel culture too. Its the ur-example of people power of this sort (though please correct me of an earlier one).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on June 20, 2022, 04:36:52 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 04:13:53 AM
QuoteMy recollection of the 80s is that the South African regime was shunned because it was oppressing non-whites. Not because of any opinions it had expressed.
Which is what generally happens when the powerful have opinions- they're able to put them into action.

So you agree that the South African boycott was based on actions, and not opinions?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 05:12:39 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 20, 2022, 04:36:52 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 04:13:53 AM
QuoteMy recollection of the 80s is that the South African regime was shunned because it was oppressing non-whites. Not because of any opinions it had expressed.
Which is what generally happens when the powerful have opinions- they're able to put them into action.

So you agree that the South African boycott was based on actions, and not opinions?
I suspect you think you've got a gotcha here, but its lost on me where you're going.
Are you arguing that once something reaches the point of being put into law any act against it becomes a completely different thing?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on June 20, 2022, 05:18:33 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 05:12:39 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 20, 2022, 04:36:52 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 04:13:53 AM
QuoteMy recollection of the 80s is that the South African regime was shunned because it was oppressing non-whites. Not because of any opinions it had expressed.
Which is what generally happens when the powerful have opinions- they're able to put them into action.

So you agree that the South African boycott was based on actions, and not opinions?
I suspect you think you've got a gotcha here, but its lost on me where you're going.
Are you arguing that once something reaches the point of being put into law any act against it becomes a completely different thing?

I think that there is an enormous difference between acting against actions and acting against expressed opinions. I don't see how historical actions against actions would be relevant in a discussion about current actions against opinions.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 05:22:53 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 20, 2022, 05:18:33 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 05:12:39 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 20, 2022, 04:36:52 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 04:13:53 AM
QuoteMy recollection of the 80s is that the South African regime was shunned because it was oppressing non-whites. Not because of any opinions it had expressed.
Which is what generally happens when the powerful have opinions- they're able to put them into action.

So you agree that the South African boycott was based on actions, and not opinions?
I suspect you think you've got a gotcha here, but its lost on me where you're going.
Are you arguing that once something reaches the point of being put into law any act against it becomes a completely different thing?

I think that there is an enormous difference between acting against actions and acting against expressed opinions. I don't see how historical actions against actions would be relevant in a discussion about current actions against opinions.
I'd argue it isn't such a binary and instead its a gradual scale from having a vague notion up to being completely gung ho putting your all into acting.
Prevention is usually better than cure so it often is wise to say, speak up against a proposed law before it is passed.

Note that there have been examples of actions judged as being cancel culture in recent times. For instance that chicken chain's donations to anti-gay organisations and the reaction they received. Ironically the initial donation wasn't cancel culture but the reaction was?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on June 20, 2022, 05:41:52 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 05:22:53 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 20, 2022, 05:18:33 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 05:12:39 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 20, 2022, 04:36:52 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 04:13:53 AM
QuoteMy recollection of the 80s is that the South African regime was shunned because it was oppressing non-whites. Not because of any opinions it had expressed.
Which is what generally happens when the powerful have opinions- they're able to put them into action.

So you agree that the South African boycott was based on actions, and not opinions?
I suspect you think you've got a gotcha here, but its lost on me where you're going.
Are you arguing that once something reaches the point of being put into law any act against it becomes a completely different thing?

I think that there is an enormous difference between acting against actions and acting against expressed opinions. I don't see how historical actions against actions would be relevant in a discussion about current actions against opinions.
I'd argue it isn't such a binary and instead its a gradual scale from having a vague notion up to being completely gung ho putting your all into acting.
Prevention is usually better than cure so it often is wise to say, speak up against a proposed law before it is passed.

Note that there have been examples of actions judged as being cancel culture in recent times. For instance that chicken chain's donations to anti-gay organisations and the reaction they received. Ironically the initial donation wasn't cancel culture but the reaction was?

What does speaking up against proposed laws have to do with cancel culture?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on June 20, 2022, 05:46:08 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 20, 2022, 05:18:33 AMI think that there is an enormous difference between acting against actions and acting against expressed opinions. I don't see how historical actions against actions would be relevant in a discussion about current actions against opinions.

Certainly you will agree that there are a host of actions that are quite benign, and opinions that are quite aggressive and possibly damaging.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on June 20, 2022, 05:49:30 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 20, 2022, 05:46:08 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 20, 2022, 05:18:33 AMI think that there is an enormous difference between acting against actions and acting against expressed opinions. I don't see how historical actions against actions would be relevant in a discussion about current actions against opinions.

Certainly you will agree that there are a host of actions that are quite benign, and opinions that are quite aggressive and possibly damaging.

Do you think that this makes the boycott against South Africa relevant in a discussion about cancel culture?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on June 20, 2022, 05:50:30 AM
I thought you were starting  a tangent.  My bad.  :)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on June 20, 2022, 05:50:58 AM
No worries. :)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 05:53:31 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 20, 2022, 05:41:52 AMWhat does speaking up against proposed laws have to do with cancel culture?
Everything?
Why express an opinion on social issues if you don't wish to see it passed into law?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on June 20, 2022, 05:54:47 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 05:53:31 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 20, 2022, 05:41:52 AMWhat does speaking up against proposed laws have to do with cancel culture?
Everything?
Why express an opinion on social issues if you don't wish to see it passed into law?


I don't follow.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 05:57:56 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 20, 2022, 05:54:47 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 05:53:31 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 20, 2022, 05:41:52 AMWhat does speaking up against proposed laws have to do with cancel culture?
Everything?
Why express an opinion on social issues if you don't wish to see it passed into law?


I don't follow.
To make up a random example- A law to ban trans people from walking the streets would come about because a large number of people are expressing the view that trans people shouldn't be allowed to walk the streets. A large number of people would come to have this view because of a small number of people selling it.
When people criticise somebody for being a racist its not just that person being a dick that they're calling out. Its the potential future implications of such stuff being normalised.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on June 20, 2022, 06:04:19 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 05:57:56 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 20, 2022, 05:54:47 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 05:53:31 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 20, 2022, 05:41:52 AMWhat does speaking up against proposed laws have to do with cancel culture?
Everything?
Why express an opinion on social issues if you don't wish to see it passed into law?


I don't follow.
To make up a random example- A law to ban trans people from walking the streets would come about because a large number of people are expressing the view that trans people shouldn't be allowed to walk the streets. A large number of people would come to have this view because of a small number of people selling it.
When people criticise somebody for being a racist its not just that person being a dick that they're calling out. Its the potential future implications of such stuff being normalised.

You're all over the place. I don't think we'll make more headway.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 06:32:33 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 20, 2022, 06:04:19 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 05:57:56 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 20, 2022, 05:54:47 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 05:53:31 AM
Quote from: The Brain on June 20, 2022, 05:41:52 AMWhat does speaking up against proposed laws have to do with cancel culture?
Everything?
Why express an opinion on social issues if you don't wish to see it passed into law?


I don't follow.
To make up a random example- A law to ban trans people from walking the streets would come about because a large number of people are expressing the view that trans people shouldn't be allowed to walk the streets. A large number of people would come to have this view because of a small number of people selling it.
When people criticise somebody for being a racist its not just that person being a dick that they're calling out. Its the potential future implications of such stuff being normalised.

You're all over the place. I don't think we'll make more headway.
Curious. Seems pretty straight forward, massively simplifying things, and directly on topic to me.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on June 20, 2022, 07:58:51 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 19, 2022, 07:55:37 PM
Quote from: viper37 on June 19, 2022, 06:24:10 PMthat second guy has to be a Canadian expat. ;) :P

Why is that? :unsure:
It's a joke because he's insisting that everyone speaks English.

It's something you see from time to time in Canada.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on June 20, 2022, 08:05:56 AM
Quote from: viper37 on June 19, 2022, 06:26:09 PM
Quote from: Berkut on June 18, 2022, 07:50:11 PM
Quote from: Josquius on June 18, 2022, 02:29:10 PM
Quote from: Berkut on June 18, 2022, 01:57:00 PM[
...which is why we should be against anyone cancelling those they don't like through stifling free speech.

This isn't complicated.

So let hate preachers continue to do their thing, anti abortion extremists to hang around outside clinics screaming their nonsense, teachers to tell kids whatever they fancy, dodgy regimes to do whatever they want with zero consequences for their businesses etc...
Yes, yes (depending), no (is that a problem?), and I don't know what you mean by a "dodgy regime".
I'm not sure I'm following you now...  Are you saying the guys showing up at military funerals to protest gay marriage should be allowed unhindered because they exercise their right to free speech?

what about those in Yi videos?
Not being allowed to disrupt a funeral is not being cancelled.

I think I've made it pretty clear what I am talking about.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on June 20, 2022, 08:14:27 AM
Quote from: Jacob on June 19, 2022, 09:49:14 PMBy the definition that you posted, I think it's fair to say that Colin Kaepernick was successfully cancelled as a result of his actions in favour of Black Lives Matter.
These two are certainly good examples of mob behavior to cancel people for simply disagreeing with their comments.
QuoteSome of those examples I'm more okay with than others. Some I actively approve of, others I'm more like "yeah, that kind of sucks but I'm not upset", and others I think are pretty horrible. On reflection my reaction maps pretty well to my political beliefs, which I don't think is surprising. I'd be curious how other languishites feel about these incidents (or others).
Actions are obviously different than expression political opinions.
Not a country fan, but I remember Morgan Wallen.  He was a drunk, he got defended by his black friends, but his career is still over and done.  Why?  As they were exiting his home, he called one his friend "my *iggah, a good guy" and told his other friend to take care of him.
Like I said, career over.  He was a moderately successful country singer before that, but it's not someone you'll hear of again.  His crimes are that he's too liberal to be defended by the GOP-turds and and he used to n*word, causing instant hysteria amongst the thought police.
QuoteI suppose there are many other examples out there, but it seems to me that a great number of attempted "cancellings" are unsuccessful and end up working out okay for the targets.
Verushka Lieutenant-Duval.  She's not likely to get any kind of career outside of UQAM, which is akin to a community college.

QuoteOn the other hand things, by your definition things like "deplatforming" is a separate (but probably related) concept. Objecting to - say - Jordan Peterson speaking at a campus does not particularly harm him, even if successful. It probably helps his brand, and his voice continues to be heard.
[/quote]
"deplatforming" hurts one's revenue in this day & age.

Me being banned from Languish means I'm free to pursue more successful ventures :P
Some influencer banned from from Tik Tok or Instagram due to public pressure means the loss of many $$$ in sponsorship.  It's like a radio/tv host losing his job, his main source of income.  It can lead to financial problems and depression.

Imho, it should be reserved to the strictest offenders.  Saying you are against abortion and gay marriage should not guarantee your exclusion from all social circles and resulting in you being persona non granta everywhere but on Fox News.

Using the word *iggah in a friendly context shouldn't be the same as saying "stupid ***ger, look where you're going!" when you hit a black person on the street.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on June 20, 2022, 08:20:08 AM
Quote from: Jacob on June 19, 2022, 09:49:14 PMI recall in incident a few years ago where an executive in Vancouver was filmed kicking a dog he was looking after (IIRC not enough to cause lasting harm, but definitely enough to cause it distress). People on the internet identified him and he lost his job over it.

Some of those examples I'm more okay with than others. Some I actively approve of, others I'm more like "yeah, that kind of sucks but I'm not upset", and others I think are pretty horrible. On reflection my reaction maps pretty well to my political beliefs, which I don't think is surprising. I'd be curious how other languishites feel about these incidents (or others).


I try very hard to NOT let me views on this stuff map to my political beliefs, since I know that means I am not acting on principle at all.

I do have different views on specific examples, but they map more to

1. The specifics of the situation, and the ability of the people involved to respond fairly. I am more tolerant of action that violates my principles when the circumstances are such that other principles would be violated otherwise (a big part of this speaks to power dynamics, and how society fails to give some people a fair voice).

2. The relevance and damage not just to those specifically involved, but to others not involved. The chilling effect of social ostracization of unpopular views on campus is extremely concerning IMO - as an example.

3. In general, I have very little trust in power given to mobs, for any reason. They lack control, accountability, or reason. This goes back to #1 though. 

I don't think riots are a great way to express political views, for example, and in fact, all things being equal, I would say a riot is a terrible thing and something society should actively (even violently if necessary) suppress. But all things are NOT equal, and if you don't give people a voice or power, and they get shit on long enough, then they are inevitably going to turn to whatever other level they can pull to express what those in power have effectively stopped them from expressing.

I would not say I actively approve of any examples of what I consider to be the efforts of society to shame people into not speaking their minds through pressure applied through the mob. The tool is so blunt and unwieldy that it will inevitably not just suppress the speech that might be truly objectionable, but to suppress the speech of everyone.

Lastly, I actually really do believe that there is power in the truth, rationality, and the principles of a liberal society. I think we can and will win the culture war not by embracing the mobs power to shut up people who say the wrong things, but through the power of people to win the debates through reason and better arguments. Where there are technical and systemic failure that make the grounds of that debate skewed towards populism, ignorance, and intolerance, we should fix those failures, not embrace them.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on June 20, 2022, 08:20:18 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 05:57:56 AMWhen people criticise somebody for being a racist its not just that person being a dick that they're calling out. Its the potential future implications of such stuff being normalised.

Of course, to avoid having a law that bans transexuals from walking down the street, we must censor anyone who talks of transexuals from walking down the street, to be on the safe side.

Just as we should censor all muslim because mulslim hate preachers come from the free expression of muslim speech.

It ain't a question of discussion, a question of education, it's simply a question of who we censor first.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 08:28:50 AM
Quote from: viper37 on June 20, 2022, 08:20:18 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 05:57:56 AMWhen people criticise somebody for being a racist its not just that person being a dick that they're calling out. Its the potential future implications of such stuff being normalised.

Of course, to avoid having a law that bans transexuals from walking down the street, we must censor anyone who talks of transexuals from walking down the street, to be on the safe side.

Just as we should censor all muslim because mulslim hate preachers come from the free expression of muslim speech.

It ain't a question of discussion, a question of education, it's simply a question of who we censor first.

Again the world doesn't work on binaries.
Nobody is calling for hit squads to be sent out after the lone village idiot shouting about how transexuals should be banned from leaving their homes.
However most rational people would see an issue if somebody with a prominent platform starts making such pronouncements and encouraging their followers to take action.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on June 20, 2022, 08:33:43 AM
The Vancouver dog story has just reminded me of the absolute chaos provoked by cat bin lady here about ten years ago :ph34r: :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 08:35:24 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on June 20, 2022, 08:33:43 AMThe Vancouver dog story has just reminded me of the absolute chaos provoked by cat bin lady here about ten years ago :ph34r: :lol:
Longer I think. IT Crowd covered it- just this week I was chatting with some people and we realised quite how old that is now.  :ph34r:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on June 20, 2022, 08:51:39 AM
Makes sense - in my head she's very linked with 'that bigoted woman'.

Theory: British tabloids pioneered cancel/call out culture of summoning a mob, doxxing and punishing people outside of norms? :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on June 20, 2022, 09:56:36 AM
Quote from: viper37 on June 20, 2022, 08:14:27 AMActions are obviously different than expression political opinions.
Not a country fan, but I remember Morgan Wallen.  He was a drunk, he got defended by his black friends, but his career is still over and done.  Why?  As they were exiting his home, he called one his friend "my *iggah, a good guy" and told his other friend to take care of him.
Like I said, career over.  He was a moderately successful country singer before that, but it's not someone you'll hear of again.  His crimes are that he's too liberal to be defended by the GOP-turds and and he used to n*word, causing instant hysteria amongst the thought police.
I just realized why there is such a strong anti-woke sentiment among the liberals.  The liberals are the biggest potential victims of the cancel campaign.  They're the ones who will wind up with no home if they get canceled.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on June 20, 2022, 10:35:58 AM
Quote from: viper37 on June 20, 2022, 08:14:27 AMActions are obviously different than expression political opinions.
Not a country fan, but I remember Morgan Wallen.  He was a drunk, he got defended by his black friends, but his career is still over and done.  Why?  As they were exiting his home, he called one his friend "my *iggah, a good guy" and told his other friend to take care of him.
Like I said, career over.  He was a moderately successful country singer before that, but it's not someone you'll hear of again.  His crimes are that he's too liberal to be defended by the GOP-turds and and he used to n*word, causing instant hysteria amongst the thought police.

A person who still has his music playing on country music stations and tour dates include big country venues like the Grand Ole Opry has his career finished? :hmm:

And according to wiki:
QuoteIn March 2022, the album established the all-time record for longest duration in the #1 spot (61 weeks and counting) on Billboard's Country Albums chart.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on June 20, 2022, 10:50:03 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 08:28:50 AMAgain the world doesn't work on binaries.
Nobody is calling for hit squads to be sent out after the lone village idiot shouting about how transexuals should be banned from leaving their homes.
However most rational people would see an issue if somebody with a prominent platform starts making such pronouncements and encouraging their followers to take action.

Again, the law works on binaries (guilty/not guilty).  Rules are based on binaries (violates rule/does not violate rule)  To suppress only the speech you find offensive means that only you can be the judge of what is offensive.  The limit should not be what "most rational people would see an issue" with, but rather "what we as a society decide the boundaries of the rules on behavior should be."  I have no problem allowing speech that I have an issue with, so long as it comports to the law.  Hate speech that is incitement to violence is already against the law, but speech calling for action short of violence is not, even if we have an issue with it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 11:05:47 AM
Quote from: grumbler on June 20, 2022, 10:50:03 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 08:28:50 AMAgain the world doesn't work on binaries.
Nobody is calling for hit squads to be sent out after the lone village idiot shouting about how transexuals should be banned from leaving their homes.
However most rational people would see an issue if somebody with a prominent platform starts making such pronouncements and encouraging their followers to take action.

Again, the law works on binaries (guilty/not guilty).  Rules are based on binaries (violates rule/does not violate rule)  To suppress only the speech you find offensive means that only you can be the judge of what is offensive.  The limit should not be what "most rational people would see an issue" with, but rather "what we as a society decide the boundaries of the rules on behavior should be." 
Does the law work that way?
As I understood it when you get into stuff like this there's a huge amount of debate to be had. Hell. Even when it comes down to murder there's debates about motivation, circumstances, etc...

QuoteI have no problem allowing speech that I have an issue with, so long as it comports to the law. 
I see no problem with disagreeing with people even if they're not breaking any laws.

QuoteHate speech that is incitement to violence is already against the law, but speech calling for action short of violence is not, even if we have an issue with it.
I'm pretty sure there's lots of examples of speech that doesn't directly involve incitement to violence having laws against it- even in the US. Begging for instance. Libel. Porn.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on June 20, 2022, 11:25:29 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 11:05:47 AM
Quote from: grumbler on June 20, 2022, 10:50:03 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 20, 2022, 08:28:50 AMAgain the world doesn't work on binaries.
Nobody is calling for hit squads to be sent out after the lone village idiot shouting about how transexuals should be banned from leaving their homes.
However most rational people would see an issue if somebody with a prominent platform starts making such pronouncements and encouraging their followers to take action.

Again, the law works on binaries (guilty/not guilty).  Rules are based on binaries (violates rule/does not violate rule)  To suppress only the speech you find offensive means that only you can be the judge of what is offensive.  The limit should not be what "most rational people would see an issue" with, but rather "what we as a society decide the boundaries of the rules on behavior should be." 
Does the law work that way?
As I understood it when you get into stuff like this there's a huge amount of debate to be had. Hell. Even when it comes down to murder there's debates about motivation, circumstances, etc...

There is no verdict other than guilty and not guilty.  The not guilty verdicts can be somewhat nuanced, but they are not guilty verdicts nonetheless.

Quote
QuoteI have no problem allowing speech that I have an issue with, so long as it comports to the law. 
I see no problem with disagreeing with people even if they're not breaking any laws.

Truisms are mere truisms.

Quote
QuoteHate speech that is incitement to violence is already against the law, but speech calling for action short of violence is not, even if we have an issue with it.
I'm pretty sure there's lots of examples of speech that doesn't directly involve incitement to violence having laws against it- even in the US. Begging for instance. Libel. Porn.

There are many things against the law.  That is a mere truism.  What does that have to do with our discussion here? And, BTW, I know of no jurisdiction where mere speech that is begging is illegal.  A man begging a woman to marry him is breaking the law?  Absurd.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on June 20, 2022, 11:26:30 AM
Quote from: grumbler on June 20, 2022, 11:25:29 AMThere are many things against the law.  That is a mere truism.  What does that have to do with our discussion here? And, BTW, I know of no jurisdiction where mere speech that is begging is illegal.  A man begging a woman to marry him is breaking the law?  Absurd.

Pretty sure he meant begging for money on the street - panhandling.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on June 20, 2022, 01:46:25 PM
Two years ago today in Elon Musk is a Douche moments:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVo4NtVUAAAKfAP?format=jpg&name=large)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVo4NuwUAAA69qi?format=jpg&name=medium)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on June 20, 2022, 06:34:35 PM
So, SpaceX gives all its employees a fixed number of days per year they can take off, say 5 days.  And now, in all his generosity, Musk has declared (as of 2 years ago) that for Tesla and SpaceX, one of these will now be used for Juneteenth?  So he is giving them what they already have?

Great man.  He should become Canadian, he'd have a future in the Liberal Party. ;)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on June 20, 2022, 07:06:04 PM
Quote from: Jacob on June 20, 2022, 11:26:30 AM
Quote from: grumbler on June 20, 2022, 11:25:29 AMThere are many things against the law.  That is a mere truism.  What does that have to do with our discussion here? And, BTW, I know of no jurisdiction where mere speech that is begging is illegal.  A man begging a woman to marry him is breaking the law?  Absurd.

Pretty sure he meant begging for money on the street - panhandling.

Panhandling isn't speech.  My point is that we should not ban speech because someone has an issue with it - even if it is many people who have an issue with it.  Western societies have been pretty careful to not make mere speech illegal, and I think society writ whole should do the same with "cancelling" speech.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on June 20, 2022, 07:12:49 PM
Quote from: grumbler on June 20, 2022, 07:06:04 PMPanhandling isn't speech.  My point is that we should not ban speech because someone has an issue with it - even if it is many people who have an issue with it.  Western societies have been pretty careful to not make mere speech illegal, and I think society writ whole should do the same with "cancelling" speech.

"Spare some change?" isn't speech? My mistake then.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on June 20, 2022, 10:45:11 PM
Quote from: Jacob on June 20, 2022, 07:12:49 PM"Spare some change?" isn't speech? My mistake then.

What a strange idea!  Do you really think that it is a mistake to believe that the phrase "spare some change?" isn't speech?  What else could it be?

It also isn't illegal to utter that phrase, so I don't know what point you are attempting to make. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on June 20, 2022, 10:55:48 PM
Quote from: grumbler on June 20, 2022, 10:45:11 PMI don't know what point you are attempting to make.

No worries :)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on July 06, 2022, 05:18:23 AM
QuoteTesla (TSLA) has lost over $500 million from its Bitcoin investment amid crypto winter

Tesla (TSLA) has lost over $500 million in value from its Bitcoin investment amid what people are now calling a "crypto winter."

Early in 2021, Tesla invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin.

Shortly after, the automaker started accepting the cryptocurrency as payment on new vehicles.

However, a few days later, Tesla took a step back with crypto by removing the Bitcoin payment option. The company noted concerns over the energy needs of the Bitcoin network:

QuoteTesla has suspended vehicle purchases using Bitcoin. We are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel.

This is a concern that many Tesla community members shared when Tesla first announced its Bitcoin investment, and many were angered by the fact that the company didn't think about it in the first place.

At the time, Tesla noted that they were not selling their stake in Bitcoin and that they planned to resume taking Bitcoin payments once the network showed a higher mix of renewable energy.

A year after the investment, Tesla's Bitcoin holding increased to $2 billion just a few months ago.

But in the crypto world, a lot can change in just a few months.

Several major cryptocurrencies have seen a major decline in value amid the broader market downturn, and Tesla's Bitcoin investment is now worth $905 million, according to Bitcoin Treasuries, which tracks Bitcoin holdings from companies.

It means that Tesla has lost almost $600 million in value through its Bitcoin investment.

The only good news for Tesla here is that its Bitcoin holding represents only 10% of its cash position and 0.1% of its total market capitalization.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has also personally invested in Bitcoin and he has previously used the "diamond hands" meme, which generally indicates that he plans on holding the investment.

Musk also said that he believes Tesla will resume taking Bitcoin payment as he sees improvements in the energy mix of Bitcoin mining.

More recently, Tesla also directly helped improve renewable energy use in Bitcoin mining with Megapacks at a Bitcoin mine in Texas.

The article is almost a month old, apparently the losses by now amount to 1.2 billion $.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on July 06, 2022, 08:35:02 AM
Fortunately for Elon, the Tesla articles of incorporation dispense with the duty of care for corporate officers, as is commonly done for Delaware corporations.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 06, 2022, 07:49:37 PM
Elon Musk reportedly welcomed twins with top exec just before 2nd child with Grimes born  (https://pagesix.com/2022/07/06/elon-musk-welcomed-twins-with-shivon-zilis-last-year-report/)

QuoteElon Musk quietly welcomed twins with Shivon Zilis – one of his top executives – late last year, a new report from Business Insider claims. 

According to court documents obtained by the outlet, the Tesla mogul expanded his family with Neurolink's Zilis in November 2021.

Business Insider reports that Musk, 51, and Zilis, 36, filed a petition to change the twins' names in order to "have their father's last name and contain their mother's last name as part of their middle name." 

The order was reportedly approved by an Austin, Texas, judge in May, though the children's names remain unknown. 
Zilis and a rep for Musk did not immediately respond to Page Six's requests for comment. 

Per Business Insider, the twins were born just weeks before Musk and now-ex Grimes welcomed their second child, a baby girl named Exa Dark Sideræl, via surrogate in December 2021. They also share 2-year-old son X Æ A-Xii.

Musk's kids with Grimes join his five other living children: Griffin, Vivian Jenna, Kai, Saxon, and Damian.

Musk — who is currently dating "Britney Ever After" actress Natasha Bassett — shares his additional kids with ex-wife Justine Wilson. 

After marrying in January 2000, he and the Canadian author welcomed son Nevada Alexander Musk in 2002. Nevada tragically died of sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, at only 10 weeks.

Musk explained his approach to fatherhood in a 2020 New York Times interview, admitting that he doesn't play a prominent role in his kids' lives when they're young. 

"Right now there's not much I can do. Grimes has a much bigger role than me right now," he said of his then-partner. 
"When the kid gets older, there will be more of a role for me," he elaborated at the time. "I think just doing what I've done with my other kids."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on July 06, 2022, 08:24:35 PM
Is he trying to field a little league team or something?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Habbaku on July 06, 2022, 09:04:54 PM
Reminds me of Monkeybutt (RIP) generating his own team.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 06, 2022, 09:18:52 PM
Quote from: HVC on July 06, 2022, 08:24:35 PMIs he trying to field a little league team or something?
Future colonists for his Mars project.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 06, 2022, 11:37:29 PM
I don't understand how there is nothing for him to do until the kids are older. Is this some kind of weird old timey thing where the kids emerge from the nursery to go straight to boarding school or something?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 06, 2022, 11:53:18 PM
I understand Tesla has lost a fair bit of money on its BitCoin gambit so far.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on July 07, 2022, 12:06:13 AM
Quote from: Valmy on July 06, 2022, 11:37:29 PMI don't understand how there is nothing for him to do until the kids are older. Is this some kind of weird old timey thing where the kids emerge from the nursery to go straight to boarding school or something?

I think it's a rich people thing where the kids are raised by the help.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on July 07, 2022, 12:08:43 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on July 07, 2022, 12:06:13 AM
Quote from: Valmy on July 06, 2022, 11:37:29 PMI don't understand how there is nothing for him to do until the kids are older. Is this some kind of weird old timey thing where the kids emerge from the nursery to go straight to boarding school or something?

I think it's a rich people thing where the kids are raised by the help.

I think it is a douche thing where a person clearly loves to spread his seed far and wide but is uninterested in his offspring.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 07, 2022, 01:29:00 AM
Quote from: garbon on July 07, 2022, 12:08:43 AMI think it is a douche thing where a person clearly loves to spread his seed far and wide but is uninterested in his offspring.

Yeah, I think it's the kind of thing where he thinks a kid's role is to build up the father's ego in various ways. Babies are notorious for not being interested in catering to the egos of anyone, no matter how much money or how many twitter followers they have, so he's going to wait until they can properly appreciate what a great man he is.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on July 07, 2022, 04:30:59 AM
Quote from: garbon on July 07, 2022, 12:08:43 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on July 07, 2022, 12:06:13 AM
Quote from: Valmy on July 06, 2022, 11:37:29 PMI don't understand how there is nothing for him to do until the kids are older. Is this some kind of weird old timey thing where the kids emerge from the nursery to go straight to boarding school or something?

I think it's a rich people thing where the kids are raised by the help.

I think it is a douche thing where a person clearly loves to spread his seed far and wide but is uninterested in his offspring.

Not mutually exclusive.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on July 07, 2022, 04:35:47 AM
Another possibility is that he thinks that changing nappies and enduring tantrums are beneath him.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on July 07, 2022, 05:21:43 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on July 07, 2022, 04:30:59 AM
Quote from: garbon on July 07, 2022, 12:08:43 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on July 07, 2022, 12:06:13 AM
Quote from: Valmy on July 06, 2022, 11:37:29 PMI don't understand how there is nothing for him to do until the kids are older. Is this some kind of weird old timey thing where the kids emerge from the nursery to go straight to boarding school or something?

I think it's a rich people thing where the kids are raised by the help.

I think it is a douche thing where a person clearly loves to spread his seed far and wide but is uninterested in his offspring.

Not mutually exclusive.

Sure but yours alone seemed... charitable.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on July 07, 2022, 05:35:29 AM
Yeah there are a few explanations, all point to Musk being a major douche.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 07, 2022, 08:47:41 AM
Quote from: Valmy on July 06, 2022, 11:37:29 PMI don't understand how there is nothing for him to do until the kids are older. Is this some kind of weird old timey thing where the kids emerge from the nursery to go straight to boarding school or something?
Sadly, I have met a few fathers like him.  They start taking care of their kids when they near their preteen/teenage years.  By then, it's often too late.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on July 07, 2022, 08:48:54 AM
Someone should write a song about fatherly neglect. Could be a hit.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on July 07, 2022, 10:30:17 AM
Quote from: Valmy on July 06, 2022, 11:37:29 PMI don't understand how there is nothing for him to do until the kids are older. Is this some kind of weird old timey thing where the kids emerge from the nursery to go straight to boarding school or something?

That's kind of his views on things, yes.

Is the new lady Canadian? Grimes & miss Wilson both are. He has a thing for our women.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 07, 2022, 10:42:38 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on July 07, 2022, 10:30:17 AM
Quote from: Valmy on July 06, 2022, 11:37:29 PMI don't understand how there is nothing for him to do until the kids are older. Is this some kind of weird old timey thing where the kids emerge from the nursery to go straight to boarding school or something?

That's kind of his views on things, yes.

Is the new lady Canadian? Grimes & miss Wilson both are. He has a thing for our women.

He is just another insecure old guy who needs to be with younger women.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on July 08, 2022, 04:42:20 PM
QuoteElon Musk Twitter takeover deal in 'serious jeopardy'

Washington Post says Musk team has stopped certain funding discussions as Tesla CEO questions spam account figures
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on July 08, 2022, 04:44:51 PM
Was this just a bit that got wildly out of hand? :huh:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on July 08, 2022, 04:49:04 PM
There seem to be contradictory reports.

QuoteElon Musk withdraws $44bn bid to buy Twitter after weeks of high drama

World's richest man had reached a deal to purchase shares of the social media app for $54.20 apiece on 25 April
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on July 08, 2022, 04:55:41 PM
It seems nuts to buy a company at that valuation considering what has happened since. The breakup fee is just $1 billion without cause. If they would accept $30 billion in the current market (current market cap is $28 billion and that is probably inflated by Elon Musk buyout hopes), it would be lighting money on fire to pay $44 billion.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on July 08, 2022, 04:59:05 PM
What has this whole thing cost him?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Legbiter on July 08, 2022, 05:01:22 PM
Cheaper to lose a billion or so right now than paying through the nose now that the market has tanked.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on July 08, 2022, 05:02:56 PM
Seems to be finally off.

QuoteElon Musk says he is terminating $44bn Twitter deal

Tesla boss cites social media group's failure to provide sufficient information on fake accounts
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on July 08, 2022, 05:55:40 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 08, 2022, 04:44:51 PMWas this just a bit that got wildly out of hand? :huh:

Yes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 08, 2022, 06:58:57 PM
As someone clever on Twitter said re: Musk and Twitter: "I'm suprised. I didn't know Musk knew how to pull out."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on July 10, 2022, 11:22:57 AM
Yes, that is super clever. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 10, 2022, 11:34:08 AM
Quote from: Berkut on July 10, 2022, 11:22:57 AMYes, that is super clever.

They'd fit right in here on languish.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on July 10, 2022, 02:30:17 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 10, 2022, 11:34:08 AM
Quote from: Berkut on July 10, 2022, 11:22:57 AMYes, that is super clever.

They'd fit right in here on languish.
Indeed.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on July 10, 2022, 02:41:41 PM
I don't know, I think his kids might be a tad too young to join.



:P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on July 10, 2022, 04:54:42 PM
So... Musk might have to pay a fair sum it seems. Twitter taking him to court

https://mashable.com/article/can-elon-musk-be-forced-to-buy-twitter?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 10, 2022, 05:11:48 PM
Quote from: Josquius on July 10, 2022, 04:54:42 PMSo... Musk might have to pay a fair sum it seems. Twitter taking him to court

https://mashable.com/article/can-elon-musk-be-forced-to-buy-twitter?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds
they will settle for the 1B$ penalty.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on July 10, 2022, 06:17:31 PM
Quote from: viper37 on July 10, 2022, 05:11:48 PM
Quote from: Josquius on July 10, 2022, 04:54:42 PMSo... Musk might have to pay a fair sum it seems. Twitter taking him to court

https://mashable.com/article/can-elon-musk-be-forced-to-buy-twitter?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds
they will settle for the 1B$ penalty.


After 10 years of litigation and substantial billing by the lawyers.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 10, 2022, 06:46:38 PM
In the end the Lawyers always win.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 11, 2022, 06:47:35 AM
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FXWt3SoWQAcM8WJ?format=jpg&name=small)

 :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on July 11, 2022, 08:20:05 AM
I read some analysis that this may have been his play all along. He apparently sold $8.5 billion of Tesla stock related to this deal, and that went off without serious questions which held up the stock price of Tesla more than if he just said he wanted to dump some stock. In light of that the $1 billion fee may actually be profitable as his incremental stock proceeds exceeded that amount.

Not sure that is true but I love the bond villian theory that he is playing chess at a higher level than we recognized.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on July 11, 2022, 09:25:00 AM
That's equivalent to an 11 percent discount on the sale.  Combined with the crypto losses I'd say the case for erratic unforced error is still stronger than the genius master plan narrative.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 09:30:36 AM
Yes, he is clearly making error after error. 

I mean, what was he thinking with that crypto investment? Nobody else fell for such a thing!

And obviously he knows nothing about how to actually make money, which is totally clear because one of his investments isn't doing well at this particular moment in time.

If you objectively look at the man and how he has managed his finances, he is clearly terribly incompetent at this "making money" thing.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 11, 2022, 09:37:30 AM
Elon? Is that you?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on July 11, 2022, 09:45:25 AM
Quote from: Jacob on July 11, 2022, 09:37:30 AMElon? Is that you?

I think that's Berkut before his morning coffee.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on July 11, 2022, 09:51:03 AM
I mean he's more financially savvy then the original, but every day Elon turns more and more into Gen X Trump.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on July 11, 2022, 09:52:01 AM
(https://external-preview.redd.it/iBiquSu1BP_v-A-A2BXi97omOIsv-cV6jDITvoFq0s4.png?format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9e018db471543476900115a643fd6bccdcd11fa2)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on July 11, 2022, 09:52:15 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 11, 2022, 09:45:25 AM
Quote from: Jacob on July 11, 2022, 09:37:30 AMElon? Is that you?

I think that's Berkut before his morning coffee.
I think it's Berkut as well.  The user name gives it away.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 09:53:09 AM
Yeah, only Elon could possibly look at Elon and come to any conclusion other then "OMG HE IS SO DUMB!"

You know that all of this is the exact same song sung about Gates back when he was the tech asshole de jure, right?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 09:58:29 AM
You guys are a bunch of housewives reading tabloids about the private lives of some star you love to hate.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on July 11, 2022, 09:58:31 AM
Quote from: HVC on July 11, 2022, 09:51:03 AMI mean he's more financially savvy then the original, but every day Elon turns more and more into Gen X Trump.
People like Musk become hugely successful because for multiple decisions in a row, they went against mainstream thinking and it paid off handsomely.  Unfortunately, this has a tendency to convince you that you always know better than mainstream, and that puts you on the path to fly too close to the sun. 

The reason mainstream thinking is mainstream is because it is most likely to be correct overall, and it's very hard to keep striking gold consistently by going against it.  The person who gets drunk on success is no longer the same person who became successful in the first place.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on July 11, 2022, 10:00:11 AM
Quote from: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 09:53:09 AMYeah, only Elon could possibly look at Elon and come to any conclusion other then "OMG HE IS SO DUMB!"

You know that all of this is the exact same song sung about Gates back when he was the tech asshole de jure, right?

US law is weird.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on July 11, 2022, 10:13:52 AM
Quote from: Valmy on July 10, 2022, 06:46:38 PMIn the end the Lawyers always win.

:yeah:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on July 11, 2022, 10:22:45 AM
Quote from: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 09:53:09 AMYeah, only Elon could possibly look at Elon and come to any conclusion other then "OMG HE IS SO DUMB!"

You know that all of this is the exact same song sung about Gates back when he was the tech asshole de jure, right?

That's a valid criticism altho Bill Gates, like Elon Musk now, was really an asshole back then.


Like BG, Musk isn't good at making money. He's good at fostering a innovating environment and pushing the limits of manufacturing in already implemented industries. It's when he smokes some weed & forget he's not an angel investor and starts tweeting his musing that things start going bad and his autistic nature makes it hard for him to back down.
 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on July 11, 2022, 10:25:50 AM
Quote from: HVC on July 11, 2022, 09:51:03 AMI mean he's more financially savvy then the original, but every day Elon turns more and more into Gen X Trump.

The guy became the richest in the world by starting companies dedicated to clean energy and space exploration but he is considered trumpy because of shitposting...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Habbaku on July 11, 2022, 10:35:12 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on July 11, 2022, 10:22:45 AMLike BG, Musk isn't good at making money.

I have no idea what this means, unless you completely ignore that they are two of the wealthiest human beings ever to have existed.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on July 11, 2022, 10:46:57 AM
Quote from: Habbaku on July 11, 2022, 10:35:12 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on July 11, 2022, 10:22:45 AMLike BG, Musk isn't good at making money.

I have no idea what this means, unless you completely ignore that they are two of the wealthiest human beings ever to have existed.

I *think* I guess what he means. My assumption is that he means that both Gates and Musk didn't make their fortunes through savvy business deals, but by developing companies that became increadibly valuable.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on July 11, 2022, 11:00:51 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on July 07, 2022, 10:30:17 AMIs the new lady Canadian? Grimes & miss Wilson both are. He has a thing for our women.

Turns out she is Canadian too, yes. Btw, Musk himself is Canadian as well (got the citizenship at 17 through her mother).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on July 11, 2022, 11:09:38 AM
Quote from: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 09:53:09 AMYeah, only Elon could possibly look at Elon and come to any conclusion other then "OMG HE IS SO DUMB!"

You know that all of this is the exact same song sung about Gates back when he was the tech asshole de jure, right?

It's not impossible for a smart, successful businessman to make big mistakes.  In fact, it happens all the time.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 11:31:17 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on July 11, 2022, 11:09:38 AM
Quote from: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 09:53:09 AMYeah, only Elon could possibly look at Elon and come to any conclusion other then "OMG HE IS SO DUMB!"

You know that all of this is the exact same song sung about Gates back when he was the tech asshole de jure, right?

It's not impossible for a smart, successful businessman to make big mistakes.  In fact, it happens all the time.


Of course. Not under dispute.

But if the overall theme of your opinion of the guy is just "OMG HE IS SO DUMB AND SUCH AN ASSHOLE" then you are rather obviously missing the forest for the trees.

Being wrong on a Bitcoin investment? I suspect there might be a couple people here on languish who were wrong on that as well. Are we calling them out?

I bet Warren Buffet has been wrong on literally dozens, maybe hundreds, of investments. Is it reasonable to sit around and tell each other how stupid he is, and what a failure, because he was wrong a bunch of times?

Or should we examine the totality of his investments and notice that regardless of how many he was wrong about, he is rather obviously amazingly good at investing? 

And I don't see anything from the Musk haters about him being a "smart, successful" businessman - exactly the opposite in fact.

It's bizarre the level of hatred people have for him. You would think they are his kids moms.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 11:32:48 AM
Quote from: The Larch on July 11, 2022, 10:46:57 AM
Quote from: Habbaku on July 11, 2022, 10:35:12 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on July 11, 2022, 10:22:45 AMLike BG, Musk isn't good at making money.

I have no idea what this means, unless you completely ignore that they are two of the wealthiest human beings ever to have existed.

I *think* I guess what he means. My assumption is that he means that both Gates and Musk didn't make their fortunes through savvy business deals, but by developing companies that became increadibly valuable.
You cannot create Microsoft, Apple, and Tesla/Space X and manage them into the spectacular successes they are (the "incredibly valuable" part), without some savvy business dealings.

Also, I find it rather amusing that the knock on them is now going to be that their companies just became incredbily successful via the technology their founders had a key role in inventing, rather then "savvy business dealing".

Isn't that normally the knock on the right - that they don't really actually invent or do anything, they just make savvy business deals to create wealth?

Now, the knock on them is that they are not savvy, they just invent amazing shit that is incredibly successful?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on July 11, 2022, 11:33:16 AM
 :wacko:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on July 11, 2022, 11:36:12 AM
Quote from: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 11:32:48 AM
Quote from: The Larch on July 11, 2022, 10:46:57 AM
Quote from: Habbaku on July 11, 2022, 10:35:12 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on July 11, 2022, 10:22:45 AMLike BG, Musk isn't good at making money.

I have no idea what this means, unless you completely ignore that they are two of the wealthiest human beings ever to have existed.

I *think* I guess what he means. My assumption is that he means that both Gates and Musk didn't make their fortunes through savvy business deals, but by developing companies that became increadibly valuable.
You cannot create Microsoft, Apple, and Tesla/Space X and manage them into the spectacular successes they are (the "incredibly valuable" part), without some savvy business dealings.

No arguing from my part, I only tried to make a guess at what GF meant.

Btw, Musk didn't actually create Tesla, he joined the company as an investor when it was already created, became chairman, and eventually kicked out the two original founders.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on July 11, 2022, 11:42:09 AM
It's all Monopoly money at this point.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 11, 2022, 11:47:48 AM
Quote from: viper37 on July 10, 2022, 05:11:48 PM
Quote from: Josquius on July 10, 2022, 04:54:42 PMSo... Musk might have to pay a fair sum it seems. Twitter taking him to court

https://mashable.com/article/can-elon-musk-be-forced-to-buy-twitter?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds
they will settle for the 1B$ penalty.


There is a good chance Musk will pay more - there could be a court order that the sale go through if that remedy is sought.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on July 11, 2022, 11:54:31 AM
Quote from: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 11:31:17 AMBeing wrong on a Bitcoin investment? I suspect there might be a couple people here on languish who were wrong on that as well. Are we calling them out?


Bitcoin is really dumb. As is all cryptocurrency. That applies to Elon Musk plus anyone on languish who were "investing" in it. I'll stand by that even if bitcoin recovers and goes to $100k.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on July 11, 2022, 12:01:21 PM
Quote from: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 11:32:48 AMYou cannot create Microsoft, Apple, and Tesla/Space X and manage them into the spectacular successes they are (the "incredibly valuable" part), without some savvy business dealings.

Also, I find it rather amusing that the knock on them is now going to be that their companies just became incredbily successful via the technology their founders had a key role in inventing, rather then "savvy business dealing".

Isn't that normally the knock on the right - that they don't really actually invent or do anything, they just make savvy business deals to create wealth?

Now, the knock on them is that they are not savvy, they just invent amazing shit that is incredibly successful?

The knock against Steve Jobs or Elon Musk (note: not Bill Gates) is they they aren't engineers, they didn't invent anything - they were just the CEO while their own engineers did the inventing.

I don't think this is a particularly compelling argument (see how Apple floundered for years without Jobs until he came back), but that's the argument.



(As I understand it Bill Gates did write a lot of the early DOS code)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 11, 2022, 12:05:13 PM
Gates bight the DOS operating system iirc for 50k

Best purchase ever - and he was lucky enough to have a dad who could front the cash.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 11, 2022, 12:08:17 PM
Musk is obviously very successful and very very rich. The proof of that pudding is in the eating, as it were. As MM says, though, even very successful, very very rich people sometimes make mistakes. IMO those mistakes are pretty fascinating, if for no other reason than the scale on which they take place.

Personally, I'll usually refrain from advancing any serious theories on the reasoning or x-dimensional chess aspects of, say, the proposed Twitter buy out. I may speculate, but I know that I don't really know shit about those things. I'm still interested in other folks' best guesses, though,  because it's both fascinating and has the potential to have real impact on how things unfold. (Elon at the helm of Twitter is going to be different than Twitter without him, I'm very certain). And for entertainment value, I'm also interested in folks hot-takes because frankly, if we can't take the piss out of the world's richest man potentially impacting the political and social media landscape, who can we?

Independently of all that - Musk's wealth, his success, the details and logic of his business moves, it is possible to judge whether he is a douche... or at least whether his public persona is a douche. And between his Thai cave submarine shenanigans, his statements on child-rearing, his contributions to the discourse around politics, and his general Twitter carrying on the conclusion is pretty clear IMO.

That said, if the reports are correct then I do give him a lot of credit for deploying Starlink to support Ukraine (esp. if the costs came out of his pocket as opposed to being picked up by the US or Ukraine). And if Musk's Mars colony saves the human species from extinction somehow, then the douchyness will fade into irrelevance also.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 11, 2022, 12:08:50 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on July 11, 2022, 11:09:38 AM
Quote from: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 09:53:09 AMYeah, only Elon could possibly look at Elon and come to any conclusion other then "OMG HE IS SO DUMB!"

You know that all of this is the exact same song sung about Gates back when he was the tech asshole de jure, right?

It's not impossible for a smart, successful businessman to make big mistakes.  In fact, it happens all the time.



It is also not impossible for successful business people to not be smart but just lucky that they were in the right place at the right time.  Lots of very smart business people have business ventures that fail.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on July 11, 2022, 12:11:01 PM
Musk is one of the great entrepreneurs of our time; perhaps the greatest of the century so far.  He has achieved extraordinary success in industries where many before him failed badly and which have very significant social impact as well.

But he is also erratic and self-absorbed.  And when big men with big ideas make mistakes, they tend to make big mistakes.

If business geniuses never made big mistakes, I'd be out of work, or at least have a lot less of it.  Fortunately, they make big mistakes quite a lot, and thus keep me and thousands like me gainfully employed.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 11, 2022, 12:11:30 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 11, 2022, 12:05:13 PMGates bight the DOS operating system iirc for 50k

Best purchase ever - and he was lucky enough to have a dad who could front the cash.

Gates success, as I understand it, was built on smart business practices. Getting DOS packaged with IBM computers, and the series of acquisition and development decisions that put Microsoft into a near monopoly position during a technological revolution.

I can't really fault him for that. Nor can I really fault Jobs nor Elon for their successful business practices. It's the way of the world, and they did well at it.

EDIT: but I'll still enjoy people taking the piss out of all three of them, and Bezos too for that matter. I'm sure they'll be okay.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 11, 2022, 12:11:54 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 11, 2022, 12:08:17 PMMusk is obviously very successful and very very rich. The proof of that pudding is in the eating, as it were. As MM says, though, even very successful, very very rich people sometimes make mistakes. IMO those mistakes are pretty fascinating, if for no other reason than the scale on which they take place.

Personally, I'll usually refrain from advancing any serious theories on the reasoning or x-dimensional chess aspects of, say, the proposed Twitter buy out. I may speculate, but I know that I don't really know shit about those things. I'm still interested in other folks' best guesses, though,  because it's both fascinating and has the potential to have real impact on how things unfold. (Elon at the helm of Twitter is going to be different than Twitter without him, I'm very certain). And for entertainment value, I'm also interested in folks hot-takes because frankly, if we can't take the piss out of the world's richest man potentially impacting the political and social media landscape, who can we?

Independently of all that - Musk's wealth, his success, the details and logic of his business moves, it is possible to judge whether he is a douche... or at least whether his public persona is a douche. And between his Thai cave submarine shenanigans, his statements on child-rearing, his contributions to the discourse around politics, and his general Twitter carrying on the conclusion is pretty clear IMO.

That said, if the reports are correct then I do give him a lot of credit for deploying Starlink to support Ukraine (esp. if the costs came out of his pocket as opposed to being picked up by the US or Ukraine). And if Musk's Mars colony saves the human species from extinction somehow, then the douchyness will fade into irrelevance also.

If A Mars colony becomes necessary then one wonders whether the billions spent on that would have been better spent keeping the world below 1.5C of warming.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on July 11, 2022, 12:13:50 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 11, 2022, 12:11:54 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 11, 2022, 12:08:17 PMMusk is obviously very successful and very very rich. The proof of that pudding is in the eating, as it were. As MM says, though, even very successful, very very rich people sometimes make mistakes. IMO those mistakes are pretty fascinating, if for no other reason than the scale on which they take place.

Personally, I'll usually refrain from advancing any serious theories on the reasoning or x-dimensional chess aspects of, say, the proposed Twitter buy out. I may speculate, but I know that I don't really know shit about those things. I'm still interested in other folks' best guesses, though,  because it's both fascinating and has the potential to have real impact on how things unfold. (Elon at the helm of Twitter is going to be different than Twitter without him, I'm very certain). And for entertainment value, I'm also interested in folks hot-takes because frankly, if we can't take the piss out of the world's richest man potentially impacting the political and social media landscape, who can we?

Independently of all that - Musk's wealth, his success, the details and logic of his business moves, it is possible to judge whether he is a douche... or at least whether his public persona is a douche. And between his Thai cave submarine shenanigans, his statements on child-rearing, his contributions to the discourse around politics, and his general Twitter carrying on the conclusion is pretty clear IMO.

That said, if the reports are correct then I do give him a lot of credit for deploying Starlink to support Ukraine (esp. if the costs came out of his pocket as opposed to being picked up by the US or Ukraine). And if Musk's Mars colony saves the human species from extinction somehow, then the douchyness will fade into irrelevance also.

If A Mars colony becomes necessary then one wonders whether the billions spent on that would have been better spent keeping the world below 1.5C of warming.

:lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on July 11, 2022, 12:14:35 PM
Again in the example of very bright and successful people almost making huge mistakes...

Steve Jobs was mostly successful in business, but he also cost himself his life by delaying treatment for his otherwise very treatable pancreatic cancer until it was too late and it ultimately killed him.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on July 11, 2022, 12:23:08 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 11, 2022, 12:05:13 PMGates bight the DOS operating system iirc for 50k

Best purchase ever - and he was lucky enough to have a dad who could front the cash.

:lol:

Just a friendly suggestion CC - google before posting.  :hug:

Bill Gates famously SOLD DOS for $50k to IBM.

DOS was largely copied from another OS - CP/M (the extent of which is debatable).  Now in the interests of fairness Bill Gates did purchase the rights to QDOS (later renamed 86-DOS), which was what was copied from CP/M, for $25k.

But nevertheless to my original point - while it wasn't DOS that Bill Gates was involved in writing (my bad), Gates did primarily write the original BASIC interpreter.  Which went to my side point that unlike Musk of Jobs, Gates was actually an inventor of stuff.

I have no idea if Gates's dad fronted the money to buy 86-DOS or not.  It's certainly possible, but also by then Microsoft had been a going concern for several years so they might also have been able to front the money themselves.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 12:34:02 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on July 11, 2022, 12:11:01 PMMusk is one of the great entrepreneurs of our time; perhaps the greatest of the century so far.  He has achieved extraordinary success in industries where many before him failed badly and which have very significant social impact as well.

But he is also erratic and self-absorbed.  And when big men with big ideas make mistakes, they tend to make big mistakes.

If business geniuses never made big mistakes, I'd be out of work, or at least have a lot less of it.  Fortunately, they make big mistakes quite a lot, and thus keep me and thousands like me gainfully employed.
No argument from me.

And no argument from me that the guy is pretty much an asshole. I would not want to work for him. But I wouldn't have wanted to work for Microsoft either, and I suspect I am considerably less wealthy then I would be had I went to work for Microsoft.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 12:35:56 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 11, 2022, 12:11:54 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 11, 2022, 12:08:17 PMMusk is obviously very successful and very very rich. The proof of that pudding is in the eating, as it were. As MM says, though, even very successful, very very rich people sometimes make mistakes. IMO those mistakes are pretty fascinating, if for no other reason than the scale on which they take place.

Personally, I'll usually refrain from advancing any serious theories on the reasoning or x-dimensional chess aspects of, say, the proposed Twitter buy out. I may speculate, but I know that I don't really know shit about those things. I'm still interested in other folks' best guesses, though,  because it's both fascinating and has the potential to have real impact on how things unfold. (Elon at the helm of Twitter is going to be different than Twitter without him, I'm very certain). And for entertainment value, I'm also interested in folks hot-takes because frankly, if we can't take the piss out of the world's richest man potentially impacting the political and social media landscape, who can we?

Independently of all that - Musk's wealth, his success, the details and logic of his business moves, it is possible to judge whether he is a douche... or at least whether his public persona is a douche. And between his Thai cave submarine shenanigans, his statements on child-rearing, his contributions to the discourse around politics, and his general Twitter carrying on the conclusion is pretty clear IMO.

That said, if the reports are correct then I do give him a lot of credit for deploying Starlink to support Ukraine (esp. if the costs came out of his pocket as opposed to being picked up by the US or Ukraine). And if Musk's Mars colony saves the human species from extinction somehow, then the douchyness will fade into irrelevance also.

If A Mars colony becomes necessary then one wonders whether the billions spent on that would have been better spent keeping the world below 1.5C of warming.
That is a really, really interesting question. And one that I am not sure I know the answer to, honestly.

I suspect the answer is that we can and should spend a lot of money trying to put a colony on Mars, and we should spend however much money is necessary to avoid that becoming the only hope for humanity, which is a couple orders of magnitude more (probably).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 11, 2022, 12:36:56 PM

He is smart.  Certainly a businessman.  His success though, a lot of it comes from hype.

Yes, he did delivered electric vehicles, he was the first.  They are overpriced for their category, but it's allright, people want them.  And they're generally better for the environment than a combustion engine, even though we have problems with the batteries.

SpaceX was created with the promise of drilling asteroids for minerals.  So far, it  has put satellites in orbit and his creating risk for future space navigation by crowding the higher atmosphere of various clutter and objects.  And he's not a team player, refusing any attempt at discussion with NASA toward solving this.

There were many, many accidents with SpaceX, which might have been excusable if he were the first, but he wasn't.  We've been launching rockets since the 50s.  He's just trying to do his own thing insisting he knows better than everyone else.  Just because he's smart does not mean everyone else is dumb.

Now, SpaceX.  It's still not close to drilling asteroid and he's promising to send people to Mars.  It is still hype.  Pumping stock with hype.

Doesn't mean he isn't a genius.  He is.  But he can be an asshole too. And lot of other things too.  His Twitter bid was just one more example of his dickish behavior.  He never wanted to seriously buy Twitter to preserve freedom of expression on the platform.  FFS, I don't think he even cares about wether Trump is there or not.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on July 11, 2022, 12:46:59 PM
Quote from: viper37 on July 11, 2022, 12:36:56 PMSpaceX was created with the promise of drilling asteroids for minerals.  So far, it  has put satellites in orbit and his creating risk for future space navigation by crowding the higher atmosphere of various clutter and objects.  And he's not a team player, refusing any attempt at discussion with NASA toward solving this.

There were many, many accidents with SpaceX, which might have been excusable if he were the first, but he wasn't.  We've been launching rockets since the 50s.  He's just trying to do his own thing insisting he knows better than everyone else.  Just because he's smart does not mean everyone else is dumb.

Now, SpaceX.  It's still not close to drilling asteroid and he's promising to send people to Mars.  It is still hype.  Pumping stock with hype.

Doesn't mean he isn't a genius.  He is.  But he can be an asshole too. And lot of other things too.  His Twitter bid was just one more example of his dickish behavior.  He never wanted to seriously buy Twitter to preserve freedom of expression on the platform.  FFS, I don't think he even cares about wether Trump is there or not.

Where to begin...

I've never heard that SpaceX started by promising to mine asteroids.  Googling suggests no such thing.  Pretty much from the beginning it was just about cutting the cost of orbital launches.

Many, many accidents... the first three Falcon 1 rockets blew up on launch.  Not sure that counts as "many, many".  Also not sure that's all that out of the ordinary.  The other option is to pull a Blue Origin and just not launch anything at all for years.

'his own thing insisting it's better' - SpaceX has done something revolutionary in rocket launches - making re-usable rockets.  It really is better than anyone else in the sector.  It really has dramatically cut the cost of reaching orbit.  This is not just hype.  (not that Musk doesn't do a lot of hyping - just that in this area he's matched the hype)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on July 11, 2022, 12:56:17 PM
Quote from: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 12:35:56 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 11, 2022, 12:11:54 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 11, 2022, 12:08:17 PMMusk is obviously very successful and very very rich. The proof of that pudding is in the eating, as it were. As MM says, though, even very successful, very very rich people sometimes make mistakes. IMO those mistakes are pretty fascinating, if for no other reason than the scale on which they take place.

Personally, I'll usually refrain from advancing any serious theories on the reasoning or x-dimensional chess aspects of, say, the proposed Twitter buy out. I may speculate, but I know that I don't really know shit about those things. I'm still interested in other folks' best guesses, though,  because it's both fascinating and has the potential to have real impact on how things unfold. (Elon at the helm of Twitter is going to be different than Twitter without him, I'm very certain). And for entertainment value, I'm also interested in folks hot-takes because frankly, if we can't take the piss out of the world's richest man potentially impacting the political and social media landscape, who can we?

Independently of all that - Musk's wealth, his success, the details and logic of his business moves, it is possible to judge whether he is a douche... or at least whether his public persona is a douche. And between his Thai cave submarine shenanigans, his statements on child-rearing, his contributions to the discourse around politics, and his general Twitter carrying on the conclusion is pretty clear IMO.

That said, if the reports are correct then I do give him a lot of credit for deploying Starlink to support Ukraine (esp. if the costs came out of his pocket as opposed to being picked up by the US or Ukraine). And if Musk's Mars colony saves the human species from extinction somehow, then the douchyness will fade into irrelevance also.

If A Mars colony becomes necessary then one wonders whether the billions spent on that would have been better spent keeping the world below 1.5C of warming.
That is a really, really interesting question. And one that I am not sure I know the answer to, honestly.

I suspect the answer is that we can and should spend a lot of money trying to put a colony on Mars, and we should spend however much money is necessary to avoid that becoming the only hope for humanity, which is a couple orders of magnitude more (probably).

Global warming is extremely unlikely to lead to the end of human population on Earth, so picking out that one as the standard to compare Mars colonization to when discussing a situation where the Mars colony saves humanity from extinction doesn't make much sense. For starters.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 11, 2022, 01:10:46 PM
Quote from: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 09:30:36 AMYes, he is clearly making error after error.

Well that is what twitter does. It eventually rots your brain and makes you spend a billion dollars not buying it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 11, 2022, 01:16:05 PM
Quote from: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 12:35:56 PMI suspect the answer is that we can and should spend a lot of money trying to put a colony on Mars, and we should spend however much money is necessary to avoid that becoming the only hope for humanity, which is a couple orders of magnitude more (probably).

It always seemed like it would be cheaper and easier to colonize the bottom of the oceans or Antarctica first. By which to say it would be ungodly expensive and almost impossible to successfully colonize those areas on a permanent basis but still orders of magnitude easier than colonizing Mars. Already I think the short term inhabitants in Antarctica demonstrate many of the mental strains of living in such a hostile environment.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 01:19:42 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 11, 2022, 01:16:05 PM
Quote from: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 12:35:56 PMI suspect the answer is that we can and should spend a lot of money trying to put a colony on Mars, and we should spend however much money is necessary to avoid that becoming the only hope for humanity, which is a couple orders of magnitude more (probably).

It always seemed like it would be cheaper and easier to colonize the bottom of the oceans or Antarctica first. By which to say it would be ungodly expensive and almost impossible to successfully colonize those areas on a permanent basis but still orders of magnitude easier than colonizing Mars. Already I think the short term inhabitants in Antarctica demonstrate many of the mental strains of living in such a hostile environment.

This is an interesting discussion, but well outside the relevance of Elon Musk's douchiness.

The point of colonizing Mars is not really about just colonizing Mars, and that is true in a way that colonizing the bottom of the ocean does not meet. 

It's like saying it would be easier to go to some inhospitable place on the Earth then it is going to the Moon. That is almost certainly true, but isn't really the point of going to the Moon.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on July 11, 2022, 02:21:21 PM
The colonising Mars stuff is a good point about Musk.

His absolute cuntishness derives from elsewhere.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on July 11, 2022, 02:24:49 PM
It feels like it'd be weirdly fitting if Twitter was owned by someone who doesn't want it and was literally forced to buy it :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 11, 2022, 02:30:07 PM
Quote from: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 01:19:42 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 11, 2022, 01:16:05 PM
Quote from: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 12:35:56 PMI suspect the answer is that we can and should spend a lot of money trying to put a colony on Mars, and we should spend however much money is necessary to avoid that becoming the only hope for humanity, which is a couple orders of magnitude more (probably).

It always seemed like it would be cheaper and easier to colonize the bottom of the oceans or Antarctica first. By which to say it would be ungodly expensive and almost impossible to successfully colonize those areas on a permanent basis but still orders of magnitude easier than colonizing Mars. Already I think the short term inhabitants in Antarctica demonstrate many of the mental strains of living in such a hostile environment.

This is an interesting discussion, but well outside the relevance of Elon Musk's douchiness.

The point of colonizing Mars is not really about just colonizing Mars, and that is true in a way that colonizing the bottom of the ocean does not meet.

It's like saying it would be easier to go to some inhospitable place on the Earth then it is going to the Moon. That is almost certainly true, but isn't really the point of going to the Moon.

Well what more is there to say about Elon Musk and his cringey social media adventures?

I think you are missing my point. I do think we should colonize mars and other planets and moons in the solar system. But in order to do that we need to successfully colonize unhospitable places on Earth first in order to experiment with and understand all the problems with doing it first particularly the social and mental impact on humans living in such places. If we can successfully do that in a permanent sustainable way, that would be a significant step in colonizing in other more inhospitable places. We did explore the bottom of the oceans and the north and south poles before going to the Moon, after all.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 02:43:44 PM
I don't know. 

I mean, lets say we spent some hundreds of billions to colonize the bottom of the deep ocean. OK. I guess.

Would we learn enough from that that applies to how to get to and colonize Mars to make it useful in the effort to colonize Mars?

I am sure we would learn a lot, but how applicable would it be?

And without some kind of actual payoff, who would fund it and support it?

Once we did that, could someone then just say "Hey, it would be easier to colonize the center of an active volcano then Mars! We should do THAT first, you know, just because!"

It seems like a diversion more then anything else.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on July 11, 2022, 02:54:54 PM
Human populations have lived isolated (in some ways much more isolated than a colony on Mars would be) and under considerable stress many times through history. I think we have a decent idea how humans function under those conditions. FWIW I think the main challenge of Mars is surviving and making a living in the physical environment of Mars, not mental or social stuff.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 03:12:21 PM
I suspect that there is a laundry list of things we don't know we don't know about any kind of effort like this.

But I don't get the basic idea that a colony on Mars is somehow harder to mentally deal with then a colony on Antartica, at least not fundamentally.

I mean, humans have managed to survive some pretty extreme situations for really long times. Hell, just managing to survive an 18th century sailing ship for a year, for example. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on July 11, 2022, 04:03:09 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 11, 2022, 02:30:07 PM
Quote from: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 01:19:42 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 11, 2022, 01:16:05 PM
Quote from: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 12:35:56 PMI suspect the answer is that we can and should spend a lot of money trying to put a colony on Mars, and we should spend however much money is necessary to avoid that becoming the only hope for humanity, which is a couple orders of magnitude more (probably).

It always seemed like it would be cheaper and easier to colonize the bottom of the oceans or Antarctica first. By which to say it would be ungodly expensive and almost impossible to successfully colonize those areas on a permanent basis but still orders of magnitude easier than colonizing Mars. Already I think the short term inhabitants in Antarctica demonstrate many of the mental strains of living in such a hostile environment.

This is an interesting discussion, but well outside the relevance of Elon Musk's douchiness.

The point of colonizing Mars is not really about just colonizing Mars, and that is true in a way that colonizing the bottom of the ocean does not meet.

It's like saying it would be easier to go to some inhospitable place on the Earth then it is going to the Moon. That is almost certainly true, but isn't really the point of going to the Moon.

Well what more is there to say about Elon Musk and his cringey social media adventures?

I think you are missing my point. I do think we should colonize mars and other planets and moons in the solar system. But in order to do that we need to successfully colonize unhospitable places on Earth first in order to experiment with and understand all the problems with doing it first particularly the social and mental impact on humans living in such places. If we can successfully do that in a permanent sustainable way, that would be a significant step in colonizing in other more inhospitable places. We did explore the bottom of the oceans and the north and south poles before going to the Moon, after all.

We have loads of examples of setting up space colonies on earth though. Antarctic bases have been a thing since forever then there's experiments like biosphere and a bunch of less flashy experiments by NASA and the like playing space colony for a year.

I do think we're pretty good with the social and mental issues and its pretty easy to set up experiments to try new slants on them.

Its the practicalities of stuff that just isn't relevant on earth that are the key problems, like actually getting to Mars, radiation, and dealing with low pressure, low oxygen environments.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 11, 2022, 06:45:53 PM
Well the bottom of the ocean is a high pressure, low oxygen environment.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on July 11, 2022, 08:02:00 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 11, 2022, 06:45:53 PMWell the bottom of the ocean is a high pressure, low oxygen environment.
So not the same at all for Mars. More a cold Venus.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 11, 2022, 08:58:24 PM
Quote from: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 03:12:21 PMBut I don't get the basic idea that a colony on Mars is somehow harder to mentally deal with then a colony on Antartica, at least not fundamentally.
If something goes wrong on Mars, you are dead.  No matter what, you are dead, because there is likely no rescue attempt possible.

And that will lead to panic among the colonists.

In Antartica, there could still be the remote possibility or repairing communications and calling for help. Or having equipment to trek to another base to get help.

And in Antartica, it is scientists and military personel we have there, not general civilians like what is proposed for Mars.

So yeah, the first ones will be dead, like the first European colonies in America were, for the most part.

But I guess we have to start somewhere.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on July 11, 2022, 09:30:31 PM
Plus with a weak magnetosphere mars colonists will either be mole people (making colonizing much harder) or cancerous lumps within a few generations.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on July 11, 2022, 11:35:44 PM
I'm sure the bubble will be shielded.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on July 12, 2022, 07:02:27 AM
Most we'll get on Mars probably for centuries will be a research station. Of course it'll be called a colony but it won't really be.

But that still will be amazing. And the real point of why we need a space renaissance is resource exploitation and industrialisation of our more immediate surroundings. We need asteroid mining and we also need to figure out how to effectively move industries to Earth orbit.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on July 12, 2022, 07:54:57 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 12, 2022, 07:02:27 AMMost we'll get on Mars probably for centuries will be a research station. Of course it'll be called a colony but it won't really be.

But that still will be amazing. And the real point of why we need a space renaissance is resource exploitation and industrialisation of our more immediate surroundings. We need asteroid mining and we also need to figure out how to effectively move industries to Earth orbit.

Yeah, way too many people fall into the error of applying historic thinking to the future.
Colonising Mars will be nothing like the colonisation of the Americas. We won't be shipping over bodies just to work. It'll be a premium ticket reserved for the best of the best.

I can see the next few hundred years, all being well, developing a massive human presence in space... But this won't mean many people living their whole lives up there.
Mars is a bit iffier but when it comes to say moon colonies I'd expect having kids there would be actually illegal due to the sheer cruelty of it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 12, 2022, 10:40:43 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 12, 2022, 07:02:27 AMMost we'll get on Mars probably for centuries will be a research station. Of course it'll be called a colony but it won't really be.

But that still will be amazing. And the real point of why we need a space renaissance is resource exploitation and industrialisation of our more immediate surroundings. We need asteroid mining and we also need to figure out how to effectively move industries to Earth orbit.

What are the resources we are short of that it makes sense in terms of cost and practicality of exploiting?

And what are the benefits of putting industry in orbit? I mean, it's good for making colonies more self-sustaining, and for building space vessels since we don't have expend fuel to escape earth's gravity well. Are there other benefits?

I ask because I genuinely have very little grounding in this area.

I have only the vaguest idea about these things, so my questions are
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on July 12, 2022, 10:51:00 AM
Quote from: viper37 on July 11, 2022, 08:58:24 PM
Quote from: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 03:12:21 PMBut I don't get the basic idea that a colony on Mars is somehow harder to mentally deal with then a colony on Antartica, at least not fundamentally.
If something goes wrong on Mars, you are dead.  No matter what, you are dead, because there is likely no rescue attempt possible.

You likely take steps to reduce the number of single point failures. And in the early most dangerous phases the colony will be able to ask any question about engineering, medicine, agriculture, or whatever, and get the best advice money can buy within a few hours.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 12, 2022, 11:16:00 AM
Quote from: viper37 on July 11, 2022, 08:58:24 PM
Quote from: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 03:12:21 PMBut I don't get the basic idea that a colony on Mars is somehow harder to mentally deal with then a colony on Antartica, at least not fundamentally.
If something goes wrong on Mars, you are dead.  No matter what, you are dead, because there is likely no rescue attempt possible.

And that will lead to panic among the colonists.

In Antartica, there could still be the remote possibility or repairing communications and calling for help. Or having equipment to trek to another base to get help.

And in Antartica, it is scientists and military personel we have there, not general civilians like what is proposed for Mars.

So yeah, the first ones will be dead, like the first European colonies in America were, for the most part.

But I guess we have to start somewhere.

Yeah but a bad start would be counter-productive. We shouldn't do it without doing everything conceivable to ensure success.

If going to Mars is understood to be a death sentence we will quickly run out of volunteers.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on July 12, 2022, 11:26:25 AM
Jesus, wtf.

Nobody is selling a trip to Mars as a death sentence, and the people we send are not going to "panic" the moment something goes wrong because they know nobody will come rescue them.

There are literally hundreds of scenarios where people are in situation where rescue is not possible, and something goes wrong. Sometimes they are able to figure out a solution, and sometimes not. But the idea that the reality that something might go wrong somehow invalidates the possibility of the effort is just bullshit.

Nobody could rescue the Apollo 13 guys, and they didn't all promptly go mad.

And the statement "If something goes wrong on Mars, you are dead. " is just simply and clearly totally fucking not true.

Things will definitely go wrong. Lots of them probably. Things go wrong all the damn time. Sometimes that results in people ending up dead, most of the time it is dealt with because we have really smart engineers and capable human beings who are trained to deal with the unexpected.

A trip to Mars is not fundamentally any different then a trip to the Moon, just a lot longer and more complicated, with a lot more that can go wrong. But a trip to the Moon was not any different then a trip into orbit- just a lot longer and more complicated, with a lot more that can go wrong.

This pessimism is just bizarre. 

There are good arguments to be made that we should not be going to Mars at all. But the idea that human lack the mental capacity to handle the risk is simply not one of them.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on July 12, 2022, 12:03:51 PM
Matt Damon showed us it could be done.

(https://c.tenor.com/cXl1f25K5HgAAAAC/the-martian-matt-damon.gif)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on July 12, 2022, 12:08:08 PM
And man conquered mars by pooping on potatoes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on July 12, 2022, 12:14:57 PM
Quote from: HVC on July 12, 2022, 12:08:08 PMAnd man conquered mars by pooping on potatoes.

If that's what it takes to conquer Mars...  :ph34r:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 12, 2022, 12:46:34 PM
Quote from: Barrister on July 11, 2022, 12:23:08 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 11, 2022, 12:05:13 PMGates bight the DOS operating system iirc for 50k

Best purchase ever - and he was lucky enough to have a dad who could front the cash.

:lol:

Just a friendly suggestion CC - google before posting.  :hug:

Bill Gates famously SOLD DOS for $50k to IBM.



BB, you might want to check your google skills.  Thankfully I actually remember this happening - there was a report about it in a documentary that was made sometime in the 90s.

So I went to the google machine, as you suggested, and found an article that set it out in fairly easy to understand language for you.

QuoteIn July 1981 Microsoft bought all rights to 86-DOSOffsite Link, otherwise known as QDOS, for Quick and Dirty Operating System, from Seattle Computer ProductsOffsite Link for $50,000 or $75,000, depending on how the cost is calculated. They renamed it MS-DOS.

https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=99

Microsoft did not sell MS-DOS to IBM, they sold a license to use it as the operating system - and Microsoft was off to the races.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 12, 2022, 03:01:53 PM
Quote from: Berkut on July 12, 2022, 11:26:25 AMBut the idea that human lack the mental capacity to handle the risk is simply not one of them.
I have lost a lot of faith in the human race in the last few years. ;)

Here's one text about it:
https://clapway.com/2016/03/25/first-humans-on-mars-will-die-quickly/

And here's another one:
https://thenextweb.com/news/good-luck-on-mars-die-horrific-death

And one more from the Man himself:
https://www.space.com/elon-musk-mars-spacex-risks-astronauts-die
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 12, 2022, 03:37:53 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 12, 2022, 11:16:00 AMYeah but a bad start would be counter-productive. We shouldn't do it without doing everything conceivable to ensure success.

If going to Mars is understood to be a death sentence we will quickly run out of volunteers.
Yeah. well, colonization in Canada was slightly delayed after everyone died of horrible diseases, cold exposure and conflict with local Indians.  It nearly took a century after Cartier and even with Champlain, it was touch & go for a while.  Serious colonization effort didn't really began until around 1660-1663, 130 years after Cartier first establish a colony and trading posts, over 50 years after Champlain founded Quebec.

I'm out of touch with my Spanish and British colonization history, but IIRC, it was a rocky start over there too?

Colonizing a planet like Mars will be made extra difficult by the fact that you can't live anywhere outside of a domed city.  And we have no idea what kind of resources are there.  North America was worth it for the furs and the fisheries.  South America was worth it for the gold.  

I believe we will need some more unmanned exploration of Mars to determine its real worth before we send people there.

Oh well. If Elon pays for it, if people and their families are ok with dying, it really is their choice.  So long as it's not up to a government or governments to bail them out...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on July 12, 2022, 03:42:40 PM
What's the legal situation today regarding Mars? There's a LOT of real estate up for grabs.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on July 12, 2022, 03:49:57 PM
Quote from: The Brain on July 12, 2022, 03:42:40 PMWhat's the legal situation today regarding Mars? There's a LOT of real estate up for grabs.

Covered by the Outer Space Treaty, which states the moon and other celestial bodies is free for the use of all people.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on July 12, 2022, 03:53:02 PM
Quote from: Barrister on July 12, 2022, 03:49:57 PM
Quote from: The Brain on July 12, 2022, 03:42:40 PMWhat's the legal situation today regarding Mars? There's a LOT of real estate up for grabs.

Covered by the Outer Space Treaty, which states the moon and other celestial bodies is free for the use of all people.

Which a state set up on Mars may or may not choose to sign.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 12, 2022, 04:11:39 PM
Quote from: viper37 on July 12, 2022, 03:37:53 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 12, 2022, 11:16:00 AMYeah but a bad start would be counter-productive. We shouldn't do it without doing everything conceivable to ensure success.

If going to Mars is understood to be a death sentence we will quickly run out of volunteers.
Yeah. well, colonization in Canada was slightly delayed after everyone died of horrible diseases, cold exposure and conflict with local Indians.  It nearly took a century after Cartier and even with Champlain, it was touch & go for a while.  Serious colonization effort didn't really began until around 1660-1663, 130 years after Cartier first establish a colony and trading posts, over 50 years after Champlain founded Quebec.

I'm out of touch with my Spanish and British colonization history, but IIRC, it was a rocky start over there too?

Sure people died but lots of money opportunities in tobacco planting and bloody civil war back in Blighty made for a pretty fast start all things considered.

But I might add their deaths were not streamed and tweeted about to the people back home.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on July 12, 2022, 04:11:57 PM
With a private actor looking not unlikely to lead the first settlement of Mars, and that private actor being Elon Musk, a sovereign state being quickly declared on Mars (probably called &]/%/&R&/&%¤) seems a lot more likely now than it used to.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 12, 2022, 04:37:43 PM
Quote from: The Brain on July 12, 2022, 04:11:57 PMWith a private actor looking not unlikely to lead the first settlement of Mars, and that private actor being Elon Musk, a sovereign state being quickly declared on Mars (probably called &]/%/&R&/&%¤) seems a lot more likely now than it used to.

The whole "declare a sovereign state" thing may not be as simple as it used to be. I mean, we have these alleged micro-nations here and there, but no one consider them real I don't think. If Musk declares himself the Sovereign of &]/%/&R&/&%¤ but the rest of the world (especially the US), then what?

&]/%/&R&/&%¤ is probably not going to be self-sustaining for quite a while and so will be very very vulnerable to embargoes and sanctions. Much of Musk's wealth and influence is bound up in the US financial system. If he declares himself the ruler of &]/%/&R&/&%¤, what's to stop the US from saying "we do not recognize this alleged 'state' and we are freezing Musk's assets until he complies with US law".

I think a precondition for declaring independence is the ability to be self-sustaining, and it may be a bit optimistic to predict that happening in Musk's lifetime.

I mean, how long until we land people on Mars for a first visit? 10 years, optimisitcally? And then from that first visit, to building a base that can sustain a continued presence? And then from there to self-sustaining? I'd expect it to take a while.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 12, 2022, 05:33:04 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 12, 2022, 04:37:43 PMThe whole "declare a sovereign state" thing may not be as simple as it used to be. I mean, we have these alleged micro-nations here and there, but no one consider them real I don't think. If Musk declares himself the Sovereign of &]/%/&R&/&%¤ but the rest of the world (especially the US), then what?

&]/%/&R&/&%¤ is probably not going to be self-sustaining for quite a while and so will be very very vulnerable to embargoes and sanctions. Much of Musk's wealth and influence is bound up in the US financial system. If he declares himself the ruler of &]/%/&R&/&%¤, what's to stop the US from saying "we do not recognize this alleged 'state' and we are freezing Musk's assets until he complies with US law".

I think a precondition for declaring independence is the ability to be self-sustaining, and it may be a bit optimistic to predict that happening in Musk's lifetime.

I mean, how long until we land people on Mars for a first visit? 10 years, optimisitcally? And then from that first visit, to building a base that can sustain a continued presence? And then from there to self-sustaining? I'd expect it to take a while.
If history serves us as a lesson:
These colonies will serve specific private interests and than be taken over or bailed out by the government of these investors.

The idea of micro nations was to use them as tax shelter by billionaire libertarians.  They could declare their place of residency to be some tiny island/platform, actually live there for a few weeks/months per year, avoid paying taxes in their country while still keeping real estate in real countries.  In the end, Monaco and Liechtenstein proved more successful and generally more secure at this type of business. ;)

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 12, 2022, 05:41:10 PM
I have some great crater side property to sell everyone who thinks Mars colonization is viable.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on July 12, 2022, 06:07:23 PM
Europa would be a cooler Sci fi destination anyway. Plus you save on the weight of not having to transport water.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on July 12, 2022, 06:13:33 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 12, 2022, 04:37:43 PM
Quote from: The Brain on July 12, 2022, 04:11:57 PMWith a private actor looking not unlikely to lead the first settlement of Mars, and that private actor being Elon Musk, a sovereign state being quickly declared on Mars (probably called &]/%/&R&/&%¤) seems a lot more likely now than it used to.

The whole "declare a sovereign state" thing may not be as simple as it used to be. I mean, we have these alleged micro-nations here and there, but no one consider them real I don't think. If Musk declares himself the Sovereign of &]/%/&R&/&%¤ but the rest of the world (especially the US), then what?

&]/%/&R&/&%¤ is probably not going to be self-sustaining for quite a while and so will be very very vulnerable to embargoes and sanctions. Much of Musk's wealth and influence is bound up in the US financial system. If he declares himself the ruler of &]/%/&R&/&%¤, what's to stop the US from saying "we do not recognize this alleged 'state' and we are freezing Musk's assets until he complies with US law".

I think a precondition for declaring independence is the ability to be self-sustaining, and it may be a bit optimistic to predict that happening in Musk's lifetime.

I mean, how long until we land people on Mars for a first visit? 10 years, optimisitcally? And then from that first visit, to building a base that can sustain a continued presence? And then from there to self-sustaining? I'd expect it to take a while.

1. It's Elon Musk. Doing it for the lols is certainly within the realm of possibility. Or as a high risk, extremely high long-term legacy reward policy.

2. The Outer Space Treaty is largely a feelgood document designed to reduce tension and costs during CW1. If space actually gets colonized reality will likely make itself felt. Wiki gives me the impression that for instance private space mining is already getting legalized by countries like the US.

3. Possession is nine tenths of the law. If there's a state on Mars, who's to take it away? In addition to practical difficulties, if the Outer Space Treaty isn't eroded or made void the US can't legally use military force on Mars.

4. Freezing assets appears somewhat draconian. It's not like he's murdered someone. But I don't know how the treaty has been implemented in US law.

5. Who knows what weird nutjob will be in the White House at the relevant point in time?

6. There may be certain countries who are happy to get influence on Mars by supplying the state if the US says "pass". I don't see independence requiring being self-sustaining. And pushing Mars into a Chinese or Russian orbit might not be considered to be in US interests.

7. Public support for starving plucky Martian colonists into submission might be limited.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 12, 2022, 06:19:17 PM
I guess we'll see if it happens.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on July 12, 2022, 06:26:06 PM
QuoteTwitter sues Elon Musk over bid to exit $44bn takeover deal
Company seeks to force completion of sale, saying billionaire 'refuses to honor his obligations'

Twitter sued Elon Musk on Tuesday to force him to complete his $44bn takeover of the social media giant after he announced on Friday he would withdraw his bid.

"Musk's exit strategy is a model of hypocrisy," the lawsuit said, accusing the billionaire of making "bad faith" arguments against Twitter and carrying out "public and misleading attacks" on the company.

The suit has kicked off what could be a long legal saga regarding the failed merger. The Tesla CEO and richest man on Earth had reached a deal to buy Twitter on 25 April, offering to purchase all of the company's shares for $54.20 each, but he began to back out over allegations of "spam" accounts on the platform.

"Musk entered into a binding merger agreement with Twitter, promising to use his best efforts to get the deal done," according to the lawsuit. "Now, less than three months later, Musk refuses to honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests."

Because the deal included a provision called a "specific performance clause", the court could force Musk to buy the company as long as he has financing in place, which he claimed to have secured in May.

Musk could be ordered to pay $1bn for walking away, a penalty he indicated in a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission he is seeking to evade. The SEC could levy additional penalties against Musk, including removing him from leadership of one or more of the several companies he leads, including Neuralink, Tesla, and SpaceX.

The complaint details how Musk offered to buy Twitter at a relatively high price and backed out after a market slump led to a downturn in tech stocks. In order to successfully escape the deal without penalty, Musk would have to prove "material adverse effect" or breach of contract. "Musk had to try to conjure one of those," the lawsuit states.

To do so, Musk began to focus on the "spam bot" issue, the suit alleges. Twitter claimed spam accounts made up less than 5% of more than 200 million users but Musk insisted that the number was higher and accused Twitter of withholding information on the problem. Twitter revealed this month that it was suspending more than 1m spam accounts a day.

Musk declared his takeover bid on 14 April, and Twitter's board agreed after Musk confirmed a funding package for the deal that included $21bn of his own money.

With the deal, Musk stood to take control of a social media network with more than 200 million users. An avid but critical user of the platform, he had vowed to push through various reforms, including relaxing its content restrictions, ridding the platform of fake and automated accounts and shifting away from its advertising-based revenue model.

Musk announced on 13 May that the deal was "on hold" while he awaited details supporting Twitter's assertion on spam or fake accounts. He asserted the figure was 20% and said Twitter would need to show proof of the lower number for the purchase to go through.

Twitter denies this in the strongly worded complaint, saying Musk continued to tweet, falsely, that Twitter had "failed to cooperate" in providing the information "apparently in the belief that repeating a falsehood enough can make it true".

The lawsuit details a number of tweets Musk sent "disparaging" the company, including a tweet directed at the Twitter CEO, Parag Agrawal, that contains a poop emoji and a number of memes.

"For Musk, it would seem, Twitter, the interests of its stockholders, the transaction Musk agreed to, and the court process to enforce it all constitute an elaborate joke," the complaint said.

Musk seemed to respond to the lawsuit on Tuesday afternoon, tweeting: "Oh the irony lol."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 12, 2022, 07:24:23 PM
Yeah, like I said a little while ago, Musk's risk is not jus the 1 Billion penalty. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 12, 2022, 08:00:09 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 12, 2022, 05:41:10 PMI have some great crater side property to sell everyone who thinks Mars colonization is viable.
It ain't right now.  It won't be in 2-3 decades when we can reach it.  It will likely be viable as a research station 75-100 years from now, the way Antartic is "viable".

For long terme colonization to be viable it would depend on what resources we could extract from there and at what costs.  Just like all colonization in history.

To produce on Mars, or in Earth's orbit and then ship it back to Earth, space travel would have to become signficantly easier and faster than now. That means having raw materials that you can transform in space and ship the rest there to manufacture.  Again, clearly not something I see happening in 20-30 years. 

SpaceX first aimed to send people to Mars by 2024. Then 2026.  Now 2029.  NASA has always looked toward the 2030s for its first manned mission to Mars.  The timelines are pretty similar. 

The difference is that Musk plans to have 1 million people living on Mars by 2050 that can sustain themselves.  That is totally unrealistic.
Link (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Mars_program#Mars_settlement_concept)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 12, 2022, 08:31:40 PM
Antarctic research is viable because supply can be flown in.

Not so much on Mars - even if all the other currently unsolvable problems could be solved.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 12, 2022, 08:39:17 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 12, 2022, 08:31:40 PMAntarctic research is viable because supply can be flown in.

Not so much on Mars - even if all the other currently unsolvable problems could be solved.
I would hope that in a century we would have an easier & faster way to send supplies to Mars, obviously.  If our technological progress stalls, it remains no more viable than it is now.

Side note, I remember reading that to render Mars inhabitable (among many other things), we would need to pump CO2, lots of it, into the atmosphere.  If we develop the tech for carbon extraction and capture here on Earth, we will know were to send it. ;)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on July 12, 2022, 09:29:52 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 12, 2022, 08:31:40 PMAntarctic research is viable because supply can be flown in.

Not so much on Mars -

How do you think the people who need it got there?  :huh:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 12, 2022, 09:41:56 PM
Musk has targeted a 1 million person colony on Mars by 2050?

Seems a bit optimistic.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 12, 2022, 11:37:54 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on July 12, 2022, 09:29:52 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 12, 2022, 08:31:40 PMAntarctic research is viable because supply can be flown in.

Not so much on Mars -

How do you think the people who need it got there?  :huh:

Well there are long periods where the Sun is between Mars and Earth and during those periods Mars would be inaccessible. The colony would have to be sustainable during those periods. Communications would even be impossible I believe.

Now maybe winter is like that in Antarctica but my understanding is it hardly ever rains or snows there so even in very cold conditions flying in there wouldn't be that difficult once you engineer for the temperature. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 12, 2022, 11:39:07 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 12, 2022, 09:41:56 PMMusk has targeted a 1 million person colony on Mars by 2050?

Seems a bit optimistic.

A one person colony would be impressive by 2050. Hell one person visiting for five minutes by 2050 would be a nice achievement.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 12, 2022, 11:51:54 PM
In other Musk news, apparently Musk and Trump are on the outs now.

I've seen all sorts of reactions to that, including a bunch of "I don't like Trump, but lol I love his vicious take-down of Musk" ones. For the record, I believe Trump is a direct threat to American democracy and actively malignant. Any distance Musk puts between himself and Trump is to Musk's credit.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on July 13, 2022, 01:07:15 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 12, 2022, 08:31:40 PMAntarctic research is viable because supply can be flown in.

Not so much on Mars - even if all the other currently unsolvable problems could be solved.

We could have sent humans to Mars since the 70s. I'm not sure what unsolvable problems you're referring to.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 13, 2022, 08:54:41 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on July 12, 2022, 09:29:52 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 12, 2022, 08:31:40 PMAntarctic research is viable because supply can be flown in.

Not so much on Mars -

How do you think the people who need it got there?  :huh:

Do little math of how long the trip takes, how much can be carried per trip and how many such trips would be needed on an annual basis.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 13, 2022, 09:23:37 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 13, 2022, 08:54:41 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on July 12, 2022, 09:29:52 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 12, 2022, 08:31:40 PMAntarctic research is viable because supply can be flown in.

Not so much on Mars -

How do you think the people who need it got there?  :huh:

Do little math of how long the trip takes, how much can be carried per trip and how many such trips would be needed on an annual basis.


1000 starships are needed, it takes 115 days on average to travel to Mars and Musk aims for a 500 000$ starting price with the long term goal being 200 000$ per trip, per person.

At this price point, a lot of Republicans could be shipped to Mars and let them build their own religious libertarian dictatorship* ideal colony and see how that works for them.


*it is an apparent contradiction, but only if you think about it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 13, 2022, 09:24:28 AM
Quote from: viper37 on July 13, 2022, 09:23:37 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 13, 2022, 08:54:41 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on July 12, 2022, 09:29:52 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 12, 2022, 08:31:40 PMAntarctic research is viable because supply can be flown in.

Not so much on Mars -

How do you think the people who need it got there?  :huh:

Do little math of how long the trip takes, how much can be carried per trip and how many such trips would be needed on an annual basis.


1000 starships are needed, it takes 115 days on average to travel to Mars and Musk aims for a 500 000$ starting price with the long term goal being 200 000$ per trip, per person.

At this price point, a lot of Republicans could be shipped to Mars and let them build their own religious libertarian dictatorship* ideal colony and see how that works for them.


*it is an apparent contradiction, but only if you think about it.

 :D
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on July 13, 2022, 09:50:13 AM
Quote from: Barrister on July 11, 2022, 12:46:59 PM
Quote from: viper37 on July 11, 2022, 12:36:56 PMSpaceX was created with the promise of drilling asteroids for minerals.  So far, it  has put satellites in orbit and his creating risk for future space navigation by crowding the higher atmosphere of various clutter and objects.  And he's not a team player, refusing any attempt at discussion with NASA toward solving this.

There were many, many accidents with SpaceX, which might have been excusable if he were the first, but he wasn't.  We've been launching rockets since the 50s.  He's just trying to do his own thing insisting he knows better than everyone else.  Just because he's smart does not mean everyone else is dumb.

Now, SpaceX.  It's still not close to drilling asteroid and he's promising to send people to Mars.  It is still hype.  Pumping stock with hype.

Doesn't mean he isn't a genius.  He is.  But he can be an asshole too. And lot of other things too.  His Twitter bid was just one more example of his dickish behavior.  He never wanted to seriously buy Twitter to preserve freedom of expression on the platform.  FFS, I don't think he even cares about wether Trump is there or not.

Where to begin...

I've never heard that SpaceX started by promising to mine asteroids.  Googling suggests no such thing.  Pretty much from the beginning it was just about cutting the cost of orbital launches.

Many, many accidents... the first three Falcon 1 rockets blew up on launch.  Not sure that counts as "many, many".  Also not sure that's all that out of the ordinary.  The other option is to pull a Blue Origin and just not launch anything at all for years.

'his own thing insisting it's better' - SpaceX has done something revolutionary in rocket launches - making re-usable rockets.  It really is better than anyone else in the sector.  It really has dramatically cut the cost of reaching orbit.  This is not just hype.  (not that Musk doesn't do a lot of hyping - just that in this area he's matched the hype)

Yeah, you can criticize SpaceX for a number of things, but losing the first three test launches of the Falcon 1 isn't one of them.  That's just how experimental technology works.  SpaceX has cut the cost/kg to Low Earth Orbit from a bit less than $6,000 for the Atlas or a bit more than $4,000 for the Soyuz to a bit less than $1,000 for the Falcon Heavy.  That's a pretty remarkable accomplishment. 

SpaceX has never claimed that one of its missions was asteroid mining, though I am sure that Musk has talked about that kind of mining in conjunction with lowering costs of material into space.

The price of SpaceX stock isn't high because of "Musk hype" but because SpaceX is the most diligent company at reducing payload costs and thus gets the lion's share of launch business.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on July 13, 2022, 10:23:20 AM
Quote from: viper37 on July 13, 2022, 09:23:37 AMAt this price point, a lot of Republicans could be shipped to Mars and let them build their own religious libertarian dictatorship* ideal colony and see how that works for them.


*it is an apparent contradiction, but only if you think about it.

The initial spaceship with colonists could be called the Mayflower.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on July 13, 2022, 10:43:40 AM
Quote from: grumbler on July 13, 2022, 09:50:13 AM
Quote from: Barrister on July 11, 2022, 12:46:59 PM
Quote from: viper37 on July 11, 2022, 12:36:56 PMSpaceX was created with the promise of drilling asteroids for minerals.  So far, it  has put satellites in orbit and his creating risk for future space navigation by crowding the higher atmosphere of various clutter and objects.  And he's not a team player, refusing any attempt at discussion with NASA toward solving this.

There were many, many accidents with SpaceX, which might have been excusable if he were the first, but he wasn't.  We've been launching rockets since the 50s.  He's just trying to do his own thing insisting he knows better than everyone else.  Just because he's smart does not mean everyone else is dumb.

Now, SpaceX.  It's still not close to drilling asteroid and he's promising to send people to Mars.  It is still hype.  Pumping stock with hype.

Doesn't mean he isn't a genius.  He is.  But he can be an asshole too. And lot of other things too.  His Twitter bid was just one more example of his dickish behavior.  He never wanted to seriously buy Twitter to preserve freedom of expression on the platform.  FFS, I don't think he even cares about wether Trump is there or not.

Where to begin...

I've never heard that SpaceX started by promising to mine asteroids.  Googling suggests no such thing.  Pretty much from the beginning it was just about cutting the cost of orbital launches.

Many, many accidents... the first three Falcon 1 rockets blew up on launch.  Not sure that counts as "many, many".  Also not sure that's all that out of the ordinary.  The other option is to pull a Blue Origin and just not launch anything at all for years.

'his own thing insisting it's better' - SpaceX has done something revolutionary in rocket launches - making re-usable rockets.  It really is better than anyone else in the sector.  It really has dramatically cut the cost of reaching orbit.  This is not just hype.  (not that Musk doesn't do a lot of hyping - just that in this area he's matched the hype)

Yeah, you can criticize SpaceX for a number of things, but losing the first three test launches of the Falcon 1 isn't one of them.  That's just how experimental technology works.  SpaceX has cut the cost/kg to Low Earth Orbit from a bit less than $6,000 for the Atlas or a bit more than $4,000 for the Soyuz to a bit less than $1,000 for the Falcon Heavy.  That's a pretty remarkable accomplishment. 

SpaceX has never claimed that one of its missions was asteroid mining, though I am sure that Musk has talked about that kind of mining in conjunction with lowering costs of material into space.

The price of SpaceX stock isn't high because of "Musk hype" but because SpaceX is the most diligent company at reducing payload costs and thus gets the lion's share of launch business.
Yeah, but he is a dick. Let's stay focused on what is important.

Can we have another 50 assholes like Musk please?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on July 13, 2022, 11:10:02 AM
It's not binary. You can be decent and gifted at the same time.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 13, 2022, 11:25:31 AM
Quote from: Berkut on July 13, 2022, 10:43:40 AMCan we have another 50 assholes like Musk please?

The unfortunate news is there are a lot more than 50 assholes like Musk.

The fortunate news is there are a lot of decent people who are also brilliant, doing a lot of great things.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on July 13, 2022, 11:38:21 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on July 13, 2022, 11:10:02 AMIt's not binary. You can be decent and gifted at the same time.
Has someone argued otherwise?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on July 13, 2022, 11:39:35 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 13, 2022, 11:25:31 AM
Quote from: Berkut on July 13, 2022, 10:43:40 AMCan we have another 50 assholes like Musk please?

The unfortunate news is there are a lot more than 50 assholes like Musk.

The fortunate news is there are a lot of decent people who are also brilliant, doing a lot of great things.
No, there are not more then 50 assholes "like Musk" unless your blinders are such that the "asshole" part is the only thing you care about.

Indeed, if you focus on just the asshole part, there are probably a billion of them. 

If you focus on the "accomplishment" part, they are rather rare.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on July 13, 2022, 11:47:05 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 13, 2022, 11:25:31 AM
Quote from: Berkut on July 13, 2022, 10:43:40 AMCan we have another 50 assholes like Musk please?

The unfortunate news is there are a lot more than 50 assholes like Musk.

Can you name even ten of those fifty?  I'll allow you to name people who haven't transformed two industries and getting set to transform a third; your candidates only need to have transform one major industry (and must not be retired).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 13, 2022, 11:56:11 AM
Quote from: grumbler on July 13, 2022, 11:47:05 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 13, 2022, 11:25:31 AM
Quote from: Berkut on July 13, 2022, 10:43:40 AMCan we have another 50 assholes like Musk please?

The unfortunate news is there are a lot more than 50 assholes like Musk.




Can you name even ten of those fifty?  I'll allow you to name people who haven't transformed two industries and getting set to transform a third; your candidates only need to have transform one major industry (and must not be retired).


Assholes - sure. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on July 13, 2022, 12:02:43 PM
It's an interesting question - does being a innovative, disruptive [insert other silicon valley buzzwords here] type leader necessarily require the person to be perceived as an asshole?

Because you can certainly think of lots of examples of that sort of archetype: Musk, Jobs, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Zuckerberg.  Heck going back Henry Ford and John D Rockefeller were not necessarily perceived well.

It's different to be a CEO of a well-established company(I think Tim Cook seems to be a nice guy).

But can anyone think of a contrary example?  Someone who was scrupulously ethical, in both business and personal life, yet still formed a huge innovative company?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 13, 2022, 12:05:45 PM
Quote from: Berkut on July 13, 2022, 11:39:35 AMNo, there are not more then 50 assholes "like Musk" unless your blinders are such that the "asshole" part is the only thing you care about.

Indeed, if you focus on just the asshole part, there are probably a billion of them.

If you focus on the "accomplishment" part, they are rather rare.

I guess it depends on what you consider "like Musk".

Let's start with the one billion assholes you posit. Let's say 10% of them have decent levels of intelligence, social skills and entrepreneurial instincts (we take the top 10%, however you define it). That leaves us 100 million.

Let's say 1% of those are born into families with a reasonably solid levels of educational opportunities, financial wherewithal, social networking, and other preqrequisites to go into entrepreneurial business. Now we have 1 million proto-Musks.

Entrepreneurship is hard. There are many many failures, though some folks pick up and try again. To keep the math simple, let's just say 1 in 10 make it from one tier of success to the next. So of the 1 million proto-Musk, 100,000 become sort of successful, of those 10,000 become solidly wealthy, 1,000 of those become genuinely rich, 100 become really rich, 10 become straight up billionaires, and 1 becomes Elon Musk.

The question is whether if we added 10 more people to the initial pool who are exactly like Elon Musk whether we'd end up with 11 Elon Musks at the end (i.e. there's something uniquely special about Musk individually).

Alternately, Musk (meeting some basic prerequisites to start the path and not actively self-sabotage) could be the product of a system that produces winners at each tier. Musk had some combination of skill and luck to make it, but if he didn't someone else would have... but whoever wins, we apply a certain amount of selection bias to the specific qualities that Musk has.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 13, 2022, 12:11:44 PM
Quote from: Barrister on July 13, 2022, 12:02:43 PMIt's an interesting question - does being a innovative, disruptive [insert other silicon valley buzzwords here] type leader necessarily require the person to be perceived as an asshole?

Because you can certainly think of lots of examples of that sort of archetype: Musk, Jobs, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Zuckerberg.  Heck going back Henry Ford and John D Rockefeller were not necessarily perceived well.

It's different to be a CEO of a well-established company(I think Tim Cook seems to be a nice guy).

But can anyone think of a contrary example?  Someone who was scrupulously ethical, in both business and personal life, yet still formed a huge innovative company?

I think to go from small to massive, you are going to make decisions that will rub people the wrong way which will give birth to the "they're an asshole" narrative. At the same time, once you're famous every foible will be magnified which will contribute as well.

That said, I don't think there's much of an "he's an asshole" narrative attached to Warren Buffett, and he went from not much to very very rich.

Personally, while there are negative narratives about Gates, Zuckerberg, and Bezos I don't think the "douchebag"/ "asshole" ones are nearly as strong as the one around Musk - which is driven, IMO, by his social media presence (and which also contributes to the "Randian super-man" narrative around him as well).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on July 13, 2022, 12:12:45 PM
Quote from: Berkut on July 13, 2022, 11:38:21 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on July 13, 2022, 11:10:02 AMIt's not binary. You can be decent and gifted at the same time.
Has someone argued otherwise?

Kinda, yeah.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 13, 2022, 12:23:58 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on July 13, 2022, 12:12:45 PM
Quote from: Berkut on July 13, 2022, 11:38:21 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on July 13, 2022, 11:10:02 AMIt's not binary. You can be decent and gifted at the same time.
Has someone argued otherwise?

Kinda, yeah.
Quote from: Zoupa on July 13, 2022, 12:12:45 PM
Quote from: Berkut on July 13, 2022, 11:38:21 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on July 13, 2022, 11:10:02 AMIt's not binary. You can be decent and gifted at the same time.
Has someone argued otherwise?

Kinda, yeah.

That is a very kind assessment.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on July 13, 2022, 12:25:15 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 13, 2022, 12:11:44 PMI think to go from small to massive, you are going to make decisions that will rub people the wrong way which will give birth to the "they're an asshole" narrative. At the same time, once you're famous every foible will be magnified which will contribute as well.

That said, I don't think there's much of an "he's an asshole" narrative attached to Warren Buffett, and he went from not much to very very rich.

Personally, while there are negative narratives about Gates, Zuckerberg, and Bezos I don't think the "douchebag"/ "asshole" ones are nearly as strong as around Musk - which are driven, IMO, by his social media presence.

You know Buffet was the one name I came up with, but in the end I kind of rejected him as he's always just been an investor, not a CEO (well he's the CEO of his investment company).  But as such he just buys and sells shares and companies, and is not involved in the day-to-day operation of his companies.  Even more so he's kind-of famous for only investing in much more traditional industries, so can hardly be called disruptive.

But yeah - I've never heard a story of Buffet being unscrupulous or dishonest, he seems to have had a scandal-free personal life, and is generally pretty well-regarded - and that was even before he promised to give away almost all of his money (since it's a common trope for pretty disliked businessmen like Ford or Rockefeller to try and rehabilitate their reputations through philanthropy later in life).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on July 13, 2022, 12:30:14 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 13, 2022, 12:11:44 PMPersonally, while there are negative narratives about Gates, Zuckerberg, and Bezos I don't think the "douchebag"/ "asshole" ones are nearly as strong as the one around Musk - which is driven, IMO, by his social media presence (and which also contributes to the "Randian super-man" narrative around him as well).

I was going to say the same thing.  Being a tough boss doesn't make you an asshole.  You have to work at being an asshole, which Musk does and the others you mentioned don't.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on July 13, 2022, 12:47:27 PM
Musk is worse than an asshole, he's an attention whore, an edgelord and a troll.

You could say that every top businessperson has to be at least a bit of an asshole in order to get to the top, but Musk gratuituously and completely uncalled for goes out of his way to show the world his worst qualities. I don't remember Bezos ever calling anyone a pedo, for instance, like Musk did with that British diver in the Thailand cave rescue affair.

That he seems to have a Boris Johnson-esque appetite to repopulate the earth by himself is also a worrying personality trait.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on July 13, 2022, 12:58:14 PM
Quote from: The Larch on July 13, 2022, 12:47:27 PMMusk is worse than an asshole, he's an attention whore, an edgelord and a troll.

You could say that every top businessperson has to be at least a bit of an asshole in order to get to the top, but Musk gratuituously and completely uncalled for goes out of his way to show the world his worst qualities. I don't remember Bezos ever calling anyone a pedo, for instance, like Musk did with that British diver in the Thailand cave rescue affair.

That he seems to have a Boris Johnson-esque appetite to repopulate the earth by himself is also a worrying personality trait.

As far as personality sins go, being an attention-whore and a troll seem fairly lower down the list to be honest.

Mark Zuckerberg isn't active on Twitter (obviously).  But when you factor in how he started Facebook in the first place, the way FB abuses people's personal data, its disinterest in allowing the spread of deliberate misinformation, can you really say that Musk is a worse person than Zuckerberg?


Business-wise, Musk has mostly been fairly up-and-up I think.  Reports of over-working his workers abound, but sadly that is also common.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on July 13, 2022, 12:59:59 PM
Quote from: Barrister on July 13, 2022, 12:58:14 PM
Quote from: The Larch on July 13, 2022, 12:47:27 PMMusk is worse than an asshole, he's an attention whore, an edgelord and a troll.

You could say that every top businessperson has to be at least a bit of an asshole in order to get to the top, but Musk gratuituously and completely uncalled for goes out of his way to show the world his worst qualities. I don't remember Bezos ever calling anyone a pedo, for instance, like Musk did with that British diver in the Thailand cave rescue affair.

That he seems to have a Boris Johnson-esque appetite to repopulate the earth by himself is also a worrying personality trait.

As far as personality sins go, being an attention-whore and a troll seem fairly lower down the list to be honest.

Mark Zuckerberg isn't active on Twitter (obviously).  But when you factor in how he started Facebook in the first place, the way FB abuses people's personal data, its disinterest in allowing the spread of deliberate misinformation, can you really say that Musk is a worse person than Zuckerberg?


Business-wise, Musk has mostly been fairly up-and-up I think.  Reports of over-working his workers abound, but sadly that is also common.

Zuckerberg is definitely sinister too, certainly, and Facebook is indeed much more nefarious regarding the public in terms of handling personal data. It's not an either/or proposition, both of them can be terrible people.  :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on July 13, 2022, 01:03:12 PM
Quote from: The Larch on July 13, 2022, 12:59:59 PMIt's not an either/or proposition, both of them can be terrible people.  :P

But that's the question - do you more-or-less have to be a 'terrible person' in order to start a disruptive and innovative company and see it grow to be worth billions of dollars?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on July 13, 2022, 01:05:01 PM
Quote from: Barrister on July 13, 2022, 01:03:12 PM
Quote from: The Larch on July 13, 2022, 12:59:59 PMIt's not an either/or proposition, both of them can be terrible people.  :P

But that's the question - do you more-or-less have to be a 'terrible person' in order to start a disruptive and innovative company and see it grow to be worth billions of dollars?

I can believe that you might need to be a bit of an asshole to make it to the top, yeah. Both in business and in many other areas. The thing is that Musk has other "unnecessary" personality flaws on top of that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on July 13, 2022, 01:07:02 PM
Quote from: Barrister on July 13, 2022, 12:02:43 PMIt's an interesting question - does being a innovative, disruptive [insert other silicon valley buzzwords here] type leader necessarily require the person to be perceived as an asshole?

Because you can certainly think of lots of examples of that sort of archetype: Musk, Jobs, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Zuckerberg.  Heck going back Henry Ford and John D Rockefeller were not necessarily perceived well.

It's different to be a CEO of a well-established company(I think Tim Cook seems to be a nice guy).
I think yes. If only because you will inevitably make enough enemies along the way (even if you're in the right) to be perceived by many as a dick and to create those stories.

But whatever brand or era of innovative/disruptive guy who builds an empire - they all seem like assholes with huge personality issues. Whether it's the oil barons, press barons, retail moguls, today's tech barons, the Sacklers etc - the founder or person who grew it is normally a monster. I think The Founder is actually pretty good on this - and possibly The Master too :ph34r:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 13, 2022, 01:13:48 PM
Without getting into the part about "and that person who is/ is not an asshole like Musk" part of it, I'm trying to think of major industry transformations apparently driven by individual entrepreneurial zeal (some of them are going to miss grumbler's "not retired" criteria, but I'm okay with that).

I'm probably going to miss a bunch, but off the top of my head:

Bezos - Amazon
Kalanick - Uber
Zuckerberg - Facebook
Kamprad - Ikea
Ortega - Inditex/ Zara
Jobs - Apple
Murdoch - Fox
Sackler - Purdue Pharma
Dorsey - Twitter
Ma - Alibaba
Walton - Walmart
Larry Page + Sergey Brin - Google
Bloomberg - Bloomberg

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 13, 2022, 01:15:30 PM
And those are just the household names. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 13, 2022, 01:18:57 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 13, 2022, 01:15:30 PMAnd those are just the household names. 

Yeah, I'm sure there are others in less public facing industries or in markets outside of the media I'm exposed to.

On the other hand, I'm sure there are massive transformations in industries that were not driven by individual founders as well.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on July 13, 2022, 01:22:10 PM
A good question is "who is better? The walton family that inherited walmart interests or musk?"

The walton family is more wealthy in aggregate, and they own a company that isn't really advancing the interests of humanity in terms of climate or space exploration. But they aren't edgelords and comparatively fly under the radar.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on July 13, 2022, 01:22:23 PM
The other onews that spring to mind are previous eras. Disney, Selznick and Mayer, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Edison. Hollywood, steel, rail, oil - earlier generations of banking - all had those individual entrepreneurs who drove wider change than just their company and all (from whenever I've read or seen anything about them) monsters.

Possibly also in the conglomeration and globalisation of luxury goods - Bernard Arnault. He may be very nice, I don't know.

Gates and Microsoft too - and I think there's something there of how much we now know him for philanthropy but in the 80s and 90s, that was not his reputation.

Edit: And of course with Gates and philanthropy there is the whole reputation laundering side of this. We see it with Carnegie to this day - but until the New Yorker article the Sacklers were best known as very rich philanthropists with whole wings of galleries or university buildings named after them.

Edit: I wonder if that's also a factor with Buffett too? :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 13, 2022, 01:31:53 PM
Carnegie is almost the platonic example. On one hand he was a tireless fighter against American imperialism and generous philanthropist. On the other he was a ruthless and unscrupulous business man and exploiter of his workers with some disturbingly draconian union and strike busting. So many of them have that sort of dichotomy. This dark game of capitalism they are playing combined with a desire to be a loved and respected leader of society, probably even a deep and genuine desire to do considerable good.

And as he was Scottish and lived in a castle he was almost certainly the inspiration for Scrooge McDuck.

Musk is really a complicated figure. He is definitely immature and self-absorbed and incredibly annoying. I understand he also does some pretty shady business shenanigans and mistreats his workers but I am not as familiar with that stuff. On the other hand he is a great salesman for electric vehicles and space travel and other advanced technology and lends a lot of hype and coolness and prestige to them. I never thought people would think electric vehicles were cool, but he did it in a big way. And I think he honestly has grandiose visions, and granted probably narcissistic, of saving the world and humanity as his goals. As American society is so dominated by billionaires and their whims I think we could do a lot worse.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 13, 2022, 01:36:55 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 13, 2022, 01:07:02 PMI think The Founder is actually pretty good on this - and possibly The Master too :ph34r:

Heh. You got that right. So many of the people in those companies talk about their founder like Scientologists talk about L Ron Hubbard.

I worked at Dell for about 10 months and I would get kind of weirded out by how Michael Dell was talked about. I was like, man he just sells computers he didn't cure cancer or anything.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on July 13, 2022, 02:07:21 PM
I don't think that anyone is arguing that there haven't been industry-transformational assholes throughout history.  Crassus was one.

I simply think that people are vastly overestimating the number of those types alive today.  Purdue Pharma is not transformational, nor is Inditex, Bloomberg, nor, arguably, Apple.  Sergei Brin doesn't seem to be an asshole, nor Larry Page or Jack Dorsey. Sam Walton hasn't even alive for the last 30 years.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on July 13, 2022, 02:17:54 PM
Musk also created the "3D graphics ca 1996" car, an achievement that wasn't expected by humanity.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on July 13, 2022, 02:18:43 PM
Quote from: grumbler on July 13, 2022, 02:07:21 PMI don't think that anyone is arguing that there haven't been industry-transformational assholes throughout history.  Crassus was one.

The protection racket industry?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on July 13, 2022, 02:20:49 PM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on July 13, 2022, 02:18:43 PM
Quote from: grumbler on July 13, 2022, 02:07:21 PMI don't think that anyone is arguing that there haven't been industry-transformational assholes throughout history.  Crassus was one.

The protection racket industry?

Private fire brigade/arson squad was pretty ingenious.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 13, 2022, 02:22:14 PM
Quote from: grumbler on July 13, 2022, 02:07:21 PMI don't think that anyone is arguing that there haven't been industry-transformational assholes throughout history.  Crassus was one.

I simply think that people are vastly overestimating the number of those types alive today.  Purdue Pharma is not transformational, nor is Inditex, Bloomberg, nor, arguably, Apple.  Sergei Brin doesn't seem to be an asshole, nor Larry Page or Jack Dorsey. Sam Walton hasn't even alive for the last 30 years.

Purdue transformed our society into one that has a large number of drug dependent citizens.  If Apple is not transformative, then Musk isn't even worth talking about.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on July 13, 2022, 02:24:35 PM
Crassus also managed to reach a solution to the Spartacus problem.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 13, 2022, 02:28:27 PM
Quote from: The Brain on July 13, 2022, 02:24:35 PMCrassus also managed to reach a solution to the Spartacus problem.

And he made the mistake of thinking he could win against a real army.  Grumbler tried to warn him, but would he listen...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on July 13, 2022, 02:39:20 PM
Quote from: grumbler on July 13, 2022, 02:07:21 PMI don't think that anyone is arguing that there haven't been industry-transformational assholes throughout history.  Crassus was one.

I simply think that people are vastly overestimating the number of those types alive today.  Purdue Pharma is not transformational, nor is Inditex, Bloomberg, nor, arguably, Apple.  Sergei Brin doesn't seem to be an asshole, nor Larry Page or Jack Dorsey. Sam Walton hasn't even alive for the last 30 years.

Purdue Pharma - transformational but in all the wrong ways.
Inditex - don't downplay it because it's fashion.  Being able to get new clothing lines into stores within days was huge as I understand it.
Bloomberg - it's media ventures have been pretty ordinary (albeit successful), but the original Bloomberg terminal was revolutionary as I understand it.
Apple - you're just trolling me.  From helping start the personal computer revolution, to inventing the modern smartphone, it's been transformational.

Brin and Page - they're really kind of reclusive.  Page in the few public speeches he's given does sound deeply weird, but hard to say he's a total asshole.

Dorsey - I don't think Twitter is transformational.

Sam Walton - hey if we're bringing u Carnegie or Ford, he counts.  But I don't really know much about him.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 13, 2022, 02:48:32 PM
Quote from: grumbler on July 13, 2022, 02:07:21 PMI don't think that anyone is arguing that there haven't been industry-transformational assholes throughout history.  Crassus was one.

I simply think that people are vastly overestimating the number of those types alive today.  Purdue Pharma is not transformational, nor is Inditex, Bloomberg, nor, arguably, Apple.  Sergei Brin doesn't seem to be an asshole, nor Larry Page or Jack Dorsey. Sam Walton hasn't even alive for the last 30 years.

I think the opioid crisis is pretty transformational... but I guess I can accept it as being arguable, depending on how your define transformational.

Personally I think fast fashion was absolutely an industry transformation, which is why I put Inditex down. If someone  else did fast fashion before that, then I credited it wrongly to Inditex though.

I may be wrong - it's not my area of expertise - but I believe Bloomberg significantly changed how (especially the speed) our financial markets work, which I'd rate as transformational.

Apple are, IMO, responsible for ubiquotous personal device touch screens and the app-economy. Much as I'm not a fan of Apple, I find it hard to argue that's not transformational.

That said... I guess it comes down what we mean by "transformational". What criteria do we use?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 13, 2022, 02:49:19 PM
Quote from: The Brain on July 13, 2022, 02:24:35 PMCrassus also managed to reach a solution to the Spartacus problem.

Yeah but he let Pompey take the credit.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 13, 2022, 02:51:57 PM
If it weren't for the visionary genius of Sam Walton we would have to shop at K-Mart and Sears instead of Walmart. Or maybe there would just be more Targets. What a radically different world that would be.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on July 13, 2022, 02:52:46 PM
Ray Kroc of McDonalds belongs on the asshole list.

I dispute that Bill Gates is an asshole.

Less known, Jack Bogel invented the ETF and did not come across as an asshole in the interviews I watched.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on July 13, 2022, 03:01:13 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 13, 2022, 02:48:32 PMI think the opioid crisis is pretty transformational... but I guess I can accept it as being arguable, depending on how your define transformational.
Also my understanding is that Arthur Sackler more or less invented the whole pharma advertising/marketing business.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on July 13, 2022, 03:02:15 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 13, 2022, 02:52:46 PMI dispute that Bill Gates is an asshole.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Bill_Gates_mugshot.png?20120106203508)

Also, it hasn't been brought up much yet, but the number of these guys who have had extra-martial affairs / divorces is really, really high.  Including Gates.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on July 13, 2022, 03:04:49 PM
What's your point Beeb?  Mismatching clothes doesn't make one an asshole.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 13, 2022, 03:05:30 PM
Quote from: Barrister on July 13, 2022, 02:39:20 PMPurdue Pharma - transformational but in all the wrong ways.

Yup.


QuoteInditex - don't downplay it because it's fashion.  Being able to get new clothing lines into stores within days was huge as I understand it.

Fast fashion completely changed how we manufacture, distribute, market, and buy clothes. It also has a massive environmental impact. I supsect (but don't know) it contributed significantly to the rise of a number of Asian economies, with fast fashion manufacturing being the first profitable step up the "modernize the economy" ladder for many places.

QuoteDorsey - I don't think Twitter is transformational.

It gave us Trump, influencers, and the like/ share economy. Pretty transformational IMO. Maybe it's wrong to give them the credit for the social media space all up, but I think they got there before instagram, youtube, and facebook did.

That's the argument, though I can see reasonable counterarguments existing.

QuoteSam Walton - hey if we're bringing u Carnegie or Ford, he counts.  But I don't really know much about him.

As I understand it, he pioneered the big box grocery/ everything store that led to the hollowing out of "Main Street", changed the way most producers do business (the famous big box squeeze, where the retailer takes control of vast bulk of the cash flow and profit margin previously accrued to the producers, while the producers carry most of the risk - eating losses for returns and unsold goods). Pretty transformational IMO (and frequently seen as assholish by the folks whose profit margin and cashflows he took over).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on July 13, 2022, 03:17:29 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 13, 2022, 03:04:49 PMWhat's your point Beeb?  Mismatching clothes doesn't make one an asshole.

It was a cheap point, but being arrested can make one an asshole.

But more seriously, the kind of anti-competitive behaviour shown by MS back in the 80s-90s was pretty serious.

Also the womanizing.  He was friends with Jeffrey Epstein.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 13, 2022, 03:24:39 PM
Quote from: Barrister on July 13, 2022, 03:17:29 PMIt was a cheap point, but being arrested can make one an asshole.

Well then we need to stop arresting people!  :bowler:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on July 13, 2022, 03:41:11 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 13, 2022, 02:48:32 PMI think the opioid crisis is pretty transformational... but I guess I can accept it as being arguable, depending on how your define transformational.

Personally I think fast fashion was absolutely an industry transformation, which is why I put Inditex down. If someone  else did fast fashion before that, then I credited it wrongly to Inditex though.

I may be wrong - it's not my area of expertise - but I believe Bloomberg significantly changed how (especially the speed) our financial markets work, which I'd rate as transformational.

Apple are, IMO, responsible for ubiquotous personal device touch screens and the app-economy. Much as I'm not a fan of Apple, I find it hard to argue that's not transformational.

That said... I guess it comes down what we mean by "transformational". What criteria do we use?

I don't think that the opioid crisis transformed any industry.

Fast fashion has not transformed the clothing industry.  Inditex has a capitalization along the lines of $100 billion, which makes it the largest (barely) ,but minuscule compared to the industry as a whole.  Inditex is innovative, but not transformational

I don't see Bloomberg transforming the financial markets.  He provides an information service that is widely used, but that's it. 

Apple I will grant you.  I was thinking more in computer terms, but their personal devices certainly transformed (or maybe even created) that industry sector.

An industry-transformational company is one that changes the way an entire industry approaches the economic problem.  Tesla did that with electric cars (everyone else scrambling to catch up) and SpaceX did it with launch systems.  Fox "News" is probably the one that impacts the most ordinary people.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 13, 2022, 03:54:08 PM
Quote from: grumbler on July 13, 2022, 03:41:11 PMI don't think that the opioid crisis transformed any industry.

Fair. It transformed society.

QuoteFast fashion has not transformed the clothing industry.  Inditex has a capitalization along the lines of $100 billion, which makes it the largest (barely) ,but minuscule compared to the industry as a whole.  Inditex is innovative, but not transformational

I see your point, though Inditex was copied by H&M, Uniqlo, NEXT and others which makes up a larger chunk of the industry. But maybe that's not enough.

QuoteI don't see Bloomberg transforming the financial markets.  He provides an information service that is widely used, but that's it.

I thought - but could be incorrect - that Bloomberg essentially created the capacity for high frequency and algorithmic trading. But maybe even if true, that may be insufficient.

QuoteAn industry-transformational company is one that changes the way an entire industry approaches the economic problem.  Tesla did that with electric cars (everyone else scrambling to catch up) and SpaceX did it with launch systems.  Fox "News" is probably the one that impacts the most ordinary people.

Reasonable definition. Your assessments make sense using it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 13, 2022, 04:45:35 PM
Quote from: grumbler on July 13, 2022, 03:41:11 PMI don't think that the opioid crisis transformed any industry.

You are ignoring the cause of the opioid crisis - the transformation in the way which drugs were marketed.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on July 13, 2022, 07:45:11 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 13, 2022, 04:45:35 PM
Quote from: grumbler on July 13, 2022, 03:41:11 PMI don't think that the opioid crisis transformed any industry.

You are ignoring the cause of the opioid crisis - the transformation in the way which drugs were marketed.

Purdue Pharma didn't innovate in the way drugs are marketed.  What they did was lie about the effects of the products they offered, and that wasn't taken up by the rest of the industry.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 13, 2022, 08:40:07 PM
You might want to read a bit more about the tactics they used which are harmful even if a drug company is not blatantly lying.

Here is a good start

https://www.jstor.org/stable/45345199
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on July 13, 2022, 09:52:38 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 13, 2022, 08:40:07 PMYou might want to read a bit more about the tactics they used which are harmful even if a drug company is not blatantly lying.

Here is a good start

https://www.jstor.org/stable/45345199

You might want to read a bit more about how the tactics Purdue Pharma used were widely used throughout the industry.  Here's a non-paywalled source: from the Pew Center (https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-sheets/2013/11/11/persuading-the-prescribers-pharmaceutical-industry-marketing-and-its-influence-on-physicians-and-patients)

In any case, the founders of Purdue Pharma have been dead for almost 100 years.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 14, 2022, 08:51:09 AM
Quote from: grumbler on July 13, 2022, 09:52:38 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 13, 2022, 08:40:07 PMYou might want to read a bit more about the tactics they used which are harmful even if a drug company is not blatantly lying.

Here is a good start

https://www.jstor.org/stable/45345199

You might want to read a bit more about how the tactics Purdue Pharma used were widely used throughout the industry.  Here's a non-paywalled source: from the Pew Center (https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-sheets/2013/11/11/persuading-the-prescribers-pharmaceutical-industry-marketing-and-its-influence-on-physicians-and-patients)

In any case, the founders of Purdue Pharma have been dead for almost 100 years.

You know that the opioid Purdue pushed was not developed when the company was founded right?

Neither was the type of marketing they used.  But you comment has a grain of truth in it.  The regulatory environment in the US has been dismantled to the point it resembles that of 100 years ago
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on July 14, 2022, 08:56:07 AM
My Purdue knowledge is 99% from the TV show Dopesick, but my impression from that is that corruption in the FDA made the Oxy epidemic possible. Of course AFAIK the FDA isn't the creation of a single individual, so not really comparable to Musk.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on July 14, 2022, 08:56:08 AM
Quote from: Barrister on July 13, 2022, 01:03:12 PM
Quote from: The Larch on July 13, 2022, 12:59:59 PMIt's not an either/or proposition, both of them can be terrible people.  :P

But that's the question - do you more-or-less have to be a 'terrible person' in order to start a disruptive and innovative company and see it grow to be worth billions of dollars?
I don't think so - I think Musks actual assholeness detracts from his success, it doesn't add to it.

My point is simply that his success is (or ought to be) undeniable. He is an insanely successful asshole.

And in the overall scheme of things, I am more then happy to chuckle at his douchebaggery while appreciating that he has accomplished more for the human race then 99.999% of humans, and wish we had more people like him.

Obviously, if we could have more people with his vision and accomplishments absent the being a grade-A asshole, that would be even better.

But the idea that the interesting narrative about Musk is his twitter posting and how many kids he has rather then what he has done betrays more about the people who find that so compelling then it does about Musk. The asshole part of him is, to me, entirely uninteresting. There are a billion assholes out in the world, and I spend very little of my emotional or intellectual energy thinking about them.

I find it amusing that other people obsess over Musk's assholeness, since it is the thing about him that is entirely unexceptional. Which suggests that it isn't really what those who bag on him all the time actually find objectionable about him.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on July 14, 2022, 09:03:00 AM
Quote from: The Brain on July 14, 2022, 08:56:07 AMMy Purdue knowledge is 99% from the TV show Dopesick, but my impression from that is that corruption in the FDA made the Oxy epidemic possible. Of course AFAIK the FDA isn't the creation of a single individual, so not really comparable to Musk.
The number of issues/stories I've seen in the last few years that seem to go back to the FDA and some mix of incompetence/inability to flex from bureaucratic norms is really startling. I don't get why it's not under investigation with serious reform from covid vaccine stuff, monkeypox vaccine, the opioid crisis - even the formula milk issue.

It seems, from a distance, like a regulator that has been entirely captured by industry and frankly by monopolistic tendencies in industry and that is having consequences both from a cost perspective but also on people's lives/health.

Incidentally if we're quibbling on transformative. I'd push back on Uber. It's a minicab firm with an app that subsidises its users with investor cash and saving money by not following the law.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on July 14, 2022, 09:20:32 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 14, 2022, 09:03:00 AMThe number of issues/stories I've seen in the last few years that seem to go back to the FDA and some mix of incompetence/inability to flex from bureaucratic norms is really startling. I don't get why it's not under investigation with serious reform from covid vaccine stuff, monkeypox vaccine, the opioid crisis - even the formula milk issue.

It seems, from a distance, like a regulator that has been entirely captured by industry and frankly by monopolistic tendencies in industry and that is having consequences both from a cost perspective but also on people's lives/health.

Incidentally if we're quibbling on transformative. I'd push back on Uber. It's a minicab firm with an app that subsidises its users with investor cash and saving money by not following the law.

Yes, the FDA has been captured by industry and has such a rigid set of rules that it can fairly easily be "gamed." I encountered a prescription medicine that had lost its patent on the 100mg dose but, because the maker reformulated the exact same medicine in a 110mg dose, the latter was still under patent, even though it was the exact same medicine.

Not sure what you are "pushing back" on regarding Uber.  Are you arguing that it is not transformative?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on July 14, 2022, 09:56:47 AM
This is like a bunch of baseball fans talking about Babe Ruth, and a significant number of them arguing that the thing about him that is the most interesting is that he is named after a candy bar, or that he had an illegitimate daughter. 

And if you point out that he was one of the best hitters of his generation, or even all time, you are accused of being some kind of delirious fanboy. FOCUS ON THE SILLY NAME AND HIS illegitimate daughter, damnit!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 14, 2022, 10:00:10 AM

This is often because the boss asks his employees to follow his example.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 14, 2022, 10:15:02 AM

It's Michael Dell, man!
:P

Tbf, back in the 90s, he revolutionized computer sales by selling directly to the consumers.  Before that, companies were exclusively selling to distributors/resellers.  It did transform the computer industry in a major way.  It contributed to the democratization of the PC just as much as IBM in the 80s, other PC makers were forced to adjust and review their business model.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 14, 2022, 10:27:18 AM
Quote from: grumbler on July 13, 2022, 02:07:21 PMI simply think that people are vastly overestimating the number of those types alive today.  Purdue Pharma is not transformational, nor is Inditex, Bloomberg, nor, arguably, Apple.  Sergei Brin doesn't seem to be an asshole, nor Larry Page or Jack Dorsey. Sam Walton hasn't even alive for the last 30 years.
Bloomberg was transformative for finance.  It's been copied a lot, but it's software/terminal was transformative of finance.

Apple, for as much as I dislike their overpriced gadgets, was transformative: iPiod and iPhones were transformative devices.  Before that, mobile devices were Nokia and Blackberry for business users, functional, but not very practical.  Apple brought it for the consumer market.  Android didn't release it's first public OS until a year and a half later.  the iPod was hugely successful, putting Apple back on track.

I'd also say it was transformative in the PC market by bringing a graphical UI to its OS, years before Microsoft.  I don't think MS would have developed Win 3.0, or even Win 95 if it wasn't for the MacOS.  MS reacted to the competition more than it innovated.  Even today, I'm not sure I would characterize MS as a innovative company.  Then again, multinational companies rarely are.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 14, 2022, 10:32:59 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 13, 2022, 02:52:46 PMI dispute that Bill Gates is an asshole.
His anti-competitive measures pretty much grants him a spot on the list.  In the 90s, probably among the top, but he's been topped by so many others since then.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 14, 2022, 10:46:08 AM


Finance is, in part, about how fast you can get the information so you can act on it.  The other part lies in analyzing past information and how similar news will affect the stocks.

Bloomberg gave you that and so, so, much more.  You want to know why that stock dipped on 13-05-20?  Click on that date on the graph, it'll give all the news about the company.  Before that, you'd have to look manually through news article and find the relevant one on the relevant date.

Want to see if two stocks (or more) correlate to one another? A couple of clicks and its done.

Want to watch all news about XYZ Inc. and ABC Ltd as they come out?  Bloomberg will give you alert on these two companies in priority.

It was very much transformative.  Getting easy access to information is key to making profit in this industry.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 14, 2022, 12:45:37 PM
Quote from: Berkut on July 14, 2022, 09:56:47 AMThis is like a bunch of baseball fans talking about Babe Ruth, and a significant number of them arguing that the thing about him that is the most interesting is that he is named after a candy bar, or that he had an illegitimate daughter.

And if you point out that he was one of the best hitters of his generation, or even all time, you are accused of being some kind of delirious fanboy. FOCUS ON THE SILLY NAME AND HIS illegitimate daughter, damnit!

58 pages.  Out of it, excluding yours, 4-5 messages have discussed Elon Musk personal behavior concerning his extra-marital child.  

The focus of the thread is more about his business practice, which seems mostly about over promising and under-delivering and pump & dump.  His stunt on crypto-currency and Twitter being the latest ones.

A more apt comparison would be the 8 players of the 1919 White Sox who betted against their own team.  They were great baseball players and not one of their fans could equal them.  Does that mean they did not deserve criticism?

You're not a fan of hockey, but Evander Kane is a great hockey player.  However, he has an attitude problem on ice and off the ice.  He's made many dirty hits, and he has had accusations of domestic violence and sexual assaults.  But we certainly need more talented hockey players like him.  His dirty hits?  His off-ice behavior?  Well, like you say, it's tabloid stuff...  We need talent.  By all means, let's excused everything else.

I'm not concerned about Elon Musk extra-marital affairs.  I'm not concerned about anyone's extra-marital affairs, this is part of their private life.  But generally speaking, people like Elon Musk do like the attention of the public on their private life when all goes well.  Can't really complain they get it when it goes bad.

Anyway,  like I said, not much concerned.  I posted that quip because of the lol, not because it meant anything.  10 children in this day and age is something out of the ordinary.  Especially when the 10th is welcome in secret while the 9th was delivered almost publicly.  Like I said, some people do crave for the public attention.

What worries me about Musk is how he uses social media to manipulate stock and inflate his own fortune, to the detriment of most other shareholders.  Publishing fake news in a traditional newspaper so as to manipulate a stock would be frowned upon.  It should be the same when it's done on Twitter.

Other business managers would be criticized for some of his work practices, so I don't see why he should be exempt of criticism, or legal penalties, because he is a genius.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 14, 2022, 01:29:04 PM
Quote from: viper37 on July 14, 2022, 10:15:02 AMIt's Michael Dell, man!
:P

Tbf, back in the 90s, he revolutionized computer sales by selling directly to the consumers.  Before that, companies were exclusively selling to distributors/resellers.  It did transform the computer industry in a major way.  It contributed to the democratization of the PC just as much as IBM in the 80s, other PC makers were forced to adjust and review their business model.


Well more like late 80s. And sure it was a big deal. But at the end all he did was sell computers.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on July 14, 2022, 01:44:06 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 14, 2022, 01:29:04 PM
Quote from: viper37 on July 14, 2022, 10:15:02 AMIt's Michael Dell, man!
:P

Tbf, back in the 90s, he revolutionized computer sales by selling directly to the consumers.  Before that, companies were exclusively selling to distributors/resellers.  It did transform the computer industry in a major way.  It contributed to the democratization of the PC just as much as IBM in the 80s, other PC makers were forced to adjust and review their business model.


Well more like late 80s. And sure it was a big deal. But at the end all he did was sell computers.

That's like saying Amazon was just like a company selling goods from a catalog through the mail.

True, but kind of misses the bigger point.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 14, 2022, 01:52:56 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 14, 2022, 01:29:04 PM
Quote from: viper37 on July 14, 2022, 10:15:02 AMIt's Michael Dell, man!
:P

Tbf, back in the 90s, he revolutionized computer sales by selling directly to the consumers.  Before that, companies were exclusively selling to distributors/resellers.  It did transform the computer industry in a major way.  It contributed to the democratization of the PC just as much as IBM in the 80s, other PC makers were forced to adjust and review their business model.


Well more like late 80s. And sure it was a big deal. But at the end all he did was sell computers.

I think you have your timing off.  Dell was a very big deal in the 90s.  And it was not really until the 90s that Dell could implement its online sales strategy.  Viper is right, it completely changed the way computers were sold.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 14, 2022, 02:49:49 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 14, 2022, 01:52:56 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 14, 2022, 01:29:04 PM
Quote from: viper37 on July 14, 2022, 10:15:02 AMIt's Michael Dell, man!
:P

Tbf, back in the 90s, he revolutionized computer sales by selling directly to the consumers.  Before that, companies were exclusively selling to distributors/resellers.  It did transform the computer industry in a major way.  It contributed to the democratization of the PC just as much as IBM in the 80s, other PC makers were forced to adjust and review their business model.


Well more like late 80s. And sure it was a big deal. But at the end all he did was sell computers.

I think you have your timing off.  Dell was a very big deal in the 90s.  And it was not really until the 90s that Dell could implement its online sales strategy.  Viper is right, it completely changed the way computers were sold.

Of course it was a big deal in the 90s, but it wasn't like it just sprang from the ground it was exploding around 1988 and its 1988 IPO was a huge deal around here. That is where all the "Dellionaires" made their millions by jumping in early. Look I live in the area. I was there I think I know when Dell started to be a big deal. And I think it is a great company and I think Dell is a great business man. I think doing the built to order thing with little warehousing and phone/online sales was all great.

But come on. It is not like if Michael Dell never existed we would all be buying computers at Radio Shack and we would still be living like its 1985. It is not like built to order was some kind of revolutionary idea that he invented. He just applied it to computers. And it is not like everything else wasn't attempted to be sold online once the technology got there. He just was the first guy and he did it better. But what is revolutionary about selling computers? Selling things built to order? Doing it without a middle man? Nothing that hadn't already been done. He just put it together. And frankly the company is kind of dinosaur now, I mean people still need computers but so much is now done on phones and tablets. Time has moved on past Dell, though it obviously chugs along.

If Michael Dell truly was the revolutionary genius the people who worked at Dell claimed he was he would have been ahead of that curve. And that's all I am saying. I thought his worship by the employees in the company over the top.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on July 14, 2022, 03:06:28 PM
"Dude! You're getting a Dell!"
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 14, 2022, 03:10:16 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 14, 2022, 02:49:49 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 14, 2022, 02:49:49 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 14, 2022, 01:52:56 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 14, 2022, 01:29:04 PM
Quote from: viper37 on July 14, 2022, 10:15:02 AMIt's Michael Dell, man!
:P

Tbf, back in the 90s, he revolutionized computer sales by selling directly to the consumers.  Before that, companies were exclusively selling to distributors/resellers.  It did transform the computer industry in a major way.  It contributed to the democratization of the PC just as much as IBM in the 80s, other PC makers were forced to adjust and review their business model.


Well more like late 80s. And sure it was a big deal. But at the end all he did was sell computers.

I think you have your timing off.  Dell was a very big deal in the 90s.  And it was not really until the 90s that Dell could implement its online sales strategy.  Viper is right, it completely changed the way computers were sold.

Of course it was a big deal in the 90s, but it wasn't like it just sprang from the ground it was exploding around 1988 and its 1988 IPO was a huge deal around here. That is where all the "Dellionaires" made their millions by jumping in early. Look I live in the area. I was there I think I know when Dell started to be a big deal. And I think it is a great company and I think Dell is a great business man. I think doing the built to order thing with little warehousing and phone/online sales was all great.

But come on. It is not like if Michael Dell never existed we would all be buying computers at Radio Shack and we would still be living like its 1985. It is not like built to order was some kind of revolutionary idea that he invented. He just applied it to computers. And it is not like everything else wasn't attempted to be sold online once the technology got there. He just was the first guy and he did it better. But what is revolutionary about selling computers? Selling things built to order? Doing it without a middle man? Nothing that hadn't already been done. He just put it together. And frankly the company is kind of dinosaur now, I mean people still need computers but so much is now done on phones and tablets. Time has moved on past Dell, though it obviously chugs along.

If Michael Dell truly was the revolutionary genius the people who worked at Dell claimed he was he would have been ahead of that curve. And that's all I am saying. I thought his worship by the employees in the company over the top.
I was there I think I know when Dell started to be a big deal. And I think it is a great company and I think Dell is a great business man. I think doing the built to order thing with little warehousing and phone/online sales was all great.

But come on. It is not like if Michael Dell never existed we would all be buying computers at Radio Shack and we would still be living like its 1985. It is not like built to order was some kind of revolutionary idea that he invented. He just applied it to computers. And it is not like everything else wasn't attempted to be sold online once the technology got there. He just was the first guy and he did it better. But what is revolutionary about selling computers? Selling things built to order? Doing it without a middle man? Nothing that hadn't already been done. He just put it together. And frankly the company is kind of dinosaur now, I mean people still need computers but so much is now done on phones and tablets. Time has moved on past Dell, though it obviously chugs along.

If Michael Dell truly was the revolutionary genius the people who worked at Dell claimed he was he would have been ahead of that curve. And that's all I am saying. I thought his worship by the employees in the company over the top.

Great, with all your inside knowledge then you will remember, as I do, that sales over the internet didn't become a thing until the 90s.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on July 14, 2022, 03:15:21 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 14, 2022, 02:49:49 PMOf course it was a big deal in the 90s, but it wasn't like it just sprang from the ground it was exploding around 1988 and its 1988 IPO was a huge deal around here. That is where all the "Dellionaires" made their millions by jumping in early. Look I live in the area. I was there I think I know when Dell started to be a big deal. And I think it is a great company and I think Dell is a great business man. I think doing the built to order thing with little warehousing and phone/online sales was all great.

But come on. It is not like if Michael Dell never existed we would all be buying computers at Radio Shack and we would still be living like its 1985. It is not like built to order was some kind of revolutionary idea that he invented. He just applied it to computers. And it is not like everything else wasn't attempted to be sold online once the technology got there. He just was the first guy and he did it better. But what is revolutionary about selling computers? Selling things built to order? Doing it without a middle man? Nothing that hadn't already been done. He just put it together. And frankly the company is kind of dinosaur now, I mean people still need computers but so much is now done on phones and tablets. Time has moved on past Dell, though it obviously chugs along.

If Michael Dell truly was the revolutionary genius the people who worked at Dell claimed he was he would have been ahead of that curve. And that's all I am saying. I thought his worship by the employees in the company over the top.

Reading up on it I think I'm in Valmy's camp now.

Dell's big thing wasn't so much "selling computers on the internet".  After all they ran tons of paper ads, you could easily buy them over the phone, they ran tons of tv ads, etc.  Dell's big competitive advantage was cutting out the middlemen, assembling computers themselves, and keeping margins on components low.  All of which are time-honoured business strategies.

Until the home computer market became more commodified, more computers were manufactured in China (which even Dell couldn't compete with).  So their stock price dipped, they went private, they expanded into enterprise computing, they went public again, and are doing fine.  But there's nothing remotely revolutionary about Dell 2022's version.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 14, 2022, 03:17:46 PM
Quote from: Barrister on July 14, 2022, 03:15:21 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 14, 2022, 02:49:49 PMOf course it was a big deal in the 90s, but it wasn't like it just sprang from the ground it was exploding around 1988 and its 1988 IPO was a huge deal around here. That is where all the "Dellionaires" made their millions by jumping in early. Look I live in the area. I was there I think I know when Dell started to be a big deal. And I think it is a great company and I think Dell is a great business man. I think doing the built to order thing with little warehousing and phone/online sales was all great.

But come on. It is not like if Michael Dell never existed we would all be buying computers at Radio Shack and we would still be living like its 1985. It is not like built to order was some kind of revolutionary idea that he invented. He just applied it to computers. And it is not like everything else wasn't attempted to be sold online once the technology got there. He just was the first guy and he did it better. But what is revolutionary about selling computers? Selling things built to order? Doing it without a middle man? Nothing that hadn't already been done. He just put it together. And frankly the company is kind of dinosaur now, I mean people still need computers but so much is now done on phones and tablets. Time has moved on past Dell, though it obviously chugs along.

If Michael Dell truly was the revolutionary genius the people who worked at Dell claimed he was he would have been ahead of that curve. And that's all I am saying. I thought his worship by the employees in the company over the top.

Reading up on it I think I'm in Valmy's camp now.

Dell's big thing wasn't so much "selling computers on the internet".  After all they ran tons of paper ads, you could easily buy them over the phone, they ran tons of tv ads, etc.  Dell's big competitive advantage was cutting out the middlemen, assembling computers themselves, and keeping margins on components low.  All of which are time-honoured business strategies.

Until the home computer market became more commodified, more computers were manufactured in China (which even Dell couldn't compete with).  So their stock price dipped, they went private, they expanded into enterprise computing, they went public again, and are doing fine.  But there's nothing remotely revolutionary about Dell 2022's version.

In the late 80s they could pull off that kind of smallish operation because not many people bought home computers then.  In the 90s it really took off, as did Dell's adaptation to sell over the internet.

In the 80s Dell really was just a guy selling computers.  He revolutionized the industry in the 90s.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on July 14, 2022, 03:20:10 PM
Quote from: viper37 on July 14, 2022, 10:46:08 AMFinance is, in part, about how fast you can get the information so you can act on it.  The other part lies in analyzing past information and how similar news will affect the stocks.

Bloomberg gave you that and so, so, much more.  You want to know why that stock dipped on 13-05-20?  Click on that date on the graph, it'll give all the news about the company.  Before that, you'd have to look manually through news article and find the relevant one on the relevant date.

Want to see if two stocks (or more) correlate to one another? A couple of clicks and its done.

Want to watch all news about XYZ Inc. and ABC Ltd as they come out?  Bloomberg will give you alert on these two companies in priority.

It was very much transformative.  Getting easy access to information is key to making profit in this industry.

If you were a trader waiting to se what the Bloomberg Terminal told you was happening, you were way, way behind the power curve.  That noise you heard was the programmed trading eating your lunch.

The Bloomberg Terminal is useful (and something like it is vital) to tweaking your programmed trading algorithms as circumstances dictate, but programmed trading existed before Bloomberg did and it was a varied group of university CS professors who, by and large, were the transformative agents in stock trading (first in digitizing the market and then in describing how programmed trading could beat even the best manual traders.  Bloomberg had the first-mover advantage when it came to presenting the information programmers needed, but that itself wasn't transformative.  If it wasn't Bloomberg it would have been some other company indistinguishable from Bloomberg.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on July 14, 2022, 04:29:32 PM
It seems like the serial baby making is a family tradition amongst the Musks...

QuoteElon Musk's dad, 76, confirms secret second child — with his stepdaughter

The Musk patriarch, 76, welcomed the baby girl with Jana, 35, back in 2019 — but only confirmed the news on Wednesday, bragging to the Sun: "The only thing we are on Earth for is to reproduce."

The two already share a 5-year-old boy, Elliot Rush, born in 2017.

Errol clearly shares his most famous son's hearty desire to procreate, with his admission coming just a week after it was revealed Elon fathered two children with an executive at his artificial intelligence company Neuralink, weeks before his second child with ex-girlfriend Grimes was born.

Errol admitted Jana's pregnancy was "unplanned" and told the publication that they are no longer living together, citing their 41-year age gap.

"It's not practical. She's 35," Errol declared. "Eventually if I'm still around, she might wind up back with me."

He added: "Any man who marries a [younger] woman, even if you feel very sprightly, it's going to be nice for a while, but there's a big gap ... and that gap is going to show itself."

The Musk family tree is complicated — and is growing more so by the day. Errol has seven children, while Elon has fathered 10 offspring.

Errol — who is a wealthy South African engineer — married model Maye Haldeman Musk in 1970, with whom he had three children: Elon, Kimbal and Tosca.

The couple split in 1979, before Errol went on to wed Heide Bezuidenhout, a young widow who already had two children, including Jana.

Errol and Heide had two biological children together, but he also helped raise Jana, who was just 4 years old when he became her stepfather. Errol and Heide eventually divorced after an 18-year marriage.

But the Musk family was subsequently stunned when Jana became pregnant with Errol's baby back in 2017. It led to a bitter falling out between Errol and Elon, with the Tesla CEO furious that his father had impregnated his stepsister.

Errol's other children were also "shocked" and uncomfortable about the surprise pregnancy.

"They still don't like it," Errol admitted in his new interview with the Sun. "They still feel a bit creepy about it, because she's their sister. Their half-sister."

Elon has not publicly commented on his father's latest baby admission. The pair are still estranged, with Elon describing his dad as a "terrible human being" in an interview with Rolling Stone.

Errol and Jana's son, born in 2017, is named Elliot Rush and is nicknamed "Rushi." Errol has not disclosed the name of their daughter, who was born in 2019.

Despite the fact they are no longer a couple, Errol said Jana and their two young children have come to stay at his home in Pretoria, South Africa.

"They spent a few days here about six months ago. And the kids were starting to get on my nerves," he candidly stated. "Then I miss them as soon as they have gone."

Errol admitted that he hadn't asked Jana for a paternity test to make sure he was the father of their now-3-year-old, saying: "I haven't checked her DNA. But she looks just like my other daughters ... So it's pretty obvious, you know."

However, the wealthy businessman stated that there are other women claiming that he has also fathered their children.

"I have about six people, women who claim that their child is my child right now. Obviously they are opportunists," he stated. "[But] there was a period in Johannesburg in the '80s that I was going out with a different woman every night. I had plenty of dates. So it's quite conceivable that one of them could actually come back and say, 'This is your child.' It's possible."

Meanwhile, the elderly patriarch says he hasn't ruled out the possibility of having more children in the future: "If I could have another child, I would. I can't see any reason not to."

Indeed, Errol (officially) has fewer children than his most famous son, Elon, 51, who is now a father of 10.

The Tesla CEO confirmed last week that he fathered twins with Shivon Zilis, a 36-year-old executive at his brain chip company Neuralink.

"Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis," Musk tweeted out last Thursday. "A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far."

The twins — whose names have not been disclosed — were born just weeks before Musk welcomed his second child, Exa Dark Sideræl, with Canadian pop star Grimes.

Musk and Grimes also have 2-year-old son X Æ A-Xii.

The world's richest man first became a father back in 2002, welcoming a son named Nevada with then-wife Justine Wilson.

Tragically, the baby boy died just 10 weeks later from sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS.

Elon and Justine went on to have five more children, twins Vivian and Griffin and triplets Kai, Saxon and Damian, before their divorce in 2008.

It's from the NY Post, so I don't know if this is fully beliveable...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 14, 2022, 05:39:23 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 14, 2022, 02:49:49 PMOf course it was a big deal in the 90s, but it wasn't like it just sprang from the ground it was exploding around 1988 and its 1988 IPO was a huge deal around here. That is where all the "Dellionaires" made their millions by jumping in early. Look I live in the area. I was there I think I know when Dell started to be a big deal. And I think it is a great company and I think Dell is a great business man. I think doing the built to order thing with little warehousing and phone/online sales was all great.

But come on. It is not like if Michael Dell never existed we would all be buying computers at Radio Shack and we would still be living like its 1985. It is not like built to order was some kind of revolutionary idea that he invented. He just applied it to computers. And it is not like everything else wasn't attempted to be sold online once the technology got there. He just was the first guy and he did it better. But what is revolutionary about selling computers? Selling things built to order? Doing it without a middle man? Nothing that hadn't already been done. He just put it together. And frankly the company is kind of dinosaur now, I mean people still need computers but so much is now done on phones and tablets. Time has moved on past Dell, though it obviously chugs along.

If Michael Dell truly was the revolutionary genius the people who worked at Dell claimed he was he would have been ahead of that curve. And that's all I am saying. I thought his worship by the employees in the company over the top.
sure, if he didn't do it, someone else would have come up with the idea, eventually.  Which is pretty much the same for everyone described as a genius: they were the first to think about it and then they were copied.

Elon Musk wasn't even the first to think about electric powered cars.  But he was the first to be successful at it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 14, 2022, 05:48:55 PM
Musk wasn't the first to set up a private rocketship company either.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 17, 2022, 12:11:26 AM
Quote from: viper37 on July 14, 2022, 05:39:23 PMsure, if he didn't do it, someone else would have come up with the idea, eventually.  Which is pretty much the same for everyone described as a genius: they were the first to think about it and then they were copied.

Sure. I think Dell is awesome. I just thought the hero worship in the company went just a little too far.

QuoteElon Musk wasn't even the first to think about electric powered cars.  But he was the first to be successful at it.

Sure. He made it cool at a very critical time I think.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on July 17, 2022, 05:26:31 AM
It seems that not even Trump likes Musk that much either.

QuoteTrump Lashes Out at Elon Musk and 'Rotten' Twitter Deal
Former US president made the comments at a rally in Alaska
Trump follows Musk remarks by promoting own Truth Social site

Former US President Donald Trump had harsh words for billionaire Elon Musk at a rally in Alaska Saturday, accusing the Tesla Inc. chief of inconsistency.

Referring to Musk's recent pronouncement that he'd never voted Republican until this June, Trump said that contradicted with what Musk had told him. Trump followed with an expletive description of the world's richest man and voiced his judgment on the Twitter Inc. acquisition deal that Musk struck but has since decided to withdraw from, calling it "rotten."

QuoteTrump on Elon Musk: "You know, he said the other day, Oh, I've never voted for a Republican. I said, I didn't know that, he told me he voted for me. So he's another bullshit artist."

Trump's comments come in the wake of Musk expressing a leaning toward Ron DeSantis, currently the Florida governor and a favored Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential election. DeSantis is, so far, the strongest potential competitor to Trump for the Republican nomination, and Musk's influence -- now numbering over 100 million followers on Twitter alone -- could make his endorsement significant.

"I'm undecided at this point on that election," Musk said in a June 21 interview with Bloomberg News. He said he will commit $20 million to $25 million to support his chosen contender.

After stressing the importance of free speech online, Trump urged the crowd to join his own Truth Social, a network closely modeled on Twitter's interface and functionality where the retweet button has been replaced with a "retruth" option.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on July 17, 2022, 06:14:26 AM
Trump was excited to be unbanned I guess. Had already gone over a million times the gloating posts he would make.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on July 17, 2022, 06:23:44 AM
Quote from: Josquius on July 17, 2022, 06:14:26 AMTrump was excited to be unbanned I guess. Had already gone over a million times the gloating posts he would make.

Well, maybe that and the fact that he also launched his own Twitter knock off (with blackjack and hookers!).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Legbiter on July 17, 2022, 11:54:04 AM
I think the success of Musk is highly contingent, all of his companies and life in general seems to always be teetering on the edge of catastrophe. :hmm: But his reusable rockets are a major blessing, he's a big player in carbon sequestering projects and driving the switch to electrical vehicles. The constant whiny and gossipy asshurt he causes English speaking online progressives seems to be because of his penchant for shitposting and his slightly heterodox views away from whatever is trending that week on Twitter.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on July 17, 2022, 02:09:44 PM
Quote from: Legbiter on July 17, 2022, 11:54:04 AMI think the success of Musk is highly contingent, all of his companies and life in general seems to always be teetering on the edge of catastrophe. :hmm: But his reusable rockets are a major blessing, he's a big player in carbon sequestering projects and driving the switch to electrical vehicles. The constant whiny and gossipy asshurt he causes English speaking online progressives seems to be because of his penchant for shitposting and his slightly heterodox views away from whatever is trending that week on Twitter.



Slightly heterodox views? :/

And no. There's far more than that though it would be convenient if that's all it was.
For all the good stuff his companies do there's a lot of snake oil also. The boring company stuff is just painful.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 18, 2022, 08:57:15 AM
Quote from: Legbiter on July 17, 2022, 11:54:04 AMI think the success of Musk is highly contingent, all of his companies and life in general seems to always be teetering on the edge of catastrophe. :hmm: But his reusable rockets are a major blessing, he's a big player in carbon sequestering projects and driving the switch to electrical vehicles. The constant whiny and gossipy asshurt he causes English speaking online progressives seems to be because of his penchant for shitposting and his slightly heterodox views away from whatever is trending that week on Twitter.



Accusing a person who risked their life to rescue boys trapped in a cave of being a pedophile does not fit well into your narrative
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on July 18, 2022, 09:26:32 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 18, 2022, 08:57:15 AM
Quote from: Legbiter on July 17, 2022, 11:54:04 AMI think the success of Musk is highly contingent, all of his companies and life in general seems to always be teetering on the edge of catastrophe. :hmm: But his reusable rockets are a major blessing, he's a big player in carbon sequestering projects and driving the switch to electrical vehicles. The constant whiny and gossipy asshurt he causes English speaking online progressives seems to be because of his penchant for shitposting and his slightly heterodox views away from whatever is trending that week on Twitter.



Accusing a person who risked their life to rescue boys trapped in a cave of being a pedophile does not fit well into your narrative

I mean accusing the man of being a pedo wasn't what had been trending until he said it...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 18, 2022, 10:34:38 AM
Yeah, it was the "you're a pedo because you don't think my cave submarine attention whoring is a good thing" thing that put Musk across the line for me. Nothing about left or right or politics, just that the man is not decent.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on July 18, 2022, 10:51:21 AM
Quote from: Jacob on July 18, 2022, 10:34:38 AMYeah, it was the "you're a pedo because you don't think my cave submarine attention whoring is a good thing" thing that put Musk across the line for me. Nothing about left or right or politics, just that the man is not decent.

I created a thread on him because of that. -_- :cheers:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on July 18, 2022, 10:56:00 AM
He also (allegedly) assaulted a flight attendant and then got SpaceX to pay her off.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on July 18, 2022, 10:59:38 AM
Berkut's evolution from a Musk hater to a Musk apologist is also quite interesting.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 18, 2022, 12:10:41 PM
Quote from: Legbiter on July 17, 2022, 11:54:04 AMI think the success of Musk is highly contingent, all of his companies and life in general seems to always be teetering on the edge of catastrophe. :hmm: But his reusable rockets are a major blessing, he's a big player in carbon sequestering projects and driving the switch to electrical vehicles. The constant whiny and gossipy asshurt he causes English speaking online progressives seems to be because of his penchant for shitposting and his slightly heterodox views away from whatever is trending that week on Twitter.

It is more than just the shitposting. I don't care about shitposting and in fact that is probably a huge reason he is making saving the world cool. Shitpost and have heterodox views I don't give a shit.

But it is the weird stuff he does that makes me nervous. Eventually assaulting people and neglecting your children and casual drug use kind of stuff will eventually take him down. Wish he wouldn't do that kind of shit, especially not so publicly.

Or not. Maybe eventually you get so rich you can do whatever you want. We will see how this lawsuit goes, speaking of twitter.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on July 18, 2022, 12:12:17 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on July 18, 2022, 10:59:38 AMBerkut's evolution from a Musk hater to a Musk apologist is also quite interesting.


Ive never been either of those things, actually.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 18, 2022, 12:33:49 PM
Would you prefer "staunch defender"?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on July 18, 2022, 12:59:02 PM
I imagine that Berkut hates bad arguments, or good arguments taken too far, even in support of a good position. 

Was Hitler a bad guy?  Most certainly.  Was he worse than Hitler?  No, he wasn't, that's just the objective truth.  The fact that someone is going to correctly argue that Hitler wasn't worse than Hitler doesn't make one a Hitler apologist.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on July 18, 2022, 01:08:28 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 18, 2022, 12:10:41 PMBut it is the weird stuff he does that makes me nervous. Eventually assaulting people and neglecting your children and casual drug use kind of stuff will eventually take him down.

Although I would not encourage corporate leaders to engage in those activities, many have done all that and much worse without impacting their efficacy much.

What bothers ME is the erratic *corporate* behavior. Regular violation of SEC rules is a very bad habit. Having a crypto initiative for show is one thing, sinking billions in company treasury funds into such a speculative asset is just bad business practice.  One can slap a master narrative on the twitter fiasco but apply Occam's razor and it is what it appears, a decision to commit to a multi-billion transaction based on a transitory whim or mood swing, to buy a company that would just be a distraction from other ventures that require his close attention.  And my concern would be that it appears that his erratic behavior is getting worse over time.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on July 18, 2022, 01:09:34 PM
Quote from: DGuller on July 18, 2022, 12:59:02 PMWas Hitler a bad guy?  Most certainly.  Was he worse than Hitler?  No, he wasn't, that's just the objective truth.

Not so.  Adolf was worse than Alois.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on July 18, 2022, 01:12:21 PM
I do find the general arguments of the form "He couldn't have gotten to where he is by being X" to be flawed, for multiple reasons.  One flaw is that humans tend to vastly underestimate luck in success.  Another flaw is that he may not have been X when he was getting to where he is today, but he became X when he got there.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 18, 2022, 01:13:18 PM
Quote from: DGuller on July 18, 2022, 01:12:21 PMI do find the general arguments of the form "He couldn't have gotten to where he is by being X" to be flawed, for multiple reasons.  One flaw is that humans tend to vastly underestimate luck in success.  Another flaw is that he may not have been X when he was getting to where he is today, but he became X when he got there.

Agreed on both counts.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on July 18, 2022, 01:16:47 PM
Quote from: DGuller on July 18, 2022, 01:12:21 PMI do find the general arguments of the form "He couldn't have gotten to where he is by being X" to be flawed, for multiple reasons.  One flaw is that humans tend to vastly underestimate luck in success.  Another flaw is that he may not have been X when he was getting to where he is today, but he became X when he got there.


Both good points and another is personal qualities that may be conducive to great success in one context (time, place, business environment etc.) may be less useful or even counterproductive when circumstances change.

US business history is littered with cases of highly regarded corporate leaders and entrepeneurs who lost their reputations by sticking around too long.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 18, 2022, 01:45:04 PM
Quote from: DGuller on July 18, 2022, 12:59:02 PMI imagine that Berkut hates bad arguments, or good arguments taken too far, even in support of a good position. 

Was Hitler a bad guy?  Most certainly.  Was he worse than Hitler?  No, he wasn't, that's just the objective truth.  The fact that someone is going to correctly argue that Hitler wasn't worse than Hitler doesn't make one a Hitler apologist.

Good thing nobody was making that argument.  :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 18, 2022, 01:49:32 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on July 18, 2022, 01:16:47 PM
Quote from: DGuller on July 18, 2022, 01:12:21 PMI do find the general arguments of the form "He couldn't have gotten to where he is by being X" to be flawed, for multiple reasons.  One flaw is that humans tend to vastly underestimate luck in success.  Another flaw is that he may not have been X when he was getting to where he is today, but he became X when he got there.


Both good points and another is personal qualities that may be conducive to great success in one context (time, place, business environment etc.) may be less useful or even counterproductive when circumstances change.

US business history is littered with cases of highly regarded corporate leaders and entrepeneurs who lost their reputations by sticking around too long.


With Musk, it is likely the latter rather than the former.  His personality quirks are probably well suited to start ups.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on July 18, 2022, 04:42:52 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 18, 2022, 12:33:49 PMWould you prefer "staunch defender"?
Nope, not that either.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 18, 2022, 06:11:24 PM
I get where Berkut is coming from. I end up defending all kinds of shitty figures online just because I don't sufficiently hate them by the standards of the person I am talking to.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on July 19, 2022, 12:04:46 AM
I thought I tried pretty hard to explain my perspective on Musk.

He is rather obviously a pretty shitty human being.

But that is by far the least interesting part of who he is - being a shitty father, or crappy boss, or self absorbed asshole? There are literally millions of people out there just like him in those areas. Who cares? How is that interesting? 

He is an interesting person we are talking about because of the things he has accomplished. But the fact that he is an asshole, means that people who get worked up about what an asshole he is tend to try to minimize the things he accomplished. That makes no sense to me, and makes the interesting discussion harder to have.

It is celebrity worship. *I* am not the one who is obsessed with him, much more it is the people who feel like they need to follow his personal life. It is tabloid fascination with someone being asshole *because* of his accomplishments. Absent them, his being a shitty dad or a crappy boss is completely uninteresting. I find Musk interesting because I find the things he has accomplished interesting. I think a discussion about those things is interesting. I think arguing with someone about whether Musk is the key to lowering cost to orbit, or whether that was going to happen anyway, and he just happened to be in the right place to reap the reward interesting. People who disagree with me about his accomplishments - that is an interesting discussion. 

But whether or not he is a good dad? Or whether he wanted a hand job from his assistant? Those are the LEAST interesting things about him. He is a unique figure in the areas of space exploitation, electric and digital cars. There is nothing unique about his being a douchebag.

It is just another form of celebrity worship. This desire to know all about the personal lives of famous people.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 19, 2022, 12:40:20 AM
Quote from: Berkut on July 19, 2022, 12:04:46 AMIt is just another form of celebrity worship. This desire to know all about the personal lives of famous people.

I don't want to know anything about him. I just want him to get on with making rockets and electric cars.

But somehow I keep getting bombarded with his shit anyway. He seems to have a lot to do with that though. Like he wants to constantly be out there under the public microscope and wants all the attention. I would rather not have him getting any of my attention.

I just don't want all this bullshit, and the things Minsky said, to get in the way of the stuff he is doing that is important.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PJL on July 19, 2022, 03:14:57 AM
Yeah, Elon Musk being an attention-seeking whore is the real problem here. There are plenty of douche-bag bosses that have been successful in their industries, perhaps because of it. While a bad thing, at least most of those have had a public persona of being a well-rounded person in the media, and where they have been seen to be asshole it's always been work-related. It's when it spills out into their personal lives that it becomes OTT.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 19, 2022, 07:16:49 AM
Being an ass is the very least of his flaws.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on July 19, 2022, 12:25:28 PM
Quote from: PJL on July 19, 2022, 03:14:57 AMYeah, Elon Musk being an attention-seeking whore is the real problem here. There are plenty of douche-bag bosses that have been successful in their industries, perhaps because of it. While a bad thing, at least most of those have had a public persona of being a well-rounded person in the media, and where they have been seen to be asshole it's always been work-related. It's when it spills out into their personal lives that it becomes OTT.
He cannot make you care about his personal life. He cannot force you to pay attention to him, even if he desperately wants your attention.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on July 19, 2022, 12:52:57 PM
Us sophisticates scoff at the tabloid interest in the most important people shaping the modern world - we are above all that.

It is totally different to read dozens of books diving into the personal lives of the most important people from centuries ago. That is just a proper intellectual pursuit.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 19, 2022, 05:43:12 PM
Quote from: Berkut on July 19, 2022, 12:25:28 PMHe cannot make you care about his personal life. He cannot force you to pay attention to him, even if he desperately wants your attention.

Look I only care because I am concerned it will interfere with Tesla and SpaceX.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 19, 2022, 05:43:45 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on July 19, 2022, 12:52:57 PMUs sophisticates scoff at the tabloid interest in the most important people shaping the modern world - we are above all that.

It is totally different to read dozens of books diving into the personal lives of the most important people from centuries ago. That is just a proper intellectual pursuit.

Look I don't care that Tiberius is a dirty old man, I only worry that it might compromise the Roman Empire ok?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 19, 2022, 05:48:42 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 19, 2022, 05:43:45 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on July 19, 2022, 12:52:57 PMUs sophisticates scoff at the tabloid interest in the most important people shaping the modern world - we are above all that.

It is totally different to read dozens of books diving into the personal lives of the most important people from centuries ago. That is just a proper intellectual pursuit.

Look I don't care that Tiberius is a dirty old man, I only worry that it might compromise the Roman Empire ok?

I believe AR was making the same point.  :)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 19, 2022, 05:52:09 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 19, 2022, 05:48:42 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 19, 2022, 05:43:45 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on July 19, 2022, 12:52:57 PMUs sophisticates scoff at the tabloid interest in the most important people shaping the modern world - we are above all that.

It is totally different to read dozens of books diving into the personal lives of the most important people from centuries ago. That is just a proper intellectual pursuit.

Look I don't care that Tiberius is a dirty old man, I only worry that it might compromise the Roman Empire ok?

I believe AR was making the same point.  :)

Yeah I was ironically restating my position on Musk incorporating the critique supplied by AR.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on July 19, 2022, 10:48:53 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on July 19, 2022, 12:52:57 PMUs sophisticates scoff at the tabloid interest in the most important people shaping the modern world - we are above all that.

It is totally different to read dozens of books diving into the personal lives of the most important people from centuries ago. That is just a proper intellectual pursuit.
If there are dozens of books that go into the personal lives of people from centuries ago, and you find that interesting and read them all, more power to you.

I suspect that the narrative of Elon Musk a century of two from now will make passing, if any, mention of his many kids or how he was an asshole on the internet.

He will either be remembered as a titan of business and industry, or not at all.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 19, 2022, 11:36:32 PM
I think it's likely that if Musk is remembered as a titan, there'll be notes about his many children and his internet persona and whatnot - but that those will be interpreted to serve the larger narratives and themes that interest whoever is doing the remembering.

Overall, I do agree with you Berkut. Musk's personality and apparent attention-craving is not that significant. I still engage with it on occasion, but it is at best a guilty pleasure and at worst a complete waste of time.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on July 25, 2022, 05:17:06 AM
More "Elon Musk behaving badly" alleged news:

QuoteElon Musk denies reported affair with wife of Google co-founder
Tesla chief rejects Wall Street Journal claims he had affair with Nicole Shanahan

Elon Musk has denied a Wall Street Journal report claiming he had an affair with Nicole Shanahan, the wife of the Google co-founder Sergey Brin, accusing the outlet of running "hit pieces" on him and Tesla.

The chief executive of the electric carmaker tweeted on Monday rejecting the claim that he had an affair with Shanahan as "total BS", adding that he and Brin were still friends.

Citing unidentified sources, the WSJ reported at the weekend that Musk had engaged in a brief affair with Shanahan in December last year. The paper claimed the affair had prompted Brin to file for divorce from Shanahan in January and had ended the tech billionaires' long friendship.

Musk tweeted that he was at a party with Brin on Sunday and that there was "nothing romantic" between him and Shanahan, a lawyer and research fellow at CodeX, an organisation dedicated to using technology to improve legal processes, based at Stanford University in California. She is also the president of a foundation that focuses on criminal justice reform, reproductive longevity for women and climate science.

In a later tweet to his more than 100 million followers, Musk said he had "lost count" of the number of "hit pieces" about him published by the WSJ. Musk claimed the news organisation had once reported that the FBI was about to arrest him, although a 2018 WSJ article alleging a criminal investigation into Tesla does not refer to arrests being planned.

Brin filed for divorce citing "irreconcilable differences", the Journal said, quoting records it said were filed in Santa Clara County superior court. Brin is a board member at Google's parent company, Alphabet, and is the world's eighth richest man with a fortune worth $94.6bn, according to Bloomberg. Musk is the world's richest man and is worth $242bn.

In its report, the WSJ also said Brin instructed his advisers to sell personal investments in Musk's companies after he came to know about the affair. The paper said it was not able to determine how large those investments were, nor whether any sales were made.

The WSJ allegation was published as Musk faces a court battle in October over his attempts to terminate his $44bn purchase of Twitter. Twitter wants to force Musk to go ahead with an agreed transaction that values the company at $54.20 a share. Musk walked away from the deal this month, citing concerns over the number of bot accounts on the social media platform.

The Wall Street Journal, Google and Shanahan have been contacted for comment.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on July 25, 2022, 05:58:14 AM
Shanahan is of asian descent. Totally not Musk's type, so no.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on July 25, 2022, 10:18:36 AM
So Elrich Bachman in Silicon Valley was based on Musk, then? :P

(https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/362481f9d2f22bea29d0a2c4127fb4040147588f1fb50ecf2287dcb9693bfd39692274dd39cef4c2c77d4a247d7e91cf_copy_-_h_2017.jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on July 25, 2022, 01:28:12 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on July 25, 2022, 05:58:14 AMShanahan is of asian descent. Totally not Musk's type, so no.

She has tits, a vagina and a heartbeat, so maybe?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 25, 2022, 01:38:30 PM
Quote from: The Larch on July 25, 2022, 05:17:06 AMMore "Elon Musk behaving badly" alleged news:
:berkut:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on July 28, 2022, 09:23:36 AM
Not only is Elon a douche, tesla is doing douchey things too. Not content to let BMW be the main car company with the reputation to nickle and dime people by charging  to activate features, tesla goes one step further and deactives feature already present on used cars.

https://futurism.com/tesla-range-reduce-remote
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 28, 2022, 09:33:24 AM
Quote from: HVC on July 28, 2022, 09:23:36 AMNot only is Elon a douche, tesla is doing douchey things too. Not content to let BMW be the main car company with the reputation to nickle and dime people by charging  to activate features, tesla goes one step further and deactives feature already present on used cars.

https://futurism.com/tesla-range-reduce-remote

Seems like a rehash of games publishers tying online functionalities of their games to user accounts, so if someone sells a used copy of the game, the new buyer has to pay for a new online access.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 28, 2022, 09:37:08 AM
I can see why there might be some confusion as the battery system was upgraded beyond its nameplate capabilities. Of course:

QuoteThe vehicle, which had been been sold twice before, originally came with a 60 kWh battery that was upgraded under warranty years later to a 90 kWh one by Tesla.

It was done by Tesla so hardly some unofficial modification that would kind of justify weird shit happening.

Also:

QuoteFuturism has reached out to Tesla for comment, but we're not holding our breath, as the company dissolved its PR department in 2020.

Tesla dissolved its PR department? For a company that is primarily powered by its celebrity owner, its cool factor, and consumer goodwill? Huh. That seems like a stupid move.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on July 28, 2022, 09:42:38 AM
Article also mentions removing Enhanced Autopilot and Full Self Driving Capabilities on a other vehicle.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 28, 2022, 09:51:24 AM
Quote from: HVC on July 28, 2022, 09:42:38 AMArticle also mentions removing Enhanced Autopilot and Full Self Driving Capabilities on a other vehicle.



That could be a mistake. The article they linked didn't go into much detail though, obviously, it is troubling you can buy a used car and the original manufacturer can fuck with it in some way.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 28, 2022, 09:55:36 AM
Interesting strategy, to deliberately lower the resale value of your product.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on July 28, 2022, 10:08:43 AM
Quote from: Jacob on July 28, 2022, 09:55:36 AMInteresting strategy, to deliberately lower the resale value of your product.
I'm not sure how else it could work as we're moving towards more and more connected cars.

I did a little bit of work on this once (mainly based on the personal data stuff in the Europe/GDPR). For it to work, at least in that area, the car companies need to be collecting data which they can then analyse and use in ways that provides a useful service to users/owners. From a regulatory perspective they are on the hook for it - that's related to stuff like telematics and GDPR fines which could be a big issue.

But I imagine an ongoing liability risk with things like autopilot and self-driving is part of the issue. Not sure how that's managed but it seems like the more the "car" does (which relies on the programming of the manufacturer) the more exposed they are plus there will be costs in maintaining that software - so I can see, from their perspective, how a subscription model mitigates that to an extent (especially with things like patching etc - it's probably better/safer to switch off an unpatched service than let those models keep rolling around). And, like Microsoft and Apple etc, they will probably want to encourage people to upgrade regularly rather than lots of second hand - I imagine deprecating software will be part of that.

I think it's part of a wider trend away from "ownership" to some model of subscription/service as more and more things that we are used to owning rely on software that is being maintained by someone. But I think it's going to be shaky because it will push up against things people think they should "own" - and there are things where I absolutely do not want a connected device/system for exactly that reason.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on July 28, 2022, 10:43:02 AM
At the luxury and premium end of the market, you have leasing rates of 60+% already in markets like the US, so paying for a service does not seem out of the question. Also these customers apparently have no desire to own the car outright.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on July 28, 2022, 11:03:39 AM
Quote from: HVC on July 28, 2022, 09:42:38 AMArticle also mentions removing Enhanced Autopilot and Full Self Driving Capabilities on a other vehicle.


Autopilot/self-driving is purely a software based feature.  That is, every Tesla car has the capability, but the vehicle owner has to pay for the software upgrade which is then uploaded.  Kind of like getting a DLC for a game.  So "removal" of the feature just means someone at Tesla HQ clicking a box.  It doesn't do anything to the actual car.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on July 28, 2022, 11:26:44 AM
Lowering battery capacity is also just a checkbox (of sorts), the point being a car had it, was sold with it, and then that was removed.

To sheilbh's point, the original owner paid for it. Don't know what the life cost is, but 8k per vehicle seems pretty good.

I know there are nuances to situations like this, but these strike as wrong be it BMW charging you to activate seat warmers or Tesla deactivating previously functioning options.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 28, 2022, 11:51:37 AM
I had a similar problem with KIA - after my first year there was a software upgrade (which had to be done in the shop, not a remote function) which increased the range.  A couple years later there was another "upgrade" but the range was decreased.  I had to put it back into the shop to get that fixed.  And they tried to charge me for it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on July 28, 2022, 02:55:00 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on July 28, 2022, 11:03:39 AMAutopilot/self-driving is purely a software based feature.  That is, every Tesla car has the capability
Actually no Tesla has the promised capability.  :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on July 28, 2022, 03:02:56 PM
My car has services like showing gas prices on the navigation system, being able to pay gas without leaving the car, some navigation features, parking the car while not sitting in it, etc. that come with a annual fee if you want the feature.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on August 11, 2022, 03:22:48 PM
 "Elon Musk admitted to his biographer that the reason the Hyperloop was announced—even tho he had no intention of pursuing it—was to try to disrupt the California high-speed rail project to get in the way of that actually succeeding."
https://twitter.com/brenttoderian/status/1557224539267817472
The titans of tech brought plenty of disruption to our broken transportation system but delivered little in the way of innovation.

And more details about the general douchiness of Elon Musk business behavior:
https://time.com/6203815/elon-musk-flaws-billionaire-visions/

QuoteHe has a history of floating false solutions to the drawbacks of our over-reliance on cars that stifle efforts to give people other options. The Boring Company was supposed to solve traffic, not be the Las Vegas amusement ride it is now. As I've written in my book, Musk admitted to his biographer Ashlee Vance that Hyperloop was all about trying to get legislators to cancel plans for high-speed rail in California—even though he had no plans to build it.
(just 'cause I like to repeat it ;) , but Berkut will accuse me of tabloid something something)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on August 11, 2022, 07:38:04 PM
Quote from: viper37 on August 11, 2022, 03:22:48 PM
QuoteHe has a history of floating false solutions to the drawbacks of our over-reliance on cars that stifle efforts to give people other options. The Boring Company was supposed to solve traffic, not be the Las Vegas amusement ride it is now. As I've written in my book, Musk admitted to his biographer Ashlee Vance that Hyperloop was all about trying to get legislators to cancel plans for high-speed rail in California—even though he had no plans to build it.
(just 'cause I like to repeat it ;) , but Berkut will accuse me of tabloid something something)

I wonder why Musk's biographer didn't include that detail in the book (which I read).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on August 12, 2022, 04:05:28 AM
Quote from: viper37 on August 11, 2022, 03:22:48 PM"Elon Musk admitted to his biographer that the reason the Hyperloop was announced—even tho he had no intention of pursuing it—was to try to disrupt the California high-speed rail project to get in the way of that actually succeeding."
https://twitter.com/brenttoderian/status/1557224539267817472
The titans of tech brought plenty of disruption to our broken transportation system but delivered little in the way of innovation.

And more details about the general douchiness of Elon Musk business behavior:
https://time.com/6203815/elon-musk-flaws-billionaire-visions/

QuoteHe has a history of floating false solutions to the drawbacks of our over-reliance on cars that stifle efforts to give people other options. The Boring Company was supposed to solve traffic, not be the Las Vegas amusement ride it is now. As I've written in my book, Musk admitted to his biographer Ashlee Vance that Hyperloop was all about trying to get legislators to cancel plans for high-speed rail in California—even though he had no plans to build it.
(just 'cause I like to repeat it ;) , but Berkut will accuse me of tabloid something something)

I saw this too and thought to post it here....but click through the link trail there and there's no definitive proof of him saying this sadly.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on August 12, 2022, 02:01:01 PM
Quote from: grumbler on August 11, 2022, 07:38:04 PMI wonder why Musk's biographer didn't include that detail in the book (which I read).
https://jalopnik.com/did-musk-propose-hyperloop-to-stop-california-high-spee-1849402460

QuoteElon was never really selling the Hyperloop after the announcement," Vance said. "The tunnel stuff, I think, is much more questionable. I still don't understand how The Boring Company digs tunnels faster or better than anybody else. Unlike SpaceX, Tesla, it's not clear to me that there's any major innovation in the tunneling. I just don't understand what the breakthrough is on that one."
"So did Elon try to sell a green project to make money? Or did he just have an idea and blurt it out," I asked Vance.
"I'm 99.9-percent sure it's the latter," Vance tells me.

Might not be as douchey as it was hinted in the Time's article, but it's still one more billionaire against fast public transit in North America, and from Musk, one more unrealistic idea floating out there that he hasn't delivered on.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on August 12, 2022, 05:38:34 PM
So that actual quote from Vance is
QuoteWith any luck, the high-speed rail would be canceled. Musk said as much to me [Ashlee Vance] during a series of e-mails and phone calls leading up to the announcement. "Down the road, I might fund or advise on a Hyperloop project, but right now I can't take my eye off the ball at either SpaceX or Tesla," he wrote.

So, he didn't say it, Vance inferred that it was true based on the fact that Musk actually said that "Down the road, I might fund or advise on a Hyperloop project."  That's why Vance only noted in the book that "it seemed at the time" that Hyperloop was "designed to make the public and legislators rethink high speed trains."

So, once again, we have people taking other peoples' words, re-writing them to make the subject appear more evil than even the quoted source claims, and boom!:  sensational article to aid book sales.

Musk is a douche, but the people lying about him for their own gain are also douches.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on August 13, 2022, 07:47:54 AM
Why would I accuse you of anything?

It's bizarre how much you guys get pissed off over anyone not agreeing with every little detail of your obsession.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on August 13, 2022, 01:13:59 PM
Quote from: Berkut on August 13, 2022, 07:47:54 AMWhy would I accuse you of anything?

because you spent 15 pages denouncing people criticizing Musk.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on August 13, 2022, 02:11:48 PM
Quote from: viper37 on August 13, 2022, 01:13:59 PM
Quote from: Berkut on August 13, 2022, 07:47:54 AMWhy would I accuse you of anything?

because you spent 15 pages denouncing people criticizing Musk.

:rolleyes:  Let us know when you are done nailing yourself to that cross.
(https://www.thefilmyap.com/wp-content/uploads/Life-of-Brian-inside.jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on September 07, 2022, 06:20:16 AM
QuoteJUST IN:

Twitter, $TWTR, has shown this message in the Elon Musk vs Twitter merger trial:

May 8th, Musk to Morgan Stanley: "let's slow down just a few days ... it won't make sense to buy Twitter if we are heading into World War."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on September 07, 2022, 07:46:49 AM
Meh.  Standing alone not such a killer doc.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on September 07, 2022, 08:26:00 AM
Good news for Musk is that there is a similar social media platform coming on the market at a truly bargain price.

It's the truth.  And social.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on October 04, 2022, 05:58:39 PM
So Musk - after his "I love peace and people, so Ukraine should compromise with Russia tweet" is apparently saying he'll buy Twitter at the original price he offered.

Saw another thing that one of his major backers is some dubious Saudi Prince or other.

I guess we'll see if this is just a stunt to make people stop talking about being an idiot on Ukraine, or whether he's going to actually follow through.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on October 04, 2022, 07:19:04 PM
Quote from: Jacob on October 04, 2022, 05:58:39 PMSo Musk - after his "I love peace and people, so Ukraine should compromise with Russia tweet" is apparently saying he'll buy Twitter at the original price he offered.

Saw another thing that one of his major backers is some dubious Saudi Prince or other.

I guess we'll see if this is just a stunt to make people stop talking about being an idiot on Ukraine, or whether he's going to actually follow through.

That doesn't narrow it down, they're all dubious.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on October 04, 2022, 07:29:53 PM
I'm kind of surprised how many pies the saudis have their fingers in.

*edit* as to twitter, I had read that he wasn't going to win. So he might just be getting ahead of that story. He seems fine at being seen as a dick, but doesn't like to be seen as losing.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on October 05, 2022, 12:55:55 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on October 04, 2022, 07:19:04 PM
Quote from: Jacob on October 04, 2022, 05:58:39 PMSo Musk - after his "I love peace and people, so Ukraine should compromise with Russia tweet" is apparently saying he'll buy Twitter at the original price he offered.

Saw another thing that one of his major backers is some dubious Saudi Prince or other.

I guess we'll see if this is just a stunt to make people stop talking about being an idiot on Ukraine, or whether he's going to actually follow through.

That doesn't narrow it down, they're all dubious.


And already invested in twitter, so no change there
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on October 05, 2022, 01:08:28 AM
Saw a comment the other day that it's natural for Musk to weigh in on the Ukrainian war - after all he knows a few things about failed takeovers.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on October 05, 2022, 03:38:30 AM
Quote from: Syt on October 05, 2022, 01:08:28 AMSaw a comment the other day that it's natural for Musk to weigh in on the Ukrainian war - after all he knows a few things about failed takeovers.
:lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on October 05, 2022, 11:13:02 AM
I am guessing Musk has gotten more financial backing to complete the deal, as I have always assumed his immediate buyer's remorse was based on his realization that Twitter is not a very good investment and he had staked a fuckton of his personal Tesla shares on it. That plus the appearance thus far that the Delaware chancery court was not going to be kind to him.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on October 05, 2022, 05:52:07 PM
Man this is a soap opera:

QuoteExclusive: Apollo, Sixth Street no longer in talks to finance Twitter deal, sources say

By Chibuike Oguh

NEW YORK, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Apollo Global Management Inc (APO.N) and Sixth Street, which were looking to provide financing to Elon Musk earlier this year for his proposed buyout of Twitter Inc (TWTR.N), are no longer in talks with the billionaire entrepreneur, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Musk and Twitter are in litigation after the entrepreneur initially pulled his offer to buy the company are in talks to end the case and clear the way for the $44 billion deal to close.

Twitter and Musk did not immediately respond to request for comment, while Apollo and Sixth Street declined to comment.

Musk has said he would finance the deal with his own cash, co-investors and bank financing.

Earlier in the year, Apollo was also considering ways it could provide financing to a deal, sources previously told Reuters.

Sixth Street was part of the talks, where the investors were looking at providing about $1 billion for the deal.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/exclusive-musk-apollo-no-longer-talks-finance-twitter-deal-source-2022-10-05/

... though I guess providing $1 billion out of $54 billion isn't that much all things considered, so maybe Musk can close the gap?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on October 05, 2022, 06:23:59 PM
Surprised he hasn't lost more investors. I would think spending months trying to bad mouth Twitter to get out of your troll gone bad would have soured the money people.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 05, 2022, 06:27:15 PM
Quote from: HVC on October 05, 2022, 06:23:59 PMSurprised he hasn't lost more investors. I would think spending months trying to bad mouth Twitter to get out of your troll gone bad would have soured the money people.

These were lenders not investors.  Lenders can money on a shitty deal.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on October 06, 2022, 08:09:51 AM
Meanwhile no stipulation of settlement has been filed in the Chancery Court in Delaware.  The case is still set for trial in 11 days.

I wouldn't bank on a deal happening until I get confirmation of closing.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on October 06, 2022, 10:30:05 AM
So a couple ideas that are totally out of my ass:

-wasn't the original deal contingent on financing? if the changes in the market mean the financing is going to fall through, maybe musk is like, "i'll let the financing fall through and then i'll get out of it that way"
-did the financing involve debt with interest rates based on the rates at the time of the deal? if so, while Musk may be overpaying for twitter based on current market prices, he may be getting a partially offsetting bargain due to debt that is now super cheap. if so the folks financing this are the ones that would be taking a bath.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on October 06, 2022, 01:23:04 PM
"Obtaining the financing or any alternative financing is not a condition to the closing of the merger."

From the proxy statement summarizing the merger terms.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on October 06, 2022, 01:24:52 PM
Without knowing the minute details, my baseline assumption is Musk will not willingly close the deal unless he has found some mechanism on the back end to offload most of the risk to other parties--I don't think he is actually willing to end up in a situation where he has to lose tens of billions in Tesla equity shares to secure Twitter.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on October 06, 2022, 01:38:58 PM
Found the financing language: "(f) Parent acknowledges and agrees that neither the obtaining of the Financing or any alternative financing, nor the completion of any issuance of securities contemplated by the Financing or any alternative financing (including the Alternative Financing), is a condition to the Closing, and reaffirms its obligation to consummate the transactions contemplated by this Agreement irrespective and independently of the availability of the Financing or any alternative financing (including the Alternative Financing), or the completion of any such issuance, subject to the applicable conditions set forth in Article VII."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on October 07, 2022, 12:37:55 PM
In normal English nouns are not written with a capital letter. Is that specific to the way you write contracts?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on October 07, 2022, 12:46:58 PM
Quote from: Zanza on October 07, 2022, 12:37:55 PMIn normal English nouns are not written with a capital letter. Is that specific to the way you write contracts?

Capitalizing words in a contract or other legal document would typically mean that the particular word has been defined somewhere else in the document.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on October 07, 2022, 12:49:48 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on October 06, 2022, 01:23:04 PM"Obtaining the financing or any alternative financing is not a condition to the closing of the merger."

From the proxy statement summarizing the merger terms.

Why would he do that?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on October 07, 2022, 12:50:47 PM
Quote from: Barrister on October 07, 2022, 12:46:58 PM
Quote from: Zanza on October 07, 2022, 12:37:55 PMIn normal English nouns are not written with a capital letter. Is that specific to the way you write contracts?

Capitalizing words in a contract or other legal document would typically mean that the particular word has been defined somewhere else in the document.
Ah ok, that makes sense.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on October 07, 2022, 01:44:52 PM
Quote from: Zanza on October 07, 2022, 12:50:47 PM
Quote from: Barrister on October 07, 2022, 12:46:58 PM
Quote from: Zanza on October 07, 2022, 12:37:55 PMIn normal English nouns are not written with a capital letter. Is that specific to the way you write contracts?

Capitalizing words in a contract or other legal document would typically mean that the particular word has been defined somewhere else in the document.
Ah ok, that makes sense.

As Beeb said, when terms are uniquely defined in this fashion the defined word becomes a proper noun:  not "an agreement" but "the Agreement."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on October 07, 2022, 03:37:34 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on October 07, 2022, 12:49:48 PMWhy would he do that?

Because reputable corporate boards won't commit to a merger agreement with a financing contingency.  It's a change of control of a major corporation, not the sale of a cottage.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on October 07, 2022, 06:44:00 PM
(https://preview.redd.it/sgj0wxmsles91.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=4094a1b9d84d82438d6ef64f34fa9a366ee516b8)

Source (paywall): https://www.ft.com/content/5ef14997-982e-4f03-8548-b5d67202623a
Source (no paywall): https://archive.ph/cbjyQ
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on October 07, 2022, 07:13:09 PM
He's well on his way to Bond villain.  Just needs some lasers to attach to his satellites to ensure his world order :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on October 07, 2022, 07:18:02 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on October 07, 2022, 03:37:34 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on October 07, 2022, 12:49:48 PMWhy would he do that?

Because reputable corporate boards won't commit to a merger agreement with a financing contingency.  It's a change of control of a major corporation, not the sale of a cottage.

Interesting, i checked a few agreements and didn't see one in any of them...there are other contingencies but not financing...i would have thought that someone like Elon Musk would have protected himself because $44 billion is a ton of money even for him and if financing did fall through that could mean a firesale of tesla stock: he could really get burned.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on October 07, 2022, 07:21:23 PM
Well, there's the exit clause - the $1 billion dollar cancellation fee. Right?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on October 07, 2022, 07:21:39 PM
Quote from: HVC on October 07, 2022, 07:13:09 PMHe's well on his way to Bond villain.  Just needs some lasers to attach to his satellites to ensure his world order :P

We've spent 20 years arguing about our various opinions on various topics like what to do in the event taiwan is invaded or how to solve ukraine...shouldn't he be able to share his half baked ideas too?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on October 07, 2022, 07:44:29 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on October 07, 2022, 07:21:39 PMWe've spent 20 years arguing about our various opinions on various topics like what to do in the event taiwan is invaded or how to solve ukraine...shouldn't he be able to share his half baked ideas too?

Elon Musk should feel free to post on languish, though I don't think he'd last long around here unless he got to bring his followers and/ or purchased the board.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on October 07, 2022, 07:55:53 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on October 07, 2022, 07:21:39 PM
Quote from: HVC on October 07, 2022, 07:13:09 PMHe's well on his way to Bond villain.  Just needs some lasers to attach to his satellites to ensure his world order :P

We've spent 20 years arguing about our various opinions on various topics like what to do in the event taiwan is invaded or how to solve ukraine...shouldn't he be able to share his half baked ideas too?

We can, but no one takes our opinions seriously ( and rightfully so :D ). But there are people out there who takes Elons opinions seriously. He also has a history of lashing out against those who don't agree with him. This leads to various outcomes ranging in calling rescuers pedophiles to unintentionally paying billions for a social media platform.  It's hard to gauge how he'll react if, say, the Ukrainians tell him to shut the hell up.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on October 07, 2022, 08:01:55 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on October 07, 2022, 07:21:39 PM
Quote from: HVC on October 07, 2022, 07:13:09 PMHe's well on his way to Bond villain.  Just needs some lasers to attach to his satellites to ensure his world order :P

We've spent 20 years arguing about our various opinions on various topics like what to do in the event taiwan is invaded or how to solve ukraine...shouldn't he be able to share his half baked ideas too?

I mean he can. But should he?

Besides I don't share my stupid ideas on Facebook or somewhere where my real name and status (such as it is) is used. I share them here specifically because it is anonymous-ish with a limited audience of people I generally trust to give it to me straight. I do that because just saying stupid things publicly is a bad idea for anybody and especially for somebody like Musk. People don't lose their jobs when I say stupid shit on Languish.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Legbiter on October 07, 2022, 08:57:34 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on October 07, 2022, 07:21:39 PMWe've spent 20 years arguing about our various opinions on various topics like what to do in the event taiwan is invaded or how to solve ukraine...shouldn't he be able to share his half baked ideas too?

:lol:

There's something very pathetic about how eagerly Russian internal propaganda has seized on his remarks about essentially maybe not retaking Crimea back from them...like their feelings and self-worth at this point literally hinge on any scrap (a tweet in this case) of anything said in West that involves an outcome slightly less awful than Russia redoing the Time of Troubles.

I say his tweet is good in that it forces the Russian elite to very briefly pause their vodka-soaked brooding and self-pity mixed with suicidal ideation, where their nuclear arsenal at least exacts revenge because of their immense and catastrophic failure of a war, and they can briefly imagine a time where it will actually end. :hmm:

Also, with his Starlink system Elon Musk has ultimately killed and wounded more Russians than the Wehrmacht did defending the Seelow Heights .   

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on October 08, 2022, 08:22:12 AM
Quote from: Jacob on October 07, 2022, 07:44:29 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on October 07, 2022, 07:21:39 PMWe've spent 20 years arguing about our various opinions on various topics like what to do in the event taiwan is invaded or how to solve ukraine...shouldn't he be able to share his half baked ideas too?

Elon Musk should feel free to post on languish, though I don't think he'd last long around here unless he got to bring his followers and/ or purchased the board.

that would draw in quite a crowd...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Oexmelin on October 08, 2022, 10:31:55 AM
I think it's Languish that wouldn't last long if Musk signed up.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on October 08, 2022, 04:03:12 PM
Quote from: Jacob on October 07, 2022, 07:21:23 PMWell, there's the exit clause - the $1 billion dollar cancellation fee. Right?

Just so.

There is no reason why a seller's BOD would ever saddle the seller with the risk of the buyer's financing, even in a friendly merger, unless the seller were truly desperate and distressed. 

OTOH its common for both sides to limit liability for breach with a flat liquidated damages amount.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on October 08, 2022, 07:28:25 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on October 08, 2022, 04:03:12 PM
Quote from: Jacob on October 07, 2022, 07:21:23 PMWell, there's the exit clause - the $1 billion dollar cancellation fee. Right?

Just so.

There is no reason why a seller's BOD would ever saddle the seller with the risk of the buyer's financing, even in a friendly merger, unless the seller were truly desperate and distressed. 

OTOH its common for both sides to limit liability for breach with a flat liquidated damages amount.

It is constructively the same thing...

If the value of the deal vs. no deal to Twitter shareholders is ~$20 billion, a flat damages amount of $1 billion in the event musk can't get financing transfers the bulk of the risk onto them.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on October 09, 2022, 10:29:57 AM
Quote from: alfred russel on October 08, 2022, 07:28:25 PMIt is constructively the same thing...

If the value of the deal vs. no deal to Twitter shareholders is ~$20 billion, a flat damages amount of $1 billion in the event musk can't get financing transfers the bulk of the risk onto them.

If there is no deal to had at +20 billion, because of lack of financing, then the +20 billion was never something that was at risk to lose in the first place.   What is at risk of loss is the time and money wasted trying to the deal to close.  That's what the 1 billion compensates for.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on October 11, 2022, 12:27:44 PM
So apparently Musk had a little chat with Putin before he floated his "Ukraine should negotiate with Russia by giving up everything Russia is currently occupying" suggestion.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/ake44z/elon-musk-vladimir-putin-ukraine

EDIT: though apparently he denies it, so maybe not?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on October 11, 2022, 12:41:48 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on October 09, 2022, 10:29:57 AM
Quote from: alfred russel on October 08, 2022, 07:28:25 PMIt is constructively the same thing...

If the value of the deal vs. no deal to Twitter shareholders is ~$20 billion, a flat damages amount of $1 billion in the event musk can't get financing transfers the bulk of the risk onto them.

If there is no deal to had at +20 billion, because of lack of financing, then the +20 billion was never something that was at risk to lose in the first place.   What is at risk of loss is the time and money wasted trying to the deal to close.  That's what the 1 billion compensates for.

Again, I haven't read the agreements nor do I ever intend to. But Musk is worth in excess of $200 billion. This transaction is something like $44 billion. So if the lack of financing allows Musk to walk away with just a $1 billion payment, that does put the $20 billion at risk because Musk could raise the funds himself.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on October 14, 2022, 02:16:07 AM
Some more bad news for Elon, it looks the feds are involved now. Both sides accuse each other of being investigated.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/international-business/article-musk-under-federal-investigation-tied-to-twitter-deal-twitter-court/

QuoteElon Musk is being investigated by federal authorities over his conduct in his $44-billion takeover deal for Twitter Inc, the social media company said in a court filing released on Thursday.

While the filing said he was under investigations, it did not say what the exact focus of the probes was and which federal authorities are conducting them.

Twitter, which sued Musk in July to force him to close the deal, said attorneys for the Tesla Inc CEO had claimed "investigative privilege" when refusing to hand over documents it had sought.

In late September, Musk's attorneys had provided a "privilege log" identifying documents to be withheld, Twitter said. The log referenced drafts of a May 13 e-mail to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and a slide presentation to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

"This game of 'hide the ball' must end," the company said in the court filing.

The court filing, which asked Delaware judge Kathaleen McCormick to order Musk's attorneys to provide the documents, was made on Oct. 6 – the same day that McCormick paused litigation between the two sides after Musk reversed course and said he would proceed with the deal.

Alex Spiro, an attorney for Musk, told Reuters that Twitter's court filing was a "misdirection" and asserted: "It is Twitter's executives that are under federal investigation."

Twitter declined to comment on Spiro's statement. It also declined to comment when asked by Reuters about its understanding of any investigation into Musk.

The SEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment and the FTC declined to comment.

The SEC has questioned Musk's comments about the Twitter acquisition, including whether a 9 per cent stake he had built up before announcing his bid had been disclosed late and why it indicated that he intended to be a passive shareholder. Musk later refiled the disclosure to indicate he was an active investor.

In June, the SEC asked Musk in a letter whether he should have amended his public filing to reflect his intention to suspend or abandon the deal.

The Information, a tech news site, reported in April that the FTC was scrutinizing whether Musk failed to comply with the antitrust reporting requirement relating to an investor's intentions of being a passive or active shareholder.

Twitter said in June, however, that the takeover deal with Musk had cleared an antitrust waiting period for review by the FTC and U.S. Justice Department.

McCormick has given Musk until Oct. 28 to close the acquisition. If the deal does not get done by then, a trial date will be set for November.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on October 26, 2022, 05:36:44 PM
So it looks like Musk is saying he'll close the deal by the end of the week?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on October 27, 2022, 01:43:11 AM
(https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/fefff202d40dc7abdae42d2fc2c4ea389938289d/1369_889_1131_679/master/1131.jpg?width=465&quality=45&dpr=2&s=none)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on October 27, 2022, 07:31:38 PM
 :hmm: He's becoming more and more Russian with every passing day.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on October 27, 2022, 08:17:20 PM
He has apparently taken control of Twitter. CEO, CFO and Head of moderation are out. I expect Donald Trump to be unbanned tomorrow. Even when losing a war, Putin is winning.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on October 28, 2022, 02:03:28 AM
I wonder if we will see a legit attempt at "truth social" that actually takes off against this?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 28, 2022, 02:10:13 AM
Quote from: Josquius on October 28, 2022, 02:03:28 AMI wonder if we will see a legit attempt at "truth social" that actually takes off against this?

I don't think the percentage of the populace who are triggered by Trump to the degree that they will seek out a "safe space" is sufficiently high to create a critical mass for "Legit Truth Social."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on October 28, 2022, 02:36:51 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 28, 2022, 02:10:13 AM
Quote from: Josquius on October 28, 2022, 02:03:28 AMI wonder if we will see a legit attempt at "truth social" that actually takes off against this?

I don't think the percentage of the populace who are triggered by Trump to the degree that they will seek out a "safe space" is sufficiently high to create a critical mass for "Legit Truth Social."
Less the triggered by Trump I'm thinking and more this just being a tip of a shitty fox newsy fake news iceberg.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 28, 2022, 02:45:13 AM
Quote from: Josquius on October 28, 2022, 02:36:51 AMLess the triggered by Trump I'm thinking and more this just being a tip of a shitty fox newsy fake news iceberg.

Same diff
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on October 28, 2022, 02:49:38 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 28, 2022, 02:45:13 AM
Quote from: Josquius on October 28, 2022, 02:36:51 AMLess the triggered by Trump I'm thinking and more this just being a tip of a shitty fox newsy fake news iceberg.

Same diff
I don't think it is.
If twitter becomes a place where facts are censored and right wing bollocks gets boosted I do think there's a lot of people who will see it as no longer a place worth posting. This does leave a potential market to recreate pre-musk twitter (with blackjack and hookers)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on October 28, 2022, 02:52:06 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on October 27, 2022, 08:17:20 PMHe has apparently taken control of Twitter. CEO, CFO and Head of moderation are out. I expect Donald Trump to be unbanned tomorrow. Even when losing a war, Putin is winning.
I'm getting that sick feeling again that Putin just can't lose.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on October 28, 2022, 02:53:09 AM
Hopefully Twitter dies and decomposes without anything taking its place.  Humanity can't handle things like Twitter.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 28, 2022, 02:54:07 AM
Quote from: Josquius on October 28, 2022, 02:49:38 AMI don't think it is.
If twitter becomes a place where facts are censored and right wing bollocks gets boosted I do think there's a lot of people who will see it as no longer a place worth posting. This does leave a potential market to recreate pre-musk twitter (with blackjack and hookers)

Yeah, no.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on October 28, 2022, 02:59:14 AM
Quote from: DGuller on October 28, 2022, 02:53:09 AMHopefully Twitter dies and decomposes without anything taking its place.  Humanity can't handle things like Twitter.

This.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on October 28, 2022, 03:05:22 AM
Ukraine's account is still up. :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on October 28, 2022, 08:37:47 AM
Quote from: garbon on October 28, 2022, 02:59:14 AM
Quote from: DGuller on October 28, 2022, 02:53:09 AMHopefully Twitter dies and decomposes without anything taking its place.  Humanity can't handle things like Twitter.

This.

I enjoy it quite a bit. I don't see much of what most people complain about because I follow academics, and journalists who were commenting on the local BC and Canadian scene.

I hope Elon doesn't destroy it and turn it into a fox disaster area.

If the people I follow leave Twitter I also will leave Twitter
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on October 28, 2022, 08:39:39 AM
Quote from: Josquius on October 28, 2022, 02:49:38 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 28, 2022, 02:45:13 AM
Quote from: Josquius on October 28, 2022, 02:36:51 AMLess the triggered by Trump I'm thinking and more this just being a tip of a shitty fox newsy fake news iceberg.

Same diff
I don't think it is.
If twitter becomes a place where facts are censored and right wing bollocks gets boosted I do think there's a lot of people who will see it as no longer a place worth posting. This does leave a potential market to recreate pre-musk twitter (with blackjack and hookers)

I agree. That is the main risk.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on October 28, 2022, 09:37:05 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 28, 2022, 08:37:47 AM
Quote from: garbon on October 28, 2022, 02:59:14 AM
Quote from: DGuller on October 28, 2022, 02:53:09 AMHopefully Twitter dies and decomposes without anything taking its place.  Humanity can't handle things like Twitter.

This.

I enjoy it quite a bit. I don't see much of what most people complain about because I follow academics, and journalists who were commenting on the local BC and Canadian scene.

I hope Elon doesn't destroy it and turn it into a fox disaster area.

If the people I follow leave Twitter I also will leave Twitter

It has been known for a while that people can carve out their own echo chambers on social media.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on October 28, 2022, 10:04:35 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 28, 2022, 08:37:47 AMI enjoy it quite a bit. I don't see much of what most people complain about because I follow academics, and journalists who were commenting on the local BC and Canadian scene.

Speaking of comments by Canadians, the sentence that came to me when I was dealing with Twitter was "the medium is the message." There was just something about how the medium of Twitter worked that seemed to make whatever group I would associate with become more toxic over time. And it wasn't Twitter's rules or whatever it was the very structure how it worked. The limits on characters, the ability to retweet and put people on blast, the whole like and whatever deal. It just seemed to encourage cult-like formation of of in-groups and shunning of out-groups and it all got really nasty. People love to form little cult groups and toxically performatively shun people anyway, those are unfortunately very nasty human things humans like to do. Twitter just really empowered that. When I realized that, back in 2014, I left never to return. The whole Gamergate thing playing out at the time didn't help.

But I do realize you can have positive experiences with Twitter, I certainly did at times during my time there.

Elon Musk is welcome to it though.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on October 28, 2022, 10:05:34 AM
Yeah, I find Twitter useful. For example when the Ukraine war got started I found about 20 accounts, ranging from on the ground Ukrainian journalists, foreign policy academics specializing in Russia, and ex-military and diplomatic officials who all give good insights, and following them gives me a nicely curated newsfeed for Ukraine issues.

I've done the same for other issues I follow.

That being said I think to some degree the core design of Twitter is why it isn't a very "successful" social media network, it isn't nearly as sticky as something like Facebook, and doesn't seem to promote the same level of engagement as things like TikTok / Snapchat / Instagram. I think to some degree its main value is as a quasi-replacement for the old RSS feed concept, but the issue there is that sort of product isn't nearly as valuable to advertisers as the other sorts of social media are. Twitter is relatively small by the standards of the social media majors, and I think its user base growth kind of stalled out years ago, and there are big question as to how anyone can monetize it to the level Musk wants to monetize it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on October 28, 2022, 10:07:25 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 28, 2022, 08:37:47 AMI enjoy it quite a bit. I don't see much of what most people complain about because I follow academics, and journalists who were commenting on the local BC and Canadian scene.

I hope Elon doesn't destroy it and turn it into a fox disaster area.

If the people I follow leave Twitter I also will leave Twitter

I also kind of enjoy Twitter.  I follow some sources for Winnipeg sports teams, a bunch of people about Ukraine, several local lawyers, and a handful of more general writers on politics.  All useful stuff.

But here's the thing - as soon as you click on one of the Tweets to see the replies they immediately become unhinged and crazy.

So you have to keep yourself very sheltered in order to use Twitter and not lose your mind.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PJL on October 28, 2022, 10:12:46 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on October 28, 2022, 10:05:34 AMThat being said I think to some degree the core design of Twitter is why it isn't a very "successful" social media network, it isn't nearly as sticky as something like Facebook, and doesn't seem to promote the same level of engagement as things like TikTok / Snapchat / Instagram. I think to some degree its main value is as a quasi-replacement for the old RSS feed concept, but the issue there is that sort of product isn't nearly as valuable to advertisers as the other sorts of social media are. Twitter is relatively small by the standards of the social media majors, and I think its user base growth kind of stalled out years ago, and there are big question as to how anyone can monetize it to the level Musk wants to monetize it.

I think there's a fundamental contradiction in pursuing more freedoms & most revenue on the platform. Advertisers are going to be much less likely to go on Twitter if their client's brands are tarnished by greater controversies as a consequence of the proposed relaxation of 'good behaviour' rules on the platform.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on October 28, 2022, 10:13:26 AM
Quote from: Barrister on October 28, 2022, 10:07:25 AMI also kind of enjoy Twitter.  I follow some sources for Winnipeg sports teams, a bunch of people about Ukraine, several local lawyers, and a handful of more general writers on politics.  All useful stuff.

But here's the thing - as soon as you click on one of the Tweets to see the replies they immediately become unhinged and crazy.

So you have to keep yourself very sheltered in order to use Twitter and not lose your mind.

Yeah, my experience is pretty similar. Clicking on replies is usually pretty fraught.

Thing is, I can live without Twitter pretty easily. If Twitter goes off, I'll delete it from my phone and move on with my life.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on October 28, 2022, 10:44:28 AM
Quote from: PJL on October 28, 2022, 10:12:46 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on October 28, 2022, 10:05:34 AMThat being said I think to some degree the core design of Twitter is why it isn't a very "successful" social media network, it isn't nearly as sticky as something like Facebook, and doesn't seem to promote the same level of engagement as things like TikTok / Snapchat / Instagram. I think to some degree its main value is as a quasi-replacement for the old RSS feed concept, but the issue there is that sort of product isn't nearly as valuable to advertisers as the other sorts of social media are. Twitter is relatively small by the standards of the social media majors, and I think its user base growth kind of stalled out years ago, and there are big question as to how anyone can monetize it to the level Musk wants to monetize it.

I think there's a fundamental contradiction in pursuing more freedoms & most revenue on the platform. Advertisers are going to be much less likely to go on Twitter if their client's brands are tarnished by greater controversies as a consequence of the proposed relaxation of 'good behaviour' rules on the platform.

There is actually another big issue--I am not worried about Musk letting Twitter turn into 4chan, he is just going to unban some right wingers who while regrettable are relatively "mainstream" for the right these days. People can mute/block those people if they don't want to see what they have to say. I'm somewhat skeptical how much "power" a big Twitter account really gives someone--the people who engage with Trump's tweets were already locked in to Trumpism, and very likely consume Trumpy stuff all day long from any number of sources.

The big issue I see, is earlier on Musk suggested part of how he would better monetize Twitter was basically getting rid of anonymous accounts by forcing you to do what Facebook does, where you at least have to pretend to be a real person to have a Facebook account. That can make the users more valuable because now Twitter can start to build a better user profile on you. But I also think it will alienate a lot of the users who use Twitter. Like I don't care that much if Musk unbans Trump, but if he tries to make me use my real life name on my Tweets, that'd be the end for me--I have no interest in my Tweets being linked to my real life identity for career / etc reasons.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on October 28, 2022, 10:48:10 AM
Quote from: Valmy on October 28, 2022, 10:04:35 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 28, 2022, 08:37:47 AMI enjoy it quite a bit. I don't see much of what most people complain about because I follow academics, and journalists who were commenting on the local BC and Canadian scene.

Speaking of comments by Canadians, the sentence that came to me when I was dealing with Twitter was "the medium is the message." There was just something about how the medium of Twitter worked that seemed to make whatever group I would associate with become more toxic over time. And it wasn't Twitter's rules or whatever it was the very structure how it worked. The limits on characters, the ability to retweet and put people on blast, the whole like and whatever deal. It just seemed to encourage cult-like formation of of in-groups and shunning of out-groups and it all got really nasty. People love to form little cult groups and toxically performatively shun people anyway, those are unfortunately very nasty human things humans like to do. Twitter just really empowered that. When I realized that, back in 2014, I left never to return. The whole Gamergate thing playing out at the time didn't help.

But I do realize you can have positive experiences with Twitter, I certainly did at times during my time there.

Elon Musk is welcome to it though.



The fundamental problem with Twitter is you can't do any nuance in 288 characters, so everything is just absolutist hot takes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on October 28, 2022, 10:50:14 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on October 28, 2022, 10:44:28 AMThe big issue I see, is earlier on Musk suggested part of how he would better monetize Twitter was basically getting rid of anonymous accounts by forcing you to do what Facebook does, where you at least have to pretend to be a real person to have a Facebook account. That can make the users more valuable because now Twitter can start to build a better user profile on you. But I also think it will alienate a lot of the users who use Twitter. Like I don't care that much if Musk unbans Trump, but if he tries to make me use my real life name on my Tweets, that'd be the end for me--I have no interest in my Tweets being linked to my real life identity for career / etc reasons.

My Twitter handle is my real name, and I'd vastly prefer it if Twitter went to such a system.

When things are attached to your real name that forces you to be far more careful about what you tweet.

Now I'll admit that as a government lawyer that means I never discuss politics on Twitter (a topic on which I have many opinions) but I think it's a better tradeoff.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on October 28, 2022, 11:02:14 AM
Don't. Be. The. Main. Character.

Musk's insatiable thirst to be the main character just cost him his, already limited, integrity and 44 billions $.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on October 28, 2022, 11:06:28 AM
Quote from: Barrister on October 28, 2022, 10:48:10 AMThe fundamental problem with Twitter is you can't do any nuance in 288 characters, so everything is just absolutist hot takes.

Yes. You cannot have real discussions in the medium provided. That is what I was getting at. The medium creates cultish tribalism and shunning behaviors.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on October 28, 2022, 12:59:24 PM
Quote from: Valmy on October 28, 2022, 10:04:35 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 28, 2022, 08:37:47 AMI enjoy it quite a bit. I don't see much of what most people complain about because I follow academics, and journalists who were commenting on the local BC and Canadian scene.

Speaking of comments by Canadians, the sentence that came to me when I was dealing with Twitter was "the medium is the message." There was just something about how the medium of Twitter worked that seemed to make whatever group I would associate with become more toxic over time. And it wasn't Twitter's rules or whatever it was the very structure how it worked. The limits on characters, the ability to retweet and put people on blast, the whole like and whatever deal. It just seemed to encourage cult-like formation of of in-groups and shunning of out-groups and it all got really nasty. People love to form little cult groups and toxically performatively shun people anyway, those are unfortunately very nasty human things humans like to do. Twitter just really empowered that. When I realized that, back in 2014, I left never to return. The whole Gamergate thing playing out at the time didn't help.

But I do realize you can have positive experiences with Twitter, I certainly did at times during my time there.

Elon Musk is welcome to it though.



That probably says more about how it is generally used.

The academics I follow talk about their work.  Not that toxic.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PJL on October 28, 2022, 01:05:10 PM
The main issue with Twitter is that the format is really a written variant of the quick soundbite & clickbait that we all see, but also that the MSM picks up on tweets by famous people and amplifies its message. It's the amplification that's the most problematic. You could argue that the MSM shouldn't be doing it, but then why not deal with the issue at source? That's where the concern now lies with Musk taking it over.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on October 28, 2022, 04:04:13 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 28, 2022, 12:59:24 PMThat probably says more about how it is generally used.

I am not sure what this means. I observed that healthy groups tended to go nuts on twitter where they didn't seem to on other platforms. And considering those other platforms and the issues with those that was pretty damning.

QuoteThe academics I follow talk about their work.  Not that toxic.

I am not sure what sort of academics can be summed up in a few characters. How can you have long form discussions on important academic topics in that format? I mean unless they are just linking to stuff off site.

But anyway it doesn't matter. If you and these academics are having a great experience on twitter than good for you. I didn't have such a great time.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on October 28, 2022, 04:07:33 PM
Quote from: PJL on October 28, 2022, 01:05:10 PMThe main issue with Twitter is that the format is really a written variant of the quick soundbite & clickbait that we all see, but also that the MSM picks up on tweets by famous people and amplifies its message. It's the amplification that's the most problematic. You could argue that the MSM shouldn't be doing it, but then why not deal with the issue at source? That's where the concern now lies with Musk taking it over.

If famous people are going to be making public statements then the media will cover it. I don't think the media only covers twitter though right?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on October 28, 2022, 04:07:49 PM
Quote from: Valmy on October 28, 2022, 11:06:28 AM
Quote from: Barrister on October 28, 2022, 10:48:10 AMThe fundamental problem with Twitter is you can't do any nuance in 288 characters, so everything is just absolutist hot takes.

Yes. You cannot have real discussions in the medium provided. That is what I was getting at. The medium creates cultish tribalism and shunning behaviors.

More than the character limit what is particularly dodgy is the system of likes. Triggers black and white thinking.

I wonder whether something like twitter could work where you indyead give a more nuanced score... Though if uber and the like is any indication less than 5/5 means somebody has pissed on your mother.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on October 28, 2022, 04:31:58 PM
Quote from: Valmy on October 28, 2022, 04:04:13 PMI am not sure what sort of academics can be summed up in a few characters. How can you have long form discussions on important academic topics in that format? I mean unless they are just linking to stuff off site.

While covering the war in Ukraine, I've seen reporters and analysts doing 30+ tweet threads. If there's a will, there's a way.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on October 28, 2022, 04:39:13 PM
Quote from: The Larch on October 28, 2022, 04:31:58 PM
Quote from: Valmy on October 28, 2022, 04:04:13 PMI am not sure what sort of academics can be summed up in a few characters. How can you have long form discussions on important academic topics in that format? I mean unless they are just linking to stuff off site.

While covering the war in Ukraine, I've seen reporters and analysts doing 30+ tweet threads. If there's a will, there's a way.

I've seen lengthy tweet threads too.  But when you think about it a 30 tweet thread is probably what - a 1500 word article?  Still pretty short to express complicated ideas.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on October 28, 2022, 04:41:08 PM
Quote from: Barrister on October 28, 2022, 04:39:13 PM
Quote from: The Larch on October 28, 2022, 04:31:58 PM
Quote from: Valmy on October 28, 2022, 04:04:13 PMI am not sure what sort of academics can be summed up in a few characters. How can you have long form discussions on important academic topics in that format? I mean unless they are just linking to stuff off site.

While covering the war in Ukraine, I've seen reporters and analysts doing 30+ tweet threads. If there's a will, there's a way.

I've seen lengthy tweet threads too.  But when you think about it a 30 tweet thread is probably what - a 1500 word article?  Still pretty short to express complicated ideas.

Then you link out of Twitter.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on October 28, 2022, 07:30:05 PM
Quote from: Valmy on October 28, 2022, 04:04:13 PM
Quote from: Valmy on October 28, 2022, 04:04:13 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 28, 2022, 12:59:24 PMThat probably says more about how it is generally used.

I am not sure what this means. I observed that healthy groups tended to go nuts on twitter where they didn't seem to on other platforms. And considering those other platforms and the issues with those that was pretty damning.

QuoteThe academics I follow talk about their work.  Not that toxic.

I am not sure what sort of academics can be summed up in a few characters. How can you have long form discussions on important academic topics in that format? I mean unless they are just linking to stuff off site.

But anyway it doesn't matter. If you and these academics are having a great experience on twitter than good for you. I didn't have such a great time.

I am not sure what sort of academics can be summed up in a few characters. How can you have long form discussions on important academic topics in that format? I mean unless they are just linking to stuff off site.

But anyway it doesn't matter. If you and these academics are having a great experience on twitter than good for you. I didn't have such a great time.

If you're not sure, the hell are you arguing with me? And by the way have you known encountered Twitter discussions in which there is something called a thread in which people develop a fairly interesting argument in multiple posts and then people discuss it?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on October 29, 2022, 01:23:29 AM
Interesting Twitter thread on how Elon Musk may have fucked himself by buying Twitter: https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1586070566221402113
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on October 29, 2022, 01:36:24 AM
Quote from: Jacob on October 29, 2022, 01:23:29 AMInteresting Twitter thread on how Elon Musk may have fucked himself by buying Twitter: https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1586070566221402113
Problem is that it can go both ways.  Musk may actually get more sweet deals from authoritarian governments if he lets them use Twitter for their own purposes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Iormlund on October 29, 2022, 09:23:07 AM
Elon's purchase of Twitter reminds me of Trump running for office after that Correspondent's dinner.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on October 29, 2022, 09:53:37 AM
Quote from: Jacob on October 29, 2022, 01:23:29 AMInteresting Twitter thread on how Elon Musk may have fucked himself by buying Twitter: https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1586070566221402113

Another step closer to Bond Villain :ph34r:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on October 29, 2022, 07:04:30 PM
Quote from: DGuller on October 29, 2022, 01:36:24 AMProblem is that it can go both ways.  Musk may actually get more sweet deals from authoritarian governments if he lets them use Twitter for their own purposes.
Yeah - I feel like the billionaire with massive economic interests in China buying a social media company is a bigger risk than the edgelord side of things.

Having said that I think Trump and the importance of Twitter for journalists doing their job has overstated the importance of what is a comparatively niche social media company that largely seems to be plateauing. Facebook (plus WhatsApp, Insta etc) deserves vastly more attention but doesn't get it because it's not where journalists do their job - and in terms of use and misuse of personal information Google also deserves a huge amount more attention.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on October 30, 2022, 07:18:03 AM
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/29/technology/twitter-layoffs-musk-jobs.html?unlocked_article_code=3JlLN9MKkAcYQoCfYtRPGfcKqIhoNEAAUlMn4a15yLHTY7jnIzz_zDBOw4o_Lk9NJ89LQOiCECKcG5wqi_feif4FcznStixWSRagqyywB1hODHPMjxu8hI-S1h-5FLzWnDXsrg5AABXxPNGxX_sIHMT3wHTwoUiJQx8L0gE14nCPvdNTDRNRhCKQ6qTk5-64lUoyzTjc38UbNsSwv3MCHjLhzpDpjRpz6yprq-1MI9tXfNWcZ9TFvbTMWD-fnWtiQvA8duaXCkH7_sbzgYE8Ol6fHfZp12_UIVG4JIj5sRJ2HLQmaIcJ9AyCrutUl0RoeiRYYILsWYazhsIitC9khpCAjI9NRA&smid=share-url

Apparently the Times is reporting Musk is doing a few things:

1. Preparing to layoff 50% of Twitter's staff prior to 11/1, specifically to screw those employees out of a 11/1 vesting date for restricted stock awards.

2. Fired the executive team "for cause" which voids their golden parachute deals (most of them still made tens of millions from the simple fact of their shares outstanding being converted at $52.40, so this does not beggar any of them--Agrawal had the smallest holding of vested shares of the executive team fired because he had been on the job the shortest period of time.)

I am highly skeptical of the business wisdom or legal prospects of either move--both of which are in violation of the signed merger agreement. He bought a company headquartered in California, not Texas. That is going to mean that shenanigans around firings for cause, and layoffs, are going to involve a lot more employee friendly legal regulations. Which I think he would know considering Tesla was headquarted in California and employs thousands of people there. I find it extremely unlikely he will prevail in a California court on either of these efforts.

A bigger deal is I frankly cannot fathom any large software company laying off 50% of its workforce--with the people chosen for reduction literally picked over a couple of days, not crippling the company. None of this is confirmed reporting, but just from a business perspective I don't fully understand how Musk, or his minority investors (whom he owes a fiduciary duty to legally), are protecting their investment with these moves. That's why I'm a little skeptical.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on October 30, 2022, 07:44:01 AM
Some of the Times reporting also seems a little inaccurate to me. They are saying that November 1st is a stock date for employees and that it is a significant portion of their income--but most companies in tech do restricted stock unit (RSU) grants quarterly, so while losing out on an RSU quarterly grant would be significant, it's not as massive as the article is suggesting (the article is suggesting it is a majority of their annual income, at least vaguely), on top of that most tech industry RSUs actually have an "accelerated vesting" clause if there is a "change in control" at a company. In that scenario it does not matter when Musk lays them off, they would get that RSU grant in any case.

And again, this is in California with some of the strictest employee protection laws in the country--and many such laws were crafted specifically for the software industry. I just don't really believe Musk, who just paid $44bn to avoid civil litigation in Delaware, would immediately saddle his newly acquired company with civil litigation involving (supposedly) 50% of his workforce, litigation that would likely drag the firm's name through the mud and make hiring extraordinarily difficult. All of that for what is like hundreds of millions of dollars for a guy who again, spent tens of billions to avoid civil litigation and who has taken out tens of billions in debt financing for the deal along with his minority investors.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on October 30, 2022, 08:00:42 AM
I see the WaPo is running similar news (50% people fired before they can claim stock), independently sourced (although sources might be the same as NYT).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/29/elon-musk-twitter-takeover/
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on October 30, 2022, 08:20:45 AM
Doing a little cursory research--California law basically has an explicit notice requirement for layoffs--its own version of the Federal WARN Act, which would very likely apply to these employees. Under the terms of that law, if an employer lays people off without observing the notice period (which is 60 days), the employer is liable for all pay and benefits the employee would have received during that 60 day window. So announcing layoffs one day before some stock vesting date seems like it just literally has no legal legs to stand on in California.

I'm not saying I doubt Musk is trying it, just saying it seems nonsensical for someone who ran California companies for years and knows how the California courts treat such matters.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on October 30, 2022, 09:50:35 AM
So, what is up with Musk?  Did he get snagged in a honeytrap by FSB?  Or does he just get his dick hard from influencing the world events, regardless of in which direction?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tonitrus on October 30, 2022, 09:55:21 AM
How would a honeytrap work on a guy who is already well known for spewing honey all over the place? :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on October 30, 2022, 09:56:58 AM
It seems that the usual suspects are already testing if Twitter will take a new moderation policy under Musk...

QuoteTwitter trolls bombard platform after Elon Musk takeover
Platform says 300 accounts carried out 50,000-plus tweets in 'organised effort to make users think firm has changed content policy'

Twitter has been hit by a coordinated trolling campaign in the wake of Elon Musk's takeover, with more than 50,000 tweets from 300 accounts bombarding the platform with hateful content.

The social media platform said it has been targeted with an attempt to make users think Twitter has dropped or weakened its content policies after the world's richest man bought the company for $44bn (£38bn) last week.

Twitter's head of safety and integrity said those running the site had not changed content policies but had been subject to "an organised effort to make people think we have".

In a Twitter thread posted on Sunday, Yoel Roth said the company had seen a "ton" of tweets posted by a small number of accounts featuring slurs and other derogatory terms. To illustrate the scale of the attack, he said more than 50,000 tweets that repeatedly used one unspecified slur came from just 300 accounts.

Roth said most of those accounts were "inauthentic" and the users involved had been banned.

"We've taken action to ban the users involved in this trolling campaign – and are going to continue working to address this in the days to come to make Twitter safe and welcoming for everyone," he wrote.

Roth's thread also linked to a post from Musk, who bought the platform last week, in which the Tesla chief executive said: "We have not yet made any changes to Twitter's content moderation policies."

Musk's takeover has led to widespread expressions of concern that the multibillionaire, a self-confessed "free speech absolutist", will relax content policies and reinstate banned accounts such as those controlled by the former US president Donald Trump and Katie Hopkins, the rightwing British political commentator.
(...)
As well as stressing that there had been no change to Twitter's content policies, Musk has announced the formation of a "content moderation council". He said the new body would bring together "widely diverse viewpoints" and no decisions on content policy or account reinstatements will be taken until the council has convened.

Musk has also indicated that Twitter could be split into different sections where users give their posts content ratings and take part in online rows in a specially created space on the platform.

His suggested changes emerged in interactions with Twitter users after the deal. He also supported a user's suggestion that the service splits into different video game-style modes, including a "player v player" version where verified accounts can engage in Twitter spats.

The billionaire, who has more than 100 million followers on the platform, said users could select a version of Twitter like they were choosing a film based on its content rating.

He wrote: "Being able to select which version of Twitter you want is probably better, much as it would be for a movie maturity rating."

Musk added that the rating of a user's tweet could be self-selected and then "modified by user feedback".

QuoteBanned British far-right figures return to Twitter within hours of takeover
Extreme group Britain First publishes series of anti-immigrant videos in first 24 hours after getting its new account

Key figures on Britain's far right who were previously banned from Twitter have been able to open new accounts, apparently without restrictions, after the platform's takeover by Elon Musk.

Britain First, an extreme group whose leader has spent time in jail for hate crimes against Muslims, rejoined the social media network on Friday. It had been banned in 2017 under Twitter's hate speech rules after posting inflammatory anti-Muslim videos. Some videos posted by its then deputy leader were retweeted by US president Donald Trump.

Twitter has mechanisms to detect when banned users set up accounts, and the new Britain First account quickly had its features limited after being found to violate rules. But it was later restored to full functionality, according to screenshots shared with members in a group for Britain First supporters. The account was still live on Saturday evening.
(...)
It is unclear whether the decision to allow Britain First on the platform is a conscious one by moderators or an oversight, and Twitter did not respond to requests for comment. But the Center for Countering Digital Hate said the move would allow the group to "restart [its] campaign of spreading divisive hate and racism" and sent a message that extremists could "operate with impunity".
(...)
The apparent return of far-right figures raises questions about where Twitter's new owner will draw the line on content moderation and who will be permitted on the app. Musk, the Tesla billionaire who bought Twitter for $44bn, has been critical of its moderation decisions in the past and called for a greater emphasis on what he says is "free speech". In the hours after his takeover of the platform, some users flooded it with racist, antisemitic and homophobic slurs in an apparent attempt to test the response.

In a statement on Friday, the world's richest man moved to assuage concerns about a rise in harmful content under his ownership by announcing the creation of a content moderation council that would bring together "diverse views", adding that "no major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before the council convenes".
(...)
He also indicated he would examine the case of Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist and author, who was suspended from Twitter after violating the platform's policies with a tweet about transgender actor Elliot Page. "Anyone suspended for minor & dubious reasons will be freed from Twitter jail," Musk wrote.

Britain First, which describes itself as a "patriotic" group that is "taking our country back", said the fact it had been able to rejoin was a sign Twitter's new owner valued freedom of speech. Golding said: "Britain First was first banned by woke bigots back in 2017 after being retweeted by President Donald Trump. We are glad to be back on the platform as a registered, full UK political party that contests democratic elections." Twitter did not respond to requests for comment on Saturday.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on October 30, 2022, 10:28:03 AM
I think Twitter has not changed anything in its content moderation, and has said they will not until their new content moderation board is created. The current spike in bad behavior is largely just taking advantage of what was already pretty week content moderation at Twitter.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on October 30, 2022, 11:29:49 AM
I expect the response from twitter is possibly weakened by doubt among employees - "in this grey area should I err on cracking down on bigots or err on the side of not intervening? And will management back me up?" - and chosing to not intervene where they had before.

Not that I'm arguing thay Twitter's content moderation policies aren't fairly weak - but there could still be a shift in enforcement nonetheless.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on October 30, 2022, 02:55:36 PM
Quote from: DGuller on October 30, 2022, 09:50:35 AMSo, what is up with Musk?  Did he get snagged in a honeytrap by FSB?  Or does he just get his dick hard from influencing the world events, regardless of in which direction?

He's an attention whore. This gives him attention.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Darth Wagtaros on October 31, 2022, 08:54:56 AM
Quote from: The Brain on October 30, 2022, 02:55:36 PM
Quote from: DGuller on October 30, 2022, 09:50:35 AMSo, what is up with Musk?  Did he get snagged in a honeytrap by FSB?  Or does he just get his dick hard from influencing the world events, regardless of in which direction?

He's an attention whore. This gives him attention.
Yep.  If Twitter had banned Biden then he'd have been all about restoring freedom of speech for democrats.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on October 31, 2022, 09:49:00 AM
Musk strikes me as a classic shallow Libertarian. Rabidly all about "freedom" while not having given it enough thought to understand and assess the practical realities of what it means in practice.

I don't think he is any kind of right winger, except insofar as his views and interests might align with theirs at times.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Darth Wagtaros on October 31, 2022, 10:14:19 AM
Quote from: Berkut on October 31, 2022, 09:49:00 AMMusk strikes me as a classic shallow Libertarian. Rabidly all about "freedom" while not having given it enough thought to understand and assess the practical realities of what it means in practice.

I don't think he is any kind of right winger, except insofar as his views and interests might align with theirs at times.
No, I don't think so either. But the right-wingers are saying nice htings about him today, so today he is all about making them happy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on October 31, 2022, 09:34:43 PM
I'll note that it's basically November 1st now, and newer reporting at the New York Times confirms there have been no mass layoffs of yet. The theory that Musk was going to hit them prior to 11/1 to avoid some internal stock payout schemes awarding the laid off workers appears to be untrue, in that case.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/technology/elon-musk-twitter-control.html?unlocked_article_code=R_I7vAZXUDPdafzJOZfPR9QSIPT5_D071omqY7vkWAVZRQEWzay9GJBmJBfoRhChUYTCF37RkjonMTdQOM8hARzwbPAG1Cy_rpllkYB3Sm_CLeEJYrglZqRSN4J7kFbQqgZ9LEk3S24rykcUE5InkgQ6n2EFSuwexpkH-Yo7qvr-qM1zyhcaMpb4xoir_yns-3Zc_ia1FneQls21Lk1cGhMd65_kGfSwVQb9WLlQjwVDB8gPlaLer7Ak074hJTyEQLuV22a56uTXZ9nGSSI1vwnOBO-c6GaJh0ORpTprYUL6x8jLw55Oc5Axx-n9cwYYRzz44mj73Fx_iYig5HfAmZ1UQu_0EA&smid=share-url

Obviously he did fire the executive team but it's also not being reported any longer he was trying to screw them out of their compensation that was agreed upon in the merger documents. Seems like all this talk of him trying to do shady stuff on outgoing compensation was manufactured.

Bigger question now is as per this article Twitter will have to service $1bn in annual debt payments to pay off the $13bn in debt Musk saddled the company with to partially finance his takeover.

FY2021 Twitter's revenue was around $5bn with a net loss of $220m on that revenue.

FY2020 it had a $1.14bn net loss.
FY2019 $1.46bn net profit.
FY2018 $1.20bn net profit.
FY2017 $108m net loss.
FY2016 $456m net loss.
FY2015 $521m net loss.
FY2014 $578m net loss.

Twitter went public in 2013.

Prior to going public the company opened in 2006, and at the time of its 2013 IPO it had never turned a net profit, with accumulated losses during its previous period as a private company of $419m.

All told since 2006 Twitter has had two profitable years--2018 and 2019. It is set to be unprofitable in 2022 at current clip.

I guess the question is, what was going on in '18 and '19 that saw it turn its first profits--profits which would at least allow it to service its debt obligations, and how feasible is it to get back to them.

What seems concerning if I'm Musk or a co-investor, getting back to those numbers will mean you're just barely clearly the debt servicing cost per year. That doesn't seem like a great setup for the future IPO. Anyone who is investing in Twitter with Musk is either hoping for a future IPO or significant profit payouts down the line in the form of dividends or etc. For any of that to happen Twitter is going to need significant growth of MAU and ad revenue, both of which seem difficult in this climate. There is a reason Twitter's user growth has been stale for years, and the global social media advertising market is in decline with signs that those declines may represent a structural shift away from such advertising and to companies valuing such advertising less than it had previously.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 31, 2022, 09:44:05 PM
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/31/1132906782/elon-musk-twitter-pelosi-conspiracy

Musk suggests Pelosi attack might have been homosexualist love spat, quickly deletes post.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on October 31, 2022, 11:05:46 PM
Musk becomes harder to defend everyday. FFS dude.

At least he was self-aware enough to delete it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 01, 2022, 01:27:12 AM
Why did he delete it? I don't think Daddy Putin had a problem with it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 01, 2022, 05:16:24 AM
Quote from: Valmy on October 31, 2022, 11:05:46 PMAt least he was self-aware enough to delete it.

Or some aide or PR stooge snatched his phone and deleted it for him.  :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 01, 2022, 07:29:13 AM
Quote from: Valmy on October 31, 2022, 11:05:46 PMMusk becomes harder to defend everyday. FFS dude.

At least he was self-aware enough to delete it.
I just quit trying. 

I just shut up and tell myself that if he actually gets us closer to less reliance on fossil fuel, or advances our exploration of space, it is worth all the fucking assholeness bullshit.

I mean, it is, right? Right?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on November 01, 2022, 08:15:47 AM
Only thing I give him real credit for is space exploration. He was smart enough to make himself the face of drive toward electric vehicles but I don't think he was or going to be that instrumental for that.


Seeing him worshipped by what seems to me a lot of cross-section with incels and similar fools reminds me of that comparison that people worshipped Steve Jobs -a certified massively selfish asshole- as a god while considering Bill Gates -a ruthless businessman who has been trying to do something decent with his wealth- the Devil.

A lot of people just cannot help melting from the most destructive "alpha male" attitude.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 01, 2022, 09:42:19 AM
Yeah I think the political angle on Musk that I find interesting is some of the weird silicon valley ideology that you have with him, with Peter Thiel and others - because I think that massive fandom of a certain type of entrepreneur/business leader is precisely part of that politics.

I think it is odd but I think it does also tie in with some of the weird politics of certain tech billionaires - and it does seem like a very specifically tech thing. Other sectors have billionaires but their politics seem more normal/just don't want to be regulated or taxed.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 01, 2022, 10:22:24 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 01, 2022, 09:42:19 AMI think it is odd but I think it does also tie in with some of the weird politics of certain tech billionaires - and it does seem like a very specifically tech thing. Other sectors have billionaires but their politics seem more normal/just don't want to be regulated or taxed.

I guess it has to do with Techies seeing themselves as ahead of the curve/disruptors/paradigm shifters/whatever. As their sector doesn't follow traditional business patterns, they don't see themselves beholden to traditional ideological ones.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 01, 2022, 10:24:10 AM
Quote from: The Larch on November 01, 2022, 10:22:24 AMI guess it has to do with Techies seeing themselves as ahead of the curve/disruptors/paradigm shifters/whatever. As their sector doesn't follow traditional business patterns, they don't see themselves beholden to traditional ideological ones.
That sounds right - also it seems particularly susceptible to the idea of a single animating genius which again links to their politics. But I think also taps into something very uniquely American in the idea of the CEO as hero.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 01, 2022, 10:26:42 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 01, 2022, 10:24:10 AM
Quote from: The Larch on November 01, 2022, 10:22:24 AMI guess it has to do with Techies seeing themselves as ahead of the curve/disruptors/paradigm shifters/whatever. As their sector doesn't follow traditional business patterns, they don't see themselves beholden to traditional ideological ones.
That sounds right - also it seems particularly susceptible to the idea of a single animating genius which again links to their politics. But I think also taps into something very uniquely American in the idea of the CEO as hero.

Yeah, tech must be the only sector where there's still a large degree of genious worshipping and idolization of their industry leaders, as well as a certain mythology linked to it (the "coder in the garage" kind of creation story, for instance).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 01, 2022, 03:46:17 PM
So it seems that Musk plans to turn Twitter's "blue tick" into a kind of premium membership, rather than a system to show who is a confirmed real person and who is not.

QuoteMusk proposes charging $8 for verified Twitter account despite user backlash
The new owner justified the measure saying 'we need to pay the bills somehow'

Elon Musk has indicated that a verified account on Twitter in the future could cost $8 a month, despite facing a user backlash over proposals to charge for the feature.

The new owner of Twitter described the current system for allocating blue check marks – which verify a user as a trustworthy source – as "bullshit" in a Twitter post to his more than 110 million followers on Tuesday.

"Twitter's current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn't have a blue checkmark is bullshit. Power to the people! Blue for $8/month," he wrote, suggesting that a tick could be given to accounts that subscribe to the platform's premium service, Blue, for $8 a month.

Musk added that the price could fluctuate according to country. Twitter's Blue service operates in a handful of countries: the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It costs $4.99 a month in the US and in its current guise the service offers a narrower suite of perks such as being able to undo or edit tweets.

In the Twitter thread, Musk said subscribers to the new Blue service would also get priority in replies, mentions and search, which he said was "essential to defeat" spam accounts. Users will also see half as many adverts and will be able to post long video and audio clips. No timing for the changes was announced.

The changes would affect about 400,000 blue tick accounts on Twitter. Advertising, which would be reduced for Blue subscribers under the plans, accounts for 90% of Twitter's $5bn in annual revenue.

Hours before, Musk justified his plans to charge for verification by tweeting that "we need to pay the bills somehow", adding that it was the only way to "defeat the bots and trolls". Musk made the comments in an exchange with the author Stephen King, who had tweeted that if a $20 tick-charge were implemented "I'm gone like Enron." "How about $8?" Musk responded.

Musk's plans to charge for verification had leaked on Monday, sparking a backlash from some users including King. A Twitter poll floating the idea published by the tech investor Jason Calacanis, a Musk associate who is part of a team brought in by the multibillionaire to help run the business, had an 80% response for the option "wouldn't pay".

The blue tick verification process was brought in by Twitter in 2009 in response to celebrity concerns about impersonation. The programme ran into trouble when Twitter withdrew the verification status from controversial users such as the rightwing personality Milo Yiannopoulos and it was paused for a number of years before resuming it in 2021.

Musk closed a $44bn deal to buy Twitter on Thursday last week and has wasted no time in ringing the changes. He fired senior executives including the CEO, Parag Agrawal, and made himself sole director of the company. He has also reportedly installed a team of associates to help him run the business including Calacanis and his personal attorney, as well as drafting in employees at Tesla to look at Twitter's code.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 01, 2022, 04:43:37 PM
I think the "if you're not paying for it, you're the product" thing is very true when it comes to Twitter. If you're the average Twitter nobody, your data and your attention is being sold. If you're a somebody on Twitter your data and your attention is probably not of significant value, but the content you generate is the product that is used to keep the Twitter nobodies engaged.

With the subscription fee it looks like Musk is going to try to get (at least a subset of) the product to pay for privilege of being product. There's a bit of structural conflict, I think, but he may be able to pull it off... though I think he'd be better off if he had a solid plan for how to roll it out rather than just rely on "if I say it, people will come on board."

Though I do have to say I'm keeping my Twitter account to see how this unfolds.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 01, 2022, 05:44:22 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 01, 2022, 04:43:37 PMI think the "if you're not paying for it, you're the product" thing is very true when it comes to Twitter. If you're the average Twitter nobody, your data and your attention is being sold. If you're a somebody on Twitter your data and your attention is probably not of significant value, but the content you generate is the product that is used to keep the Twitter nobodies engaged.

With the subscription fee it looks like Musk is going to try to get (at least a subset of) the product to pay for privilege of being product. There's a bit of structural conflict, I think, but he may be able to pull it off... though I think he'd be better off if he had a solid plan for how to roll it out rather than just rely on "if I say it, people will come on board."

Though I do have to say I'm keeping my Twitter account to see how this unfolds.
This is true - but working in data (and media) Twitter is genuinely the least of our worries on that front. Facebook and Google are vastly bigger and dodgier in what they're doing with data. I don't think that will change with Musk because ultimately Twitter is comparatively niche compared to them. I know I'm a broken clock on this but Facebook and Google and dishonest on an industrial scale in what they're doing with people's data - and underpin that entire ecosystem in a way that Twitter doesn't.

The missed opportunity I think for Twitter were things like Patreon and Substack because Twitter is used by everyone with a podcast or a newsletter to promote - but the monetisable product is somewhere else. I think a subscription model could maybe a step in that direction.

But I think, as you say, it's a very different business. I also think there's a bit of a disconnect in that shift from what Twitter is if you follow politics or if you've got a high follower count like Musk and, I suspect, what Twitter is for the vast majority of users which is BTS stans. So I slightly wonder if Musk is leaning into the product based on how he experiences Twitter and not how it is, which strikes me as a risk.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 01, 2022, 05:51:23 PM
On google, just saw this thing on Pro Publica about Google: https://www.propublica.org/article/google-alphabet-ads-fund-disinformation-covid-elections

Haven't given it more than a cursory skim, but it seems to make the case that Google fuels misinformation and worse.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 01, 2022, 06:01:49 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 01, 2022, 05:44:22 PMI know I'm a broken clock on this but Facebook and Google and dishonest on an industrial scale in what they're doing with people's data - and underpin that entire ecosystem in a way that Twitter doesn't.

Please educate me, particularly as regards Google.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 01, 2022, 06:15:35 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 01, 2022, 05:44:22 PMBut I think, as you say, it's a very different business. I also think there's a bit of a disconnect in that shift from what Twitter is if you follow politics or if you've got a high follower count like Musk and, I suspect, what Twitter is for the vast majority of users which is BTS stans. So I slightly wonder if Musk is leaning into the product based on how he experiences Twitter and not how it is, which strikes me as a risk.

Yeah, I was going to say something similar - that I think Musk has a very real lived experience of what the problems and painpoints are for Twitter users, and some ideas of how to fix them... but they're the perspective of someone with 110 million followers and however many billions of net worth.

And the risk for Musk, I think, is that in his previous successes as an executive he could rely more on his own deeply felt set of priorities - driving a car or launching a rocket is not something where there's massive variation between desired user experiences. Optimizing the organization for producing those products - for which he could always refer back to his own deeply held product owner experience - is obviously not trivial, but still relatively simple... compared to social media, where there are many many different desired user experiences - people making a living from social media, politicians, people getting news, trolls (professional and hobbyists), ideologues, marketers, folks looking for social connection, journalists, academics - and they don't necessarily map closely to Musk's own experience.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 01, 2022, 06:17:55 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 01, 2022, 05:51:23 PMOn google, just saw this thing on Pro Publica about Google: https://www.propublica.org/article/google-alphabet-ads-fund-disinformation-covid-elections

Haven't given it more than a cursory skim, but it seems to make the case that Google fuels misinformation and worse.
Google's ad business is on basically every news website in the world (and more). It and the other middle men capture most of the revenue. It doesn't need to be doing personalised ads because the Google code is basically the easiest, most straightforward way to even display ads so they are integral to the entire system (there are a few alternatives).

They flagrantly ignore what they are saying around "purpose limitation" of not using data for any other reason beyond the reason it was collected - which is a breach of European law - and there is so much sharing within and across all Google properties it's just a nightmare. I think Wolfe Christie has done really good work on that. So even if you as a publisher don't display personalised ads, and have the most vanilla, simple Google code you can there's really strong evidence that Google is still harvesting data about your users which are then going into their personalisation models.

To that I'd add that on that site Google does have brand safety tools - but again there's no purpose limitation. So you sign up to brand safety - you don't want your brand against inappropriate content or you don't want inappropriate ads next to your content. I've never seen it fully confirmed but there's been lots of signs that Google is basically scraping those sites for their own commercial purposes (e.g. to further their ads business) as well as just brand safety.

I work in the field so I am very ethically compromised (though I'm not at a bad place compared to some very ad-heavy news sites) - but adtech is just fundamentally contrary to any concept of data protection or fundamental rights around data. It is currently based on broadcasting what Google knows about any impression on a site to the entire adtech ecosystem, which then analyses you to identify if they've got relevant ads and then the entire ecosystem bids on that bit of space. There are so many parties getting personal data from every single click on a page it's incredible - I've seen one activist, in my view, rightly describe it as the biggest data leak in the world and it's just a permanent flow.

And we know that people don't want this if they're asked. We know from Google and Facebook's earnings that every time Apple makes a change to their design that requires consent for adtech, or European regulation does that an awful lot of people say no and Google/Facebook take a big hit. We can see the adoption of more privacy-centric browsers or plugins precisely to stop this from happening. It's also evidenced in surveys and in focus groups. But it's the core business of some of the world's biggest companies (and it feels telling that so many of the world's biggest companies fundamentally sell ad space).

I'd also add the computing power behind that - again Google is a core part - is hugely carbon intensive. Globally online advertising is a bigger emitter than aviation. It's like bitcoin - just imagine the server power of every impression on everyone of the Google's 2 million clients selling inventory about that individual visitor.

There are changes in the industry - regulation is helpful in trying to push things along, publishers are desperately looking at ways to claw back some revenue and climate concerns are rising for big brands. But it's really not good on so many levels and Google especially is the absolute heart of the industry.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 01, 2022, 06:21:36 PM
There's also the thing that one of the reasons disinformation and conspiracy theory is so lucrative is that they make money from Google advertising.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 01, 2022, 06:36:10 PM
Yeah - although I think their bigger impact in that area is the wipe out of publisher revenue for big media organisations as much, if not more than the ability of niche sites to monetise their content.

As I say advertising on websites is the core of the world's biggest businesses - and very, very little of that is making its way to the companies that are producing the content people want to read.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 01, 2022, 06:49:22 PM
In re the checkmark, there are a few issues.

For one, the main reason Twitter developed the checkmark was actually to head off litigation.

By creating a verified status, Twitter has basically an argument that anyone who is not verified, you don't really know that it is really that person. They also will not allow anyone to impersonate a real person unless it is a form of parody. For example I can have @DumbDonaldTrump as a parody account that mocks Trump for being stupid. I cannot have a Donald Trump account where I put forth credible and flagrant claims that I am the real Donald Trump. Further, before he was banned, the actual real Donald Trump could get verified so other people would know it was the real Donald Trump.

Twitter came up with this system to avoid getting sued by famous people being impersonated on their platform. It isn't a perfect liability shield, but my understanding has always been that was the core reason they created it.

Ancillary reasons are helping to promote people who generate lots of Twitter views, and even more ancillary, helping sort out potential disinformation and things of that nature.

If they take the blue checkmark away from a famous person who does not want to pony up, they are still going to have to maintain the other parts of the system--protecting that person against impersonation, or they open themselves up to liability. Additionally right now they have several blue checkmark people (like for example some Russian and Iranian government officials, among many others of that ilk) for whom it would be illegal for Twitter to charge money to--because they cannot legally accept payments from those people because they are under legal sanction.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 02, 2022, 08:00:20 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 01, 2022, 06:36:10 PMYeah - although I think their bigger impact in that area is the wipe out of publisher revenue for big media organisations as much, if not more than the ability of niche sites to monetise their content.

As I say advertising on websites is the core of the world's biggest businesses - and very, very little of that is making its way to the companies that are producing the content people want to read.

I'm not sure about the "want" to read part of your post.  Instead dubious content gets supported because numbers of people want to read it.


marketplace of ideas?

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on November 02, 2022, 08:37:51 AM
1. Get an audience
2. Monetise that audience
3. Keep the audience engaged
4. Untold amount of profit by peddling Google ads for weight loss pills.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 02, 2022, 08:53:21 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 02, 2022, 08:00:20 AMI'm not sure about the "want" to read part of you post.  Instead dubious content gets supported because numbers of people want to read it.

marketplace of ideas?
Sure but the vast majority of internet traffic is to the mainstream media - there will always be people who want to and do read dubious content. I don't think the big issue is the rise of bad content, I think it's the decline of good content (with the exception of Facebook - where I think there are bigger issues on this).

Partly that's a structural change. Media companies have too much data and know what readers are interested in. Back in the day when you were just a newspaper or an organised news show you didn't really know which bits people were reading. You could sneak in the protein of reporting with the carbs of opinion pieces - not everyone's going to read, say, an Industrial Relations Correspondent (a now extinct category in the UK) or a report from Tigray, but it was there and you had to turn the page. Some people would pause and read it. Where I am, if all they wanted to do was increase their readership it would be 100% screeds about Brexit and the Tories because that's what people click to straight away. The challenge is getting people to click on to the deeply reported piece or the fact heavy piece on, say, climate that doesn't meet someone's priors. The other thing the data highlights is exactly how much certain bits of the media are basically subsidising what I'd consider the valuable bits - reporters around the country and the world doing stories. When budget decisions are made there is always a desire to protect that but it's a more challenging issue when you can quantify it.

The other side is the type of content. So the dubious sites have cheap overhead because basically what they're doing is reporting on online rumours and "just raising questions". That's incredibly cheap - you need a laptop and an internet connection. It is vastly more expensive to actually report on issues - even just in time cost of calling round for comments on a press release. Again the financial pressure on the mainstream media has pushed it more into the type of content that dubious sites are spreading. Far too many articles are about someone saying something somewhere on the internet and that being described as "controversy over", "x clap back", "people are discussing" (all incredibly passive reports because reporting in the active would undermine the report: "Twitter rando with 134 followers said something racist"). I think the problem with that is that if the content is similar in that way, you're training your readers to read a certain sort of content. Frankly if they get into that, they might as well go to the full fat version.

I don't think the problem is lots of bad opinions or fake facts, I think it's what the internet has done structurally to the mainstream media. I don't think relying on the platforms to counter disinformation or misinformation will solve anything - instead it will reinforce the problems we have by further strengthening the position of the platforms at the heart of everything despite not being the organisations doing reporting, producing content or making editorial decisions. Making them pay more to the publishers, I think, would help more.

Australia will be an interesting case study because they pushed that law that basically required Google and Facebook to pay news publishers. They threatened to pull out of that market and threw a tantrum but then didn't. Australia's media is overwhelmingly dominated by Murdoch companies - but that group of companies alone saw "nine figure increases" in their revenue directly because of that law. Some of that will go into dividends or whatever, but a chunk is now being invested in increasing reporting muscle and newsroom costs. It might, also, allow more news sites to eschew a paywall as their only path to profitability - which I think is important. The UK has relatively big open sites like the BBC and the Guardian as well as Mail Online. But if you're a casual news consumer in the US lots of the big "reputable" sites (NYT/Washington Post etc) are behind really aggressive paywalls for very good commercial reasons but I think that's also a challenge for the public discourse and I think a question for a democratic society of news becoming a thing for people who can afford not just to buy a paper but sign up for a subscription model.

Edit: TLDR - I don't think it's a demand issue, I think it's a supply issue.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 02, 2022, 09:43:11 AM
(https://i.redd.it/xktz4r1r7fx91.jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on November 02, 2022, 09:47:08 AM
Quote from: Syt on November 02, 2022, 09:43:11 AM...snip

:lol:

Brilliant post, thanks Syt.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 02, 2022, 10:07:29 AM
My favourite take was something like "world richest man says 'pay me $96/month to protect free speech a fight inequality"
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 02, 2022, 10:14:46 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 02, 2022, 08:53:21 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 02, 2022, 08:00:20 AMI'm not sure about the "want" to read part of you post.  Instead dubious content gets supported because numbers of people want to read it.

marketplace of ideas?
Sure but the vast majority of internet traffic is to the mainstream media - there will always be people who want to and do read dubious content. I don't think the big issue is the rise of bad content, I think it's the decline of good content (with the exception of Facebook - where I think there are bigger issues on this).

Partly that's a structural change. Media companies have too much data and know what readers are interested in. Back in the day when you were just a newspaper or an organised news show you didn't really know which bits people were reading. You could sneak in the protein of reporting with the carbs of opinion pieces - not everyone's going to read, say, an Industrial Relations Correspondent (a now extinct category in the UK) or a report from Tigray, but it was there and you had to turn the page. Some people would pause and read it. Where I am, if all they wanted to do was increase their readership it would be 100% screeds about Brexit and the Tories because that's what people click to straight away. The challenge is getting people to click on to the deeply reported piece or the fact heavy piece on, say, climate that doesn't meet someone's priors. The other thing the data highlights is exactly how much certain bits of the media are basically subsidising what I'd consider the valuable bits - reporters around the country and the world doing stories. When budget decisions are made there is always a desire to protect that but it's a more challenging issue when you can quantify it.

The other side is the type of content. So the dubious sites have cheap overhead because basically what they're doing is reporting on online rumours and "just raising questions". That's incredibly cheap - you need a laptop and an internet connection. It is vastly more expensive to actually report on issues - even just in time cost of calling round for comments on a press release. Again the financial pressure on the mainstream media has pushed it more into the type of content that dubious sites are spreading. Far too many articles are about someone saying something somewhere on the internet and that being described as "controversy over", "x clap back", "people are discussing" (all incredibly passive reports because reporting in the active would undermine the report: "Twitter rando with 134 followers said something racist"). I think the problem with that is that if the content is similar in that way, you're training your readers to read a certain sort of content. Frankly if they get into that, they might as well go to the full fat version.

I don't think the problem is lots of bad opinions or fake facts, I think it's what the internet has done structurally to the mainstream media. I don't think relying on the platforms to counter disinformation or misinformation will solve anything - instead it will reinforce the problems we have by further strengthening the position of the platforms at the heart of everything despite not being the organisations doing reporting, producing content or making editorial decisions. Making them pay more to the publishers, I think, would help more.

Australia will be an interesting case study because they pushed that law that basically required Google and Facebook to pay news publishers. They threatened to pull out of that market and threw a tantrum but then didn't. Australia's media is overwhelmingly dominated by Murdoch companies - but that group of companies alone saw "nine figure increases" in their revenue directly because of that law. Some of that will go into dividends or whatever, but a chunk is now being invested in increasing reporting muscle and newsroom costs. It might, also, allow more news sites to eschew a paywall as their only path to profitability - which I think is important. The UK has relatively big open sites like the BBC and the Guardian as well as Mail Online. But if you're a casual news consumer in the US lots of the big "reputable" sites (NYT/Washington Post etc) are behind really aggressive paywalls for very good commercial reasons but I think that's also a challenge for the public discourse and I think a question for a democratic society of news becoming a thing for people who can afford not just to buy a paper but sign up for a subscription model.

Edit: TLDR - I don't think it's a demand issue, I think it's a supply issue.


Media consumption habits are not as clear cut as you propose.  They vary across age groups and countries.  The US being a particular outlier - which is a significant part of their problem.

You might find this to be an interesting read

https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2022/dnr-executive-summary
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 02, 2022, 11:28:23 AM
FWIW I think most Americans who get news from social media are getting it from Facebook, not Twitter. Facebook serves up traditional news article copied from various sources to a pretty entrenched audience of boomers. Twitter does link lots of news articles, but is a noisy platform that AFAICT is less utilized by older generations and has less engagement than Facebook in general, and less of an audience.

Facebook has 240m American users, Twitter has 7 million American users.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 02, 2022, 11:50:06 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 02, 2022, 11:28:23 AMFWIW I think most Americans who get news from social media are getting it from Facebook, not Twitter. Facebook serves up traditional news article copied from various sources to a pretty entrenched audience of boomers. Twitter does link lots of news articles, but is a noisy platform that AFAICT is less utilized by older generations and has less engagement than Facebook in general, and less of an audience.

Facebook has 240m American users, Twitter has 7 million American users.
Yeah - Facebook is vastly more relevant. Outside of the US especially when you add WhatsApp which is basically used for mass chain letters in some countries/communities.

As you say, Facebook also looks more like the average voter. In the UK there's been numerous studies that Twitter is vastly more left-wing than average and far younger and more college educated too (which makes sense given that age and education are the big divides in recent elections here). But the same studies show Facebook is more right wing than average, used by older people and less college educated.

I always remember the point that while Twitter was excited about the potential of Corbyn's 2017 (relative) success and was this a breakthrough for the left, on Facebook the most shared election memes and content by an order of magnitude were Labour attacking Theresa May's plan to have a free vote on fox hunting - which is very UK boomer content. That was Labour's most successful message on social media in years so perhaps not unrelated to their performance).

QuoteMedia consumption habits are not as clear cut as you propose.  They vary across age groups and countries.  The US being a particular outlier - which is a significant part of their problem.

You might find this to be an interesting read
I don't think any of that really goes against what I've said. Every big media company is a digital company with an app and where there social media plans on any big stories, promoting your story on social media is part of the job for a journalist so getting news from social media or online includes the mainstream media. Again, that stuff costs money.

I think there's possibly a bit of dot-joining they could do - for example there seems to be a link between young people trusting the media least and therfore least likely to have a subscription. I think it's the other way round young people (lowest paid, in the rental market, most exposed to "flexible" contracts) are least likely to have (or be able to afford) subscriptions - therefore they are least likely to trust the media. Media consumption is about habit forming and I'm not sure the current model of walled gardens, driven by commercial imperatives, is good for the sector or public discourse in the long-run.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 02, 2022, 11:58:59 AM
The fact that more people rely on Facebook is hardly reassuring, given that we have a 13,000+ post thread about the inane stuff that people circulate on FB.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on November 02, 2022, 12:09:48 PM
We can just hope that Zuckerberg's delusional Metaverse will eventually ruin Facebook. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on November 02, 2022, 12:13:36 PM
Looks like Languish will survive the Social Media era. That's a fun thing to think about.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 02, 2022, 02:33:07 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 02, 2022, 11:28:23 AMFacebook has 240m American users, Twitter has 7 million American users.

Correction: first source I looked at was incorrect. While FB is estimated to have 240m monthly active American users, Twitter has more like 39m, so bigger than I said--but still quite a bit smaller than FB.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 02, 2022, 02:55:18 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 02, 2022, 02:33:07 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 02, 2022, 11:28:23 AMFacebook has 240m American users, Twitter has 7 million American users.

Correction: first source I looked at was incorrect. While FB is estimated to have 240m monthly active American users, Twitter has more like 39m, so bigger than I said--but still quite a bit smaller than FB.

But Twitter gets amplified by news sources reporting on what is tweeted.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 02, 2022, 04:45:35 PM
Somebody had "conflict of interests" in his bingo card?

QuoteGM temporarily suspends advertising on Twitter following Elon Musk takeover

DETROIT — General Motors is suspending its advertising on Twitter following Elon Musk's takeover of the social media platform, the company told CNBC on Friday.

The Detroit automaker, a rival to Musk-led electric vehicle maker Tesla, said it is "pausing" advertising as it evaluates Twitter's new direction. It will continue to use the platform to interact with customers but not pay for advertising, GM added.

"We are engaging with Twitter to understand the direction of the platform under their new ownership. As is normal course of business with a significant change in a media platform, we have temporarily paused our paid advertising. Our customer care interactions on Twitter will continue," the company said in an emailed statement.

Under CEO Mary Barra, the Detroit company was among the first automakers to announce billions of dollars in spending to better compete against Tesla in the battery electric vehicle segment.

A spokesperson for Ford Motor, another Tesla rival, told CNBC that the automaker is not currently advertising on Twitter, and had not been doing so prior to Elon Musk's take-private deal. They added, "We will continue to evaluate the direction of the platform under the new ownership."

However, when presented with a screenshot of a promoted tweet from Ford CEO Jim Farley, the spokesperson could not confirm when was the last time Ford or its collaborators may have paid for ads, including promoted tweets, on the platform.

Ford is continuing to engage with its customers on Twitter.

Other auto companies, including Stellantis and Alphabet-owned Waymo, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on whether they plan to suspend advertising or discontinue using the social media platform in wake of Musk's $44 billion buyout of Twitter.

Electric truck maker Nikola said it had no plans to change anything regarding the platform. Rivian declined to comment.

The future direction of Twitter has been central to the takeover story. Musk has said he is a "free speech absolutist," who would restore the account of former President Donald Trump, who was banned over his tweets during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.

Musk said on Friday that he plans a "content moderation council" and will not reinstate any accounts or make major content decisions before it is convened. Musk also said in a statement to advertisers this week that he cannot let Twitter become a "free-for-all hellscape."

Henrik Fisker, CEO of EV startup Fisker Inc., deleted his Twitter account earlier this year when Twitter's board accepted Musk's bid to buy the company and take it private. Fisker Inc. continues to use Twitter, which every major automotive brand utilizes for customer engagement and marketing. The company said it had no plans to change what it's doing on the social network.

Musk has long boasted that Tesla does not pay for traditional advertising, a cost that has added up for conventional automakers' brands through the years.

Instead, Tesla rewards people who run, or are members of, Tesla owners' clubs as well as other social media influencers who promote the company's products, stock and Musk on social networks, especially Twitter and YouTube as well as on fan blogs.

They are often granted early access to Tesla products, like the company's Full Self Driving Beta software, and given passes to company events where attendance is limited.

In September 2020, Tesla weighed a stockholder proposal to begin strategic, paid advertising to educate the public about its vehicles and charging network. The Tesla board recommended against it, and shareholders voted with the board against starting to pay for traditional ad campaigns.

In the company's annual report for 2021, Tesla wrote: "Historically, we have been able to generate significant media coverage of our company and our products, and we believe we will continue to do so. Such media coverage and word of mouth are the current primary drivers of our sales leads and have helped us achieve sales without traditional advertising and at relatively low marketing costs."

It reported marketing, promotional and advertising costs were "immaterial" for the years ended Dec. 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019 in financial filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 03, 2022, 08:53:31 AM
Elon continues doing magnificent PR for himself.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FglVYVmXkAIWB5w?format=jpg&name=medium)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on November 03, 2022, 09:09:22 AM
You laugh but this is the kind of edgelord juvenile stuff that his incel cult of followers love.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 03, 2022, 09:20:42 AM
Who is laughing?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 03, 2022, 09:37:42 AM
I was told he is brilliant and the world would be better off if we had more like him. I'm sure I just lack the intellect to understand the truth of that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on November 03, 2022, 10:00:48 AM
So, I've seen it claimed that there are only 400,000 verified accounts on twitter. Even if they all went premium (and they won't), and paid the max rumored rate of 20 bucks, that'd be $8 million of monthly revenue, $96 million/year. This is an absolutely unrealistic best case scenario, and it would be just a drop in the ocean since Twitter earned $5 billion in 2021. This move makes absolutely no sense.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 03, 2022, 10:10:15 AM
Quote from: celedhring on November 03, 2022, 10:00:48 AMSo, I've seen it claimed that there are only 400,000 verified accounts on twitter. Even if they all went premium (and they won't), and paid the max rumored rate of 20 bucks, that'd be $8 million of monthly revenue, $96 million/year. This is an absolutely unrealistic best case scenario, and it would be just a drop in the ocean since Twitter earned $5 billion in 2021. This move makes absolutely no sense.

Musk's problem is that he got caught in one of his stunts and was forced by buy Twitter at a price that makes no sense. At some point the debt holders are going to call in their collateral, and then, mercifully, we will not talk about his brilliance anymore.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 03, 2022, 12:25:30 PM
Seen on Twitter:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FgkVHb4XEAAPJT9?format=jpg&name=large)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FgkVHb4XoAEyZ0u?format=jpg&name=large)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FgkVHb2XoAAPccI?format=jpg&name=large)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FgkVHb5XoAAISz-?format=jpg&name=large)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 03, 2022, 12:50:52 PM
Quote from: celedhring on November 03, 2022, 10:00:48 AMSo, I've seen it claimed that there are only 400,000 verified accounts on twitter. Even if they all went premium (and they won't), and paid the max rumored rate of 20 bucks, that'd be $8 million of monthly revenue, $96 million/year. This is an absolutely unrealistic best case scenario, and it would be just a drop in the ocean since Twitter earned $5 billion in 2021. This move makes absolutely no sense.

The currency of social media platforms is attention.  This move may never earn significant revenue and may fail completely, but it is commanding people's attention.  Everyone is talking about it.  On twitter.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 03, 2022, 02:02:22 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 03, 2022, 08:53:31 AMElon continues doing magnificent PR for himself.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FglVYVmXkAIWB5w?format=jpg&name=medium)

It's not exactly wrong is it?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on November 03, 2022, 02:05:55 PM
Perceived value of goods and services is a thing.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Habbaku on November 03, 2022, 02:39:02 PM
It's very wrong, as GF points out.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 03, 2022, 03:15:09 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on November 03, 2022, 02:05:55 PMPerceived value of goods and services is a thing.

Then they don't need to whine about not having the checkmark...

Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised most of the whining would not have existed if musk followed a certain orthodoxy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 03, 2022, 03:39:59 PM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 03, 2022, 02:02:22 PMIt's not exactly wrong is it?

It's correct that most people are willing to pay more for a refreshing hot drink than an intangible check mark.

But I'm not sure if that was the point Musk was trying to make.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 03, 2022, 04:02:03 PM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 03, 2022, 03:15:09 PMAnyway, I wouldn't be surprised most of the whining would not have existed if musk followed a certain orthodoxy.
I've said before - the thing that worries me about Musk owning Twitter: massive interests in China and his main financial backer is Saudi. Both seem a little concerning for a social media platform. And of course an ironic position for a man proclaiming his intent to buy this platform for the good of the public square and free speech - let's see how that lasts for Chinese, Hong Kong, Saudi etc activists.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 03, 2022, 04:30:33 PM
Is that the real price for a Starbucks fru fur drink?  :huh:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on November 03, 2022, 06:18:51 PM
84hr work week now the norm at Twitter (https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-twitter-staff-layoffs-long-hours-shifts-work-jobs-2022-11)

So, really, it was overstaffed. :)

QuoteStaff at Twitter have been clocking up much longer hours than usual since Elon Musk took over, CNBC reported. This comes as staff face the looming threat of layoffs amid the tech mogul's planned overhaul of the company.

Twitter managers have told some staff to work 12-hour shifts, seven days a week — equivalent to 84 hours a week — to meet Musk's deadlines, CNBC reported, citing internal communications.

Musk's $44 billion purchase of the social-media platform went through on Thursday evening, but concerns about layoffs at the company have been swirling since well before that. It remains unclear how many staff will be laid off and when, as well as which teams will be most affected.

Since Friday, staff at the company have been set tasks which some see as a test by Musk's team to see who works hard.

Insider previously reported that Musk's team assigned some of Twitter's engineers coding projects to work on over the weekend, known as sprints. Other tasks include making major changes to Twitter's verification service.

Insider previously reported that an internal message was sent to Twitter staff working on changes to the company's verification process telling them that: "The expectation is literally to work 24/7 to get this out."

CNBC reported that staff haven't been told whether they'll get overtime pay, time off in lieu, or job security for working on the assignments.

Staff worry that their careers at Twitter could be over if they don't complete their tasks by the early November deadlines, CNBC reported.

Twitter's managers, meanwhile, have been asked to carry out performance reviews and send Musk's team lists of which employees should be kept on, people familiar with the discussions told Insider.

But the managers themselves are also feeling the strain, with some telling The New York Times that they slept at Twitter's office on Friday and Saturday nights.

Twitter's top managers were pulled into meetings with Musk and his team last week at Twitter's San Francisco headquarters, where they were asked to describe their division's work, two people involved in the meetings told The Times.

Some Twitter managers told the publication that they felt like they were being assessed.

The Washington Post reported that Musk's team plans to cut around a quarter of Twitter's staff in a first round of layoffs, citing a person familiar with discussions that took place at Twitter HQ last week.

Twitter didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment on working hours, staff sleeping at the office, and layoffs.

Musk dissolved Twitter's board of directors, a Monday SEC filing shows, cementing his position as Twitter's sole director.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tonitrus on November 03, 2022, 09:04:14 PM
Musks' shenanigans, but especially the reading/research on how Tesla manages their employees, is why I would never buy a Tesla and went with a competing EV instead.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 03, 2022, 10:49:24 PM
Yeah I ruled out getting a Tesla and put Elon in my idiosyncratic "avoid supporting this guy's business" bucket a while ago. IIRC it was his behaviour around the trapped Thai boys situation that put him on it. Certainly, nothing I've seen sense has caused me to want to reevaluate that decision.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 03, 2022, 10:51:51 PM
In other news, it looks like Twitter is doing massive layoffs tomorrow.

Saw what was supposed to be the email circulated to staff, outlining the process: https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1588327845348093952

If the email is indeed real, I'm also going to take a moment to scoff at an email like that being signed "Twitter" rather than the name of whoever owns the decision - or at the very last, someone who's been delegated the responsibility to communicate it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 03, 2022, 11:25:40 PM
Tesla's build quality is what would keep me away. 20k car QA on a 65+k car. Now that the competition is truly ramping up I think Tesla is in for a world of hurt.  And as much as I loath him as a person his companies home battery/solar tech is intriguing and way ahead of the game.  same with satellite internet.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 03, 2022, 11:59:23 PM
Teslas are expensive with tons of bells and whistles. They are toys for rich car lovers. Not really my bag baby. I want a more economical EV.

My hope is that all his catering to the fake-libertarian quasi-fascist right wing set will trick them all into supporting EVs and solar tech  :lol:

Certainly a ton of left wing climate change people are now going to buy other EVs and solar tech, which makes this even a more puzzling series of moves. Surely this is his main target market right? Why antagonize them over this nonsense trolling he does?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on November 04, 2022, 01:10:34 AM
Occam's razor. He's just not that bright.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 04, 2022, 01:13:33 AM
Quote from: Valmy on November 03, 2022, 11:59:23 PMTeslas are expensive with tons of bells and whistles. They are toys for rich car lovers. Not really my bag baby. I want a more economical EV.

My hope is that all his catering to the fake-libertarian quasi-fascist right wing set will trick them all into supporting EVs and solar tech  :lol:
?

Less so in real politics but as i have mentioned before in the real world and online I'm definitely spotting this.

They're switching over from climate change isn't real towards Evs as a direct one to one solution for climate change where we just swap out Ice for Evs and problem solved, no need to change anything around urban design or public transport.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on November 04, 2022, 01:48:31 AM
Maybe that's Musk's 5D Chess plan. Becoming a darling of the cretin right so they embrace renewable energy to own the libs.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tonitrus on November 04, 2022, 01:55:03 AM
Quote from: HVC on November 03, 2022, 11:25:40 PMTesla's build quality is what would keep me away. 20k car QA on a 65+k car. Now that the competition is truly ramping up I think Tesla is in for a world of hurt.  And as much as I loath him as a person his companies home battery/solar tech is intriguing and way ahead of the game.  same with satellite internet.

What Tesla did right with EVs (and is frustrating other EVs right now), more than the cars themselves, is put a huge investment into a robust, easy-access charging network.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 04, 2022, 02:20:28 AM
Quote from: celedhring on November 04, 2022, 01:48:31 AMMaybe that's Musk's 5D Chess plan. Becoming a darling of the cretin right so they embrace renewable energy to own the libs.

I had the same thought too.  Make EV cool for rednecks and he's a climate god.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Threviel on November 04, 2022, 03:59:12 AM
Besides charging network the software in Teslas are (were?) far superior to traditional cars.

Infotainment, maps and usability is just far far better than every other car I've tested. The others are probably catching up, but Tesla had a huge head start.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on November 04, 2022, 04:08:36 AM
The thing with Tesla is that they entered the market when EVs were just a novelty for the rich and started launching progressively cheaper cars, while they built production capacity and scale. It's a very impressive industrial success story (they also benfited a lot from public policy, too).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 04, 2022, 04:17:00 AM
I'm a Tesla shareholder.  I could conceivably get a proxy motion to shitcan Elon.  How would you vote in that situation?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 04, 2022, 06:20:43 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 03, 2022, 10:51:51 PMIn other news, it looks like Twitter is doing massive layoffs tomorrow.

Saw what was supposed to be the email circulated to staff, outlining the process: https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1588327845348093952

If the email is indeed real, I'm also going to take a moment to scoff at an email like that being signed "Twitter" rather than the name of whoever owns the decision - or at the very last, someone who's been delegated the responsibility to communicate it.

"Tomorrow" :lol:

They cut off my (and hundreds of others) internal access before you even posted this.  :bleeding:  :ike:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 04, 2022, 06:32:19 AM
Hello there! :)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on November 04, 2022, 06:33:13 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 04, 2022, 04:17:00 AMI'm a Tesla shareholder.  I could conceivably get a proxy motion to shitcan Elon.  How would you vote in that situation?

Yes. CEOs are not heroes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 04, 2022, 07:05:20 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 04, 2022, 01:10:34 AMOccam's razor. He's just not that bright.

Or, going by D&D logic ( :nerd: ), he's smart, but unwise.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on November 04, 2022, 07:19:19 AM
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 04, 2022, 06:20:43 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 03, 2022, 10:51:51 PMIn other news, it looks like Twitter is doing massive layoffs tomorrow.

Saw what was supposed to be the email circulated to staff, outlining the process: https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1588327845348093952

If the email is indeed real, I'm also going to take a moment to scoff at an email like that being signed "Twitter" rather than the name of whoever owns the decision - or at the very last, someone who's been delegated the responsibility to communicate it.

"Tomorrow" :lol:

They cut off my (and hundreds of others) internal access before you even posted this.  :bleeding:  :ike:

Hello vM.

Hope it goes well or you; but as you're a talented guy I'm sure that would be no sweat.

:cheers:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 04, 2022, 07:21:52 AM
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 04, 2022, 06:20:43 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 03, 2022, 10:51:51 PMIn other news, it looks like Twitter is doing massive layoffs tomorrow.

Saw what was supposed to be the email circulated to staff, outlining the process: https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1588327845348093952

If the email is indeed real, I'm also going to take a moment to scoff at an email like that being signed "Twitter" rather than the name of whoever owns the decision - or at the very last, someone who's been delegated the responsibility to communicate it.

"Tomorrow" :lol:

They cut off my (and hundreds of others) internal access before you even posted this.  :bleeding:  :ike:

This wise man offers you sage advice:

(https://i.postimg.cc/fy5Bg7j3/image.png)

(In case it wasn't clear, I'm being sarcastic :P )
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 04, 2022, 07:29:41 AM
Quote from: celedhring on November 04, 2022, 04:08:36 AMThe thing with Tesla is that they entered the market when EVs were just a novelty for the rich and started launching progressively cheaper cars, while they built production capacity and scale. It's a very impressive industrial success story (they also benfited a lot from public policy, too).

The main thing missed though is the only reason Tesla has been able to do that is not because they started luxury and scaled up, but because Musk is a modern day P.T. Barnum who was able to get investors to pour many billions of dollars into Tesla when all of its financials and other performance for like 8 years made it look like every other startup car maker--a manufacturing company losing tons of money every quarter.

That's his real superpower with Tesla, and no other company that has attempted to break into the car market has ever had that before, which is why they've all failed. He didn't find a magical way to break into the car market without operating at a loss for years--he did that part, what he found was a way to operate at a loss for years and not go out of business by convincing the open market to recapitalize him multiple times.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 04, 2022, 07:44:51 AM
Quote from: Josquius on November 04, 2022, 01:13:33 AMLess so in real politics but as i have mentioned before in the real world and online I'm definitely spotting this.

They're switching over from climate change isn't real towards Evs as a direct one to one solution for climate change where we just swap out Ice for Evs and problem solved, no need to change anything around urban design or public transport.

Seems like progress to me! At least from that demographic...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 04, 2022, 07:54:31 AM
Quote from: Valmy on November 04, 2022, 07:44:51 AM
Quote from: Josquius on November 04, 2022, 01:13:33 AMLess so in real politics but as i have mentioned before in the real world and online I'm definitely spotting this.

They're switching over from climate change isn't real towards Evs as a direct one to one solution for climate change where we just swap out Ice for Evs and problem solved, no need to change anything around urban design or public transport.

Seems like progress to me! At least from that demographic...

It's a bit of a sliding scale. It starts at "climate change is not real", then it evolves into "climate change exists but it's a natural phenomenon mankind has nothing to do with", then it turns into "climate change is happening, mankind is responsible but there's nothing that we can do about it" and then into "climate change is real and we can do something about it but it's not as urgent as it's claimed to be". If this demographic is now thinking that EVs are the golden bullet that will get rid of the problem (which I doubt) is a new step in that scale.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 04, 2022, 07:57:13 AM
At this point I find the Twitter stuff more interesting as a business story than a culture / speech / social network story. I think the feared changes to Twitter that will somehow make the world worse for disinformation or hate speech are fairly exaggerated. Elon will want to at least not lose money on Twitter which will require advertisers. Twitter (and all other social media) was already contributing significantly to the spread of misinformation. I think Musk is unlikely to make these things worse, not out of trust in Musk but more out of a belief we were already rolling around at the bottom of the barrel. And that is because I think being incubators of misinformation is actually an innate trait of a large open social network, I think there are fairly limited things that can be done to stop that.

Facebook is already a lot more egregious in my mind because they promote a few things that create more powerful echo chambers. Twitter is more of an open discussion platform, unless you opt to be a private Tweeter, which few people do. On Facebook a lot of discussions happen in post comments which generally are friends only, Facebook Groups which are notorious incubators of extremism and misinformation, and in news article comments. All three of these things are algorithmically likely to be serving up ever more outrageous aka "engaging" content. Additionally, all of them tend to be insular; people largely stick to commenting on news articles from news sources they actually follow. People are insular with news now, groups are insular by design, and most people restrict most of their Facebook visibility to friends only so personal posts are communicated to a self-selected audience that are going to disproportionately likely be an echo chamber.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 04, 2022, 08:16:18 AM
QuoteBREAKING: Elon Musk has directed Twitter's teams to find over $1 billion in annual infrastructure cost savings by cutting cloud services and extra server space, per Reuters.

Back to 130 characters per tweet (unless you pay for a premium package)?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 04, 2022, 08:17:10 AM
If they went back to 140 characters that would be a very good thing :ph34r:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on November 04, 2022, 08:21:49 AM
Zero character limit would be even better.  You can still tweet a thread if you have a lot of wisdom to share.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on November 04, 2022, 08:28:12 AM
Quote from: The Larch on November 04, 2022, 08:16:18 AM
QuoteBREAKING: Elon Musk has directed Twitter's teams to find over $1 billion in annual infrastructure cost savings by cutting cloud services and extra server space, per Reuters.

Back to 130 characters per tweet (unless you pay for a premium package)?

Or they will stop storing tweets after X years, which would do many people a lot of good  :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 04, 2022, 12:08:50 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 04, 2022, 01:10:34 AMOccam's razor. He's just not that bright.
He has driven down the cost of putting a kilogram into space, or at least been a significant part of that happening, by about 10x.

We could use some more not bright assholes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 04, 2022, 12:20:15 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 04, 2022, 12:08:50 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 04, 2022, 01:10:34 AMOccam's razor. He's just not that bright.
He has driven down the cost of putting a kilogram into space, or at least been a significant part of that happening, by about 10x.

We could use some more not bright assholes.

Has he done any of the engineering, or been the hype man? Serious question, with his physics degree this would be the only business where he could have actually done any of the grunt work.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 04, 2022, 12:27:10 PM
Musk has certainly not been involved in the aerospace engineering. SpaceX didn't drive costs down because of any magically amazing engineering feats, there's a lot of misunderstanding of what SpaceX is and how it has done what it does. They appear to have largely cribbed research done by ULA years ago that showed exactly how they could lower launch costs, but ULA is a consortium of two major aerospace companies that had a vested interest in not lowering launch costs. All of the early guys who helped SpaceX get started were ex-NASA / DoD / aerospace major employees, initially they were helping Musk pick out decommissioned Soviet ICBMs to use as a rocket platform but shifted to in house manufacture because existing rockets were seen as too expensive.

There is "big idea" stuff and "particulars", SpaceX is definitely doing particulars that other companies had not done, but the big idea predates SpaceX and was essentially not pursued because the cost+ model of getting NASA and DoD to pay for your launches was seen as far more lucrative to ULA than pursuing what SpaceX is doing. Essentially aerospace is a small industry in terms of number of firms, DoD and NASA have historically had deep and probably improper relationships with the aero/defense majors and there had been and continues to be a system of funneling lavish contracts on them that aren't based on what you would see in a genuinely free market with operators who seek to lower costs. SpaceX and to a lesser degree the also-rans doing the same thing (there's a few lesser knowns) basically are doing what they are doing because they didn't benefit from the existing corrupt system. Much like Musks' ability to fund Tesla with hype capitalization and not actually generating profits, his business innovation here is interesting.

But being a 'business innovator' with funding and contracting strategy doesn't create the sort of profile Musk wants. Musk wants to be seen as a genius inventor of technology, and that isn't what he is.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on November 04, 2022, 12:54:58 PM
(https://i.redd.it/zyca3plw5yx91.png)

How can the richest man in the world not understand free markets? Companies do not want to be associated with him. That's all.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 04, 2022, 01:05:36 PM
:bleeding:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 04, 2022, 01:08:08 PM
It seems typical Libertarian-Bro approach to free speech:

"I should be able to say whatever I want - however untrue, however hurtful, however shitty - and if people complain about it they're against free speech."

"Other people should not be allowed to say things that are hurtful or shitty about me, and if they use their speech to react against me in a way I don't like - especially if it impacts me financially - then they are being political and against free speech."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 04, 2022, 01:11:36 PM
SpaceX does space vehicle engineering differently than ULA and their ilk, so it isn't just a parasite on what others do.  SpaceX doesn't spend a lot of engineering time on gold-plating their launch vehicles, and they don't launch prototypes expecting success.  They build a prototype cheaply and launch it to find out where it blows up, not whether it blows up.  Then they refine the design, test to destruction again, and iterate to a successful design.

SpaceX was also one of the first space launch companies to realize that investment in re-usable vehicles was the key to lowering launch costs, and they were the first to actively pursue reusability as a major goal. 

The extent to which SpaceX's innovations were do to Musk is something I will leave to those better able to read minds, but it is probably not accidental that SpaceX is pursuing pretty much exactly the path Musk laid out when he first talked about his over-arching goal of settling Mars.  In Musk's vision, Mars will not be settled by NASA astronauts.

Those who compulsively reject the idea of "brilliant asshole" might have less emotion invested in rejecting "visionary asshole."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 04, 2022, 01:20:55 PM
"Free speech is when you give my company money."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 04, 2022, 01:25:37 PM
An author on Twitter summed it up nicely: "People don't want to come to my house after I took a shit in the living room! Why do they hate free speech??"
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 04, 2022, 01:28:49 PM
Although I think that's a little passive - activists do play an important role here. Same as companies ending parties with the NRA, say. It's not because of a passive revulsion from the general public.

Edit: Maybe another side of libertarian approach there in the contempt for activists in the public sphere rather than just homo economicus?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 04, 2022, 02:03:36 PM
I thought that most companies that had withdrawn their advertising from Twitter was due to possible conflicts of interest by Musk, not the result of negative activism against him.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 04, 2022, 02:26:15 PM
Apparently Elon is continuing whining about "activist groups".

I guess civil society is okay when it's astro-turfed (and paid) by foreign and domestic interests hostile to democracy, but not okay otherwise?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 04, 2022, 02:29:40 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 04, 2022, 01:08:08 PMIt seems typical Libertarian-Bro approach to free speech:

"I should be able to say whatever I want - however untrue, however hurtful, however shitty - and if people complain about it they're against free speech."

"Other people should not be allowed to say things that are hurtful or shitty about me, and if they use their speech to react against me in a way I don't like - especially if it impacts me financially - then they are being political and against free speech."

Yeah, the thing that continually has to be pointed out, especially to right wing protest groups, is that freedom of speech does not include a freedom from criticism. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 04, 2022, 02:44:09 PM
Quote from: grumbler on November 04, 2022, 01:11:36 PMThose who compulsively reject the idea of "brilliant asshole" might have less emotion invested in rejecting "visionary asshole."

I'll go with brilliant but increasingly erratic asshole.  Even at the top of the game, he got into some serious problems with his loose online communications.  And the latter have gone from being an occasional lapse of judgment to a daily circus event.  It's not a reassuring trend, and his new job running the world's pre-eminent shitposting factory can't help.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 04, 2022, 03:00:32 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 04, 2022, 02:44:09 PMI'll go with brilliant but increasingly erratic asshole.  Even at the top of the game, he got into some serious problems with his loose online communications.  And the latter have gone from being an occasional lapse of judgment to a daily circus event.  It's not a reassuring trend, and his new job running the world's pre-eminent shitposting factory can't help.

No arguments from me on that line.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and we are seeing it happen in front of our eyes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 04, 2022, 03:40:15 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 04, 2022, 02:44:09 PM
Quote from: grumbler on November 04, 2022, 01:11:36 PMThose who compulsively reject the idea of "brilliant asshole" might have less emotion invested in rejecting "visionary asshole."

I'll go with brilliant but increasingly erratic asshole.  Even at the top of the game, he got into some serious problems with his loose online communications.  And the latter have gone from being an occasional lapse of judgment to a daily circus event.  It's not a reassuring trend, and his new job running the world's pre-eminent shitposting factory can't help.


I will give him kudos for having ideas and vision.  But the fact that people say he is responsible for Space X ignores the people that actually did the work.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 04, 2022, 04:44:52 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 04, 2022, 02:44:09 PM
Quote from: grumbler on November 04, 2022, 01:11:36 PMThose who compulsively reject the idea of "brilliant asshole" might have less emotion invested in rejecting "visionary asshole."

I'll go with brilliant but increasingly erratic asshole.  Even at the top of the game, he got into some serious problems with his loose online communications.  And the latter have gone from being an occasional lapse of judgment to a daily circus event.  It's not a reassuring trend, and his new job running the world's pre-eminent shitposting factory can't help.

Yeah, I wonder if we would all be better off if he got hit by a bus at this point. Or some kind of tragic event that would solidify his legacy of what he accomplished that was useful, while stopping him from destroying that utility with his narcissism.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 04, 2022, 04:45:28 PM
I think the thing with him is that his asshole traits are pretty tied to his business traits.
It's the same sort of mental issues that see him getting involved in petty shit on twitter that make him look beyond sensible business decisions towards "wee rockets are cool".

I will respect him on tesla. The whole open patent wanting to be imitated making electric cars cool thing is good.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 04, 2022, 04:45:48 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 04, 2022, 03:40:15 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 04, 2022, 02:44:09 PM
Quote from: grumbler on November 04, 2022, 01:11:36 PMThose who compulsively reject the idea of "brilliant asshole" might have less emotion invested in rejecting "visionary asshole."

I'll go with brilliant but increasingly erratic asshole.  Even at the top of the game, he got into some serious problems with his loose online communications.  And the latter have gone from being an occasional lapse of judgment to a daily circus event.  It's not a reassuring trend, and his new job running the world's pre-eminent shitposting factory can't help.


I will give him kudos for having ideas and vision.  But the fact that people say he is responsible for Space X ignores the people that actually did the work.
Maybe if he had slipped on a banana and broken his neck at 12 years old and none of us knew he existed, that same decline in cost to put payload into space would have happened anyway.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on November 04, 2022, 04:46:41 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 04, 2022, 02:44:09 PM
Quote from: grumbler on November 04, 2022, 01:11:36 PMThose who compulsively reject the idea of "brilliant asshole" might have less emotion invested in rejecting "visionary asshole."

I'll go with brilliant but increasingly erratic asshole.  Even at the top of the game, he got into some serious problems with his loose online communications.  And the latter have gone from being an occasional lapse of judgment to a daily circus event.  It's not a reassuring trend, and his new job running the world's pre-eminent shitposting factory can't help.

I think he's also a lucky reckless asshole.  He's the type to put all his wealth on a single number of roulette, win, do it again and win again, and conclude that the laws of probability don't apply to him.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PJL on November 04, 2022, 04:50:31 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 04, 2022, 04:44:52 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 04, 2022, 02:44:09 PM
Quote from: grumbler on November 04, 2022, 01:11:36 PMThose who compulsively reject the idea of "brilliant asshole" might have less emotion invested in rejecting "visionary asshole."

I'll go with brilliant but increasingly erratic asshole.  Even at the top of the game, he got into some serious problems with his loose online communications.  And the latter have gone from being an occasional lapse of judgment to a daily circus event.  It's not a reassuring trend, and his new job running the world's pre-eminent shitposting factory can't help.

Yeah, I wonder if we would all be better off if he got hit by a bus at this point. Or some kind of tragic event that would solidify his legacy of what he accomplished that was useful, while stopping him from destroying that utility with his narcissism.

It makes you wonder if Steve Jobs would have got to where Elon Musk is now and is going to, had he not died when he did from cancer.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PJL on November 04, 2022, 04:54:59 PM
Quote from: Josquius on November 04, 2022, 04:45:28 PMI think the thing with him is that his asshole traits are pretty tied to his business traits.
It's the same sort of mental issues that see him getting involved in petty shit on twitter that make him look beyond sensible business decisions towards "wee rockets are cool".

I think that's true of all great entrepreneurs to some extent, they have to be some sort of asshole to not give up trying and continue to be imaginative and disruptive to existing business practices in their area.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 04, 2022, 05:07:44 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 04, 2022, 04:45:48 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 04, 2022, 03:40:15 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 04, 2022, 02:44:09 PM
Quote from: grumbler on November 04, 2022, 01:11:36 PMThose who compulsively reject the idea of "brilliant asshole" might have less emotion invested in rejecting "visionary asshole."

I'll go with brilliant but increasingly erratic asshole.  Even at the top of the game, he got into some serious problems with his loose online communications.  And the latter have gone from being an occasional lapse of judgment to a daily circus event.  It's not a reassuring trend, and his new job running the world's pre-eminent shitposting factory can't help.


I will give him kudos for having ideas and vision.  But the fact that people say he is responsible for Space X ignores the people that actually did the work.
Maybe if he had slipped on a banana and broken his neck at 12 years old and none of us knew he existed, that same decline in cost to put payload into space would have happened anyway.

More like if that had happened in say 2004ish it would have happened anyway.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on November 04, 2022, 06:11:52 PM
Quote from: Josquius on November 04, 2022, 04:45:28 PMThe whole open patent wanting to be imitated making electric cars cool thing is good.
That was a pure PR move, which worked in you. First, Tesla does actually not have that many patents compared to other OEMs and second, Tesla did not patent its competition differentiating IP, e.g its battery software, its own chips etc.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on November 04, 2022, 06:29:46 PM
(https://i.redd.it/adv8jl968zx91.jpg)

 :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on November 04, 2022, 06:44:52 PM
Sad to see an institution collapse because of one man's hubris.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 04, 2022, 07:13:55 PM
I am going to miss it.  A number of people I follow have left.  I am starting to get things in my feed I never used to get, that are more like the types of things Valmy referred to earlier.  Not sure how long I am going to stay.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 04, 2022, 07:39:37 PM
Yeah, I'm not one who is going to reflexively leave, but I use Twitter for infotainment. If the quality gets bad and I have to sift through a bunch of stuff to get to what I want, I'll discontinue. The way it has traditionally worked is you can mostly curate what shows up in your feed to primarily be things you are interested in, we'll see if it changes for the worse.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 04, 2022, 09:26:30 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 04, 2022, 04:45:48 PMMaybe if he had slipped on a banana and broken his neck at 12 years old and none of us knew he existed, that same decline in cost to put payload into space would have happened anyway.

Sure, but it would have taken much longer.  SpaceX does innovative research because Musk decided that that was the way to go, and without SpaceX US (at least) space vehicle R&D would have proceeded down the same track of diminishing returns it was on before SpaceX.

I think that Tesla is much less technically impressive and owes less to Musk, but SpaceX and The Boring Company are basically his creations and reflect his engineering concepts.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on November 04, 2022, 09:41:08 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 03, 2022, 11:25:40 PMTesla's build quality is what would keep me away. 20k car QA on a 65+k car. Now that the competition is truly ramping up I think Tesla is in for a world of hurt.  And as much as I loath him as a person his companies home battery/solar tech is intriguing and way ahead of the game.  samhe cye with satellite internet.
Tbf, that is the cycle of any new tech product.  Nvidia has been selling overpriced video card for a while now. 3x the prix for 10% more fps in game.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 04, 2022, 09:54:29 PM
Quote from: viper37 on November 04, 2022, 09:41:08 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 03, 2022, 11:25:40 PMTesla's build quality is what would keep me away. 20k car QA on a 65+k car. Now that the competition is truly ramping up I think Tesla is in for a world of hurt.  And as much as I loath him as a person his companies home battery/solar tech is intriguing and way ahead of the game.  samhe cye with satellite internet.
Tbf, that is the cycle of any new tech product.  Nvidia has been selling overpriced video card for a while now. 3x the prix for 10% more fps in game.

Yeah, but Nvidia doesn't have capacitors soldiered in the wrong places :P .  Tesla isn't a overnight company, they've been around for a bit. It's first production car went out in 2008 and they still have shoddy manufacturing. Nothing that will blow up your car (except when it does lol ), but way below the expectations of the price point.  When they were the only game it could fly, but other manufactures are catching up. As has been mentioned they have same advantages still, like charging networks, but electrify America and electrify Canada will catch up. If they don't get their shit in order sooner or later it will bite them. I just hope it won't take down the areas where they do genuinely exceed.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 05, 2022, 04:29:15 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 03, 2022, 04:02:03 PM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 03, 2022, 03:15:09 PMAnyway, I wouldn't be surprised most of the whining would not have existed if musk followed a certain orthodoxy.
I've said before - the thing that worries me about Musk owning Twitter: massive interests in China and his main financial backer is Saudi. Both seem a little concerning for a social media platform. And of course an ironic position for a man proclaiming his intent to buy this platform for the good of the public square and free speech - let's see how that lasts for Chinese, Hong Kong, Saudi etc activists.

China is an issue, as always, but even Schultz is still sucking up to the ccp. The Saudis were already invested in twitter...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 05, 2022, 02:10:13 PM
I am entirely certain that if Musk was not such an asshole, and was a properly progressive, liberal nice guy, 95% of the people in this thread dismissing SpaceX/Tesla would be perfectly happy talking about what a brilliant business man he is, and how great SpaceX is, and what amazing things he has done for climate change awareness and EVs.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 05, 2022, 02:19:17 PM
I am entirely certain it is easy to make assertions that can't be tested.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on November 05, 2022, 04:28:54 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 04, 2022, 09:54:29 PM
Quote from: viper37 on November 04, 2022, 09:41:08 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 03, 2022, 11:25:40 PMTesla's build quality is what would keep me away. 20k car QA on a 65+k car. Now that the competition is truly ramping up I think Tesla is in for a world of hurt.  And as much as I loath him as a person his companies home battery/solar tech is intriguing and way ahead of the game.  samhe cye with satellite internet.
Tbf, that is the cycle of any new tech product.  Nvidia has been selling overpriced video card for a while now. 3x the prix for 10% more fps in game.

Yeah, but Nvidia doesn't have capacitors soldiered in the wrong places :P .  Tesla isn't a overnight company, they've been around for a bit. It's first production car went out in 2008 and they still have shoddy manufacturing. Nothing that will blow up your car (except when it does lol ), but way below the expectations of the price point.  When they were the only game it could fly, but other manufactures are catching up. As has been mentioned they have same advantages still, like charging networks, but electrify America and electrify Canada will catch up. If they don't get their shit in order sooner or later it will bite them. I just hope it won't take down the areas where they do genuinely exceed.
Well, right now, I'm reading reports of top of the line Nvidia cards that are melting down their motherboards PCI-E ports...  But they only make the chips and provide specs for the card manufacturers, so they'll wash their hands of it, even if it's their faulty specs the problem.

Anyway, I digress.  I agree with you about Tesla.  They're way overpriced cars and they have shitty resale value since the manufacturer blocks certain features once it is resold; you buy it for the hype.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on November 05, 2022, 04:37:11 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 05, 2022, 02:10:13 PMI am entirely certain that if Musk was not such an asshole
That is the point we are making here, really: he is an asshole.


Quote
Quote from: Berkut on November 05, 2022, 02:10:13 PM, and was a properly progressive, liberal nice guy, 95% of the people in this thread dismissing SpaceX/Tesla would be perfectly happy talking about what a brilliant business man he is, and how great SpaceX is, and what amazing things he has done for climate change awareness and EVs.

If he was a nice guy, we wouldn't be talking about how an asshole he is, that's a given.  But he is an asshole, so we're talking about his assholish behavior, duh.

He is a great lobbyist, that's a given.  He seems great at taking credit for the work of others too.  He is great at hype too.  Hyperloop has gone nowhere.  SpaceX answered a need, he got there first, sure.  If it wasn't him, it would have been someone else.  Electric cars were coming around, what was needed was govt support to stimulate adoption; that's where he shone.  This, I'm not sure someone else could have done it.  Engineering wise, lots of companies are doing better than Tesla. 

There were precursors to Tesla too, but they went nowhere because they were too costly without govt incentives to buy the cars and to build the recharge stations.  Even if I could afford it, I would not have bought a 100k$ car that I could not recharge anywhere in town.  And no business would have built a recharge station just to please me.  And govt didn't seem that interested in building them, despite all their talks about climate change.

But Elon and his team were great at lobbying for government funds for that, and later, other car manufacturers too, like GM, Ford, Chrysler, etc.  Something other car manufacturers couldn't do, and went tits up, or were bought/had their patents bought.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 05, 2022, 05:20:01 PM
Nobody is arguing that he is NOT an asshole though.

I just find it funny that because you all don't like him, you have to then turn around and claim he is just lucky, or didn't actually do anything in business that really is impressive.

That's all - I am certain that the average person bad mouthing his business accomplishments is 100% driven by their desire to not see him as accomplished BECAUSE he is an asshole. And if he were not an asshole, and in fact was a god liberal progressive, the exact same people would be gushing about what a brilliant business man he is and what amazing things he has accomplished. None of this "oh, he is so great at taking credit for what others have done!" or "If he wasn't him, surely it would have been someone else!"

It's funny to watch humans just be almost incapable of separating their emotional response to something from their ability to analyze it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PJL on November 05, 2022, 05:31:22 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 05, 2022, 05:20:01 PMNobody is arguing that he is an asshole though.

I just find it funny that because you all don't like him, you have to then turn around and claim he is just lucky, or didn't actually do anything in business that really is impressive.

That's all - I am certain that the average person bad mouthing his business accomplishments is 100% driven by their desire to not see him as accomplished BECAUSE he is an asshole. And if he were not an asshole, and in fact was a god liberal progressive, the exact same people would be gushing about what a brilliant business man he is and what amazing things he has accomplished. None of this "oh, he is so great at taking credit for what others have done!" or "If he wasn't him, surely it would have been someone else!"

It's funny to watch humans just be almost incapable of separating their emotional response to something from their ability to analyze it.

It's posts like these which gives me an understanding of the average Trump supporter. Swap Musk for him and they will act the same. For them he can do no wrong and will always make excuses. Fact is you are a Musk fanantic IMO. The last sentence applies as much to you as anyone else.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on November 05, 2022, 05:42:11 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 05, 2022, 05:20:01 PMNobody is arguing that he is an asshole though.
I am.  I have been since I've started discussing in this thread.


Quote
Quote from: Berkut on November 05, 2022, 05:20:01 PMI just find it funny that because you all don't like him, you have to then turn around and claim he is just lucky, or didn't actually do anything in business that really is impressive.
I haven't read all posts in this thread, so I don't know anything about luck.  He was very talented at convincing people to invest in his businesses, and he is a very talented lobbyist.  I have read a lot of claims that engineering-wise, he takes credit for most of other people's work.  2 years ago, I migth have thought that false, now I'm 50-50 on this.



Quote from: Berkut on November 05, 2022, 05:20:01 PMThat's all - I am certain that the average person bad mouthing his business accomplishments is 100% driven by their desire to not see him as accomplished BECAUSE he is an asshole. And if he were not an asshole, and in fact was a god liberal progressive, the exact same people would be gushing about what a brilliant business man he is and what amazing things he has accomplished. None of this "oh, he is so great at taking credit for what others have done!" or "If he wasn't him, surely it would have been someone else!"

It's funny to watch humans just be almost incapable of separating their emotional response to something from their ability to analyze it.
Progressive or conservative, I don't care.  Being a general asshole and treating people like shit does bother me, yes, from a consumer standpoint as well as an investor standpoint, because it creates unnessecary volatility.  And it seems he enganges in pump & dump schemes that is detrimental to other shareholders.

His accomplishments, it still remains to be seen.  

Hyperloop is vaporware. 

Engineering-wise, Tesla brought nothing new to the market and the competition is already better for a similar or lower price. 

SpaceX, still not sure I'd call that a success.  I need to see people on Mars before I call that a success.  He didn't gather financing because he promised people he would reduce the costs of orbital shipping, anyone can do that.  Blue Origin has had has much success has SpaceX and Bezos seems just as much dickish toward his employees as he is.  SpaceX was very successful in getting funds because it promised a crazy dream: getting people to Mars.  So far, it's way behind schedule. Until it's done, I can't rule it as a success.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 05, 2022, 05:48:08 PM
Quote from: PJL on November 05, 2022, 05:31:22 PMIt's posts like these which gives me an understanding of the average Trump supporter. Swap Musk for him and they will act the same. For them he can do no wrong and will always make excuses. Fact is you are a Musk fanantic IMO. The last sentence applies as much to you as anyone else.
Except that I am not a Musk supporter at all. He is an asshole.

If he wants to run for President, I will vote against him because he would be terrible at it.

It's funny that unless you say something that is just obviously not true - that he is has not accomplished anything, you must be some kind of "fanatic". This is exactly my point.

I think I have a very balanced, rational view of Musk. He is clearly a fucking terrible human being, who has accomplished some amazing things.

But so many people cannot accept that a terrible human CAN accomplish something amazing, even when the evidence is right in front of them. This is such a perfect example of pure cognitive dissonance.

Comparing him to Trump makes no sense. Trump didn't accomplish anything other then be terrible and convince dumb asses to vote for him.  I sure as hell would not vote for Trump or Musk for dog catcher. 

But if I wanted someone to get a rocket company off and running, I think I would sure as hell pick Musk.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 05, 2022, 05:49:35 PM
Quote from: viper37 on November 05, 2022, 05:42:11 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 05, 2022, 05:20:01 PMNobody is arguing that he is an asshole though.
I am.  I have been since I've started discussing in this thread.

Sorry, that was a typo, fixed it.

I meant to say nobody is arguing that he isn't an asshole.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 05, 2022, 05:58:19 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 05, 2022, 05:20:01 PMNobody is arguing that he is NOT an asshole though.

I have no problem at all with him being an asshole. I have a problem with him being reckless and irrational and damaging himself and his business interests at a time that I really want him and his business interests to be successful. All in the name of principles and causes that make no sense to me. Free speech doesn't involve the ability to say whatever you want on twitter. If you want to say whatever you want on the internet, make your own website and say stuff on it. But he seems to feel so strongly that twitter itself is somehow all the discourse in the world that he is going to waste billions that could be spent on Tesla and SpaceX...you know...doing some good.

And on a company that is already shitty and already loses money.

Now as for whether or not Musk is some genius, I doubt he is a genius at making cars or launching rockets or designing internet banking platforms or whatever. But it doesn't really matter. He succeeded in those areas, areas where I want to see more success (well...except internet banking platforms, I think we are good with those).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 05, 2022, 05:58:47 PM
Quote from: PJL on November 05, 2022, 05:31:22 PMIt's posts like these which gives me an understanding of the average Trump supporter. Swap Musk for him and they will act the same. For them he can do no wrong and will always make excuses. Fact is you are a Musk fanantic IMO. The last sentence applies as much to you as anyone else.

It's posts like these which gives me an understanding of the average Trump supporter.  Everything must be black and white.  Facts don't matter - "alternative facts" are just as good.  Fact is you are a Musk-hating fanatic IMO, lashing out against anyone who says anything positive about him.

The lamest argument of them all is "if Musk hadn't done it, someone else would have."  That's a mere truism.  The same truism applies to anything done by anyone outside of the arts. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 05, 2022, 06:04:12 PM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 03, 2022, 02:02:22 PMIt's not exactly wrong is it?

One is a real product and the other is some digital micro-transaction BS? It isn't even a program I can use, just an icon that is pointless without the shitty platform.

QuoteAnyway, I wouldn't be surprised most of the whining would not have existed if musk followed a certain orthodoxy.

I fucking hate leftwing discourse on twitter. It is toxic as fuck, it makes me hate people I agree with.

So no. My whining would be identical if he decided to forsake space exploration and EVs because of some stupid twitter crusade regardless of what his followed orthodoxy might be.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PJL on November 05, 2022, 06:11:05 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 05, 2022, 05:48:08 PMBut so many people cannot accept that a terrible human CAN accomplish something amazing, even when the evidence is right in front of them. This is such a perfect example of pure cognitive dissonance.


If a terrible person can accomplish something amazing, then he/she is no longer terrible.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 05, 2022, 07:54:03 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 05, 2022, 02:10:13 PMI am entirely certain that if Musk was not such an asshole, and was a properly progressive, liberal nice guy, 95% of the people in this thread dismissing SpaceX/Tesla would be perfectly happy talking about what a brilliant business man he is, and how great SpaceX is, and what amazing things he has done for climate change awareness and EVs.

I mean I guess I'm in the 5%? I've been a stock investor for over 35 years, the stock fundamentals have never been sound on Tesla, which lead me to conclude people were investing in that stock for things beyond the fundamentals. It is fairly easy to see it was "investing in Musk hype." That is not a knock on Musk, if you can become a megabillionaire by PT Barnuming lots of investors into pouring money into a car company that lost money every quarter for most of a decade, that is a skill. It isn't saving the world, it isn't being Albert Einstein or Nikola Tesla or Thomas Edison (the people Musk wants to be associated with in people's minds.)

It should be recognized though that when you have made a company attain some moderate level of success entirely through hyping up investors, it is entirely reasonable to be dubious of that person's claims of grandiosity--particularly when they are not backed up by evidence. This is a guy who has made over $200bn by convincing people he is the second birth of Thomas Edison without actually inventing anything or even most of the time operating businesses in the green.

SpaceX is a murkier matter because it is not a publicly traded company, I have had some long discussions about SpaceX with a friend in that industry and he is always careful to note that we actually don't know exactly what cost savings, in what phases, of the build, launch, and recovery process SpaceX has achieved. We also know that Musk has made specific claims around these lines since at least 2014 without ever showing his work or backing it up with evidence. That in and of itself leads one to be at least a little skeptical that SpaceX is the major financial success it is portrayed to be.

Going back to Tesla--there is no particular reason for me to be "cheering them on." Mass movement of consumer automobiles to EVs is not, as far as I can tell, any particular noble or great thing. It will be a very minor net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, because of the fact most Teslas will be powered by electricity generated by fossil fuels and because the actual manufacturing and resource extraction processes that make lithium ion battery EVs possible create significant environmental harm at scale. And finally the consumer light vehicle contribution to global emissions is so small to begin with, that Musk is basically touting himself as a world savior over a minor net reduction in a sub-10% category of emissions.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 05, 2022, 08:00:22 PM
To me Musk is very reminiscent of the Steve Jobs phenomenon 15 years ago. I don't think any reasonable person would contest that Steve Jobs was a tremendous businessman. What people objected to were the "greater claims of generalized genius", which were very common around Jobs and are very common around Musk. Lots of people literally think Musk sits in his modern day Menlo Park tower and invents everything Tesla or SpaceX are doing, just like they thought Jobs literally invented the smartphone or the ideas behind it (ignoring that companies like Palm and even Microsoft had phones as far back as 2004 that would have satisfied the definition of smartphone--and ignoring the major success that was Blackberry.)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 05, 2022, 09:16:48 PM
Anyone who thinks Musk invented the rockets SpaceX develops is dumb though. So what?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 05, 2022, 10:27:28 PM
The comparison of Musk to Edison is very apt.  Edison also would have people believe that he invented the things his company made.  Edison made money, not light bulbs.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 05, 2022, 10:44:59 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 05, 2022, 02:10:13 PMI am entirely certain that if Musk was not such an asshole, and was a properly progressive, liberal nice guy, 95% of the people in this thread dismissing SpaceX/Tesla would be perfectly happy talking about what a brilliant business man he is, and how great SpaceX is, and what amazing things he has done for climate change awareness and EVs.

I am not at all surprised you are certain.



Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on November 06, 2022, 03:36:06 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 05, 2022, 05:20:01 PMI just find it funny that because you all don't like him, you have to then turn around and claim he is just lucky, or didn't actually do anything in business that really is impressive.
Since I was the one who mentioned luck, I guess it's aimed at me.  I did not claim that he is just lucky, I claimed that he is lucky.  One reason he got so incredibly rich is that he took reckless risks, and before his companies hit it big he was perilously close to bankruptcy for a long stretch of time.  Being lucky does not preclude one from being good.

The thing with getting lucky on the way up is that you tend to rely on your luck continuing, because you're not recognizing it for what it was.  That makes you susceptible to sudden falls from grace, when you make one reckless bet too many.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 06, 2022, 08:14:10 AM
Quote from: grumbler on November 05, 2022, 10:27:28 PMThe comparison of Musk to Edison is very apt.  Edison also would have people believe that he invented the things his company made.  Edison made money, not light bulbs.

Except it isn't, right? Thomas Edison started what was essentially the first industrial research laboratory that produced any number of important inventions, and then he made a lot of money on commercialization of electricity. Technologically and even in terms of engineering there is not AFAICT anything innovative in Teslas other than maybe some of their in cabin car software. The battery technology, with minor engineering improvements, is the same lithium ion batteries everyone is using. The concept of a battery powered car is at least 100 years old--including previous working models. The idea of starting with a luxury line first was not even something Tesla was first at--there were several other companies trying the same thing.

SpaceX I've already gone over, mind that they weren't even actually reusing most of their rockets until very recently, and they have been very opaque on how much and what they were doing to lower launch costs outside of reusability. They also consistently have overstated how much they could reduce launch costs--which are again opaque because they are a private company.

Edison literally developed the first investor owned electric utility, and there is substantial evidence to suggest his innovations were key at both the timing and pace of electrification in general. Musk has made no contributions anywhere close to that. It shouldn't be controversial to say what someone has and hasn't done.

Quote from: Berkut on November 05, 2022, 09:16:48 PMAnyone who thinks Musk invented the rockets SpaceX develops is dumb though. So what?

Well but that's exactly what people are talking about, that Musk overhypes himself. And then you roll in saying "well if he was a liberal you wouldn't be saying that." That's just not true, it's a bad take.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 06, 2022, 08:49:11 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 06, 2022, 08:14:10 AMExcept it isn't, right? Thomas Edison started what was essentially the first industrial research laboratory that produced any number of important inventions, and then he made a lot of money on commercialization of electricity. Technologically and even in terms of engineering there is not AFAICT anything innovative in Teslas other than maybe some of their in cabin car software. The battery technology, with minor engineering improvements, is the same lithium ion batteries everyone is using. The concept of a battery powered car is at least 100 years old--including previous working models. The idea of starting with a luxury line first was not even something Tesla was first at--there were several other companies trying the same thing.

SpaceX I've already gone over, mind that they weren't even actually reusing most of their rockets until very recently, and they have been very opaque on how much and what they were doing to lower launch costs outside of reusability. They also consistently have overstated how much they could reduce launch costs--which are again opaque because they are a private company.

Edison literally developed the first investor owned electric utility, and there is substantial evidence to suggest his innovations were key at both the timing and pace of electrification in general. Musk has made no contributions anywhere close to that. It shouldn't be controversial to say what someone has and hasn't done.

Except that Edison didn't do those things, people who worked for him did.  He just took the credit, like Musk.

SpaceX, at Musk's direction, has developed an entirely new way of approaching launch vehicle R&D and it has been wildly successful.  Maybe Musk shouldn't get the credit for that, like Edison shouldn't get credit for developing an entirely new way of approaching R&D for electrical systems, but you can't judge them by different standards just to make Musk look bad.

I will say that Edison didn't let success turn his head the way Musk has.  Edison knew which lane he was swimming in.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 06, 2022, 09:19:37 AM
Quote from: DGuller on November 06, 2022, 03:36:06 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 05, 2022, 05:20:01 PMI just find it funny that because you all don't like him, you have to then turn around and claim he is just lucky, or didn't actually do anything in business that really is impressive.
Since I was the one who mentioned luck, I guess it's aimed at me.  I did not claim that he is just lucky, I claimed that he is lucky.  One reason he got so incredibly rich is that he took reckless risks, and before his companies hit it big he was perilously close to bankruptcy for a long stretch of time.  Being lucky does not preclude one from being good.

The thing with getting lucky on the way up is that you tend to rely on your luck continuing, because you're not recognizing it for what it was.  That makes you susceptible to sudden falls from grace, when you make one reckless bet too many.
No argument from me - I assume for anyone like Musk or Gates or Jobs there are a thousand just like them who just didn't get the break at the right time to hit it big. 

It's like any incredible talent or vision though - you have to have the talent to have the chance to hit it big like that. Combined with timing and a lot of luck.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 06, 2022, 09:24:09 AM
Quote from: grumbler on November 06, 2022, 08:49:11 AMExcept that Edison didn't do those things, people who worked for him did.  He just took the credit, like Musk.

SpaceX, at Musk's direction, has developed an entirely new way of approaching launch vehicle R&D and it has been wildly successful.  Maybe Musk shouldn't get the credit for that, like Edison shouldn't get credit for developing an entirely new way of approaching R&D for electrical systems, but you can't judge them by different standards just to make Musk look bad.

I will say that Edison didn't let success turn his head the way Musk has.  Edison knew which lane he was swimming in.

He did not do them personally, but his organization did them. What I'm saying is not only is Musk not inventing electric cars or rockets, his companies also aren't doing things as important as Musk says they are. Edison's companies were.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 06, 2022, 09:33:48 AM
I think SpaceX is most certainly doing things, or at least trying to do things, as important as anything Edison did.

There are fair criticisms to be made about whether or not they are REALLY doing the things they claim I suppose - but Otto yours is the first person I've seen make significant claims that SpaceX's accomplishments so far are something of a shell game.

Not disputing it (I simply don't know), but if it is true, then surely that shell game cannot last much longer. In fact, I am not sure how it could have lasted as long as it has - if it costs them a lot more to put cargo into space then they say, then how do they remain solvent? 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 06, 2022, 09:42:03 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 06, 2022, 09:24:09 AMHe did not do them personally, but his organization did them. What I'm saying is not only is Musk not inventing electric cars or rockets, his companies also aren't doing things as important as Musk says they are. Edison's companies were.

Edison didn't invent the light bulb, either.  Like Musk with launch vehicles, he simply made them commercially viable on a large scale.  I'm certainly not going to get into an argument over whether you think Musk's companies aren't doing things as important as Musk says.  You are certainly entitled to that opinion, but that is an opinion, not an argument.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 06, 2022, 09:43:54 AM
Quote from: grumbler on November 06, 2022, 08:49:11 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 06, 2022, 08:14:10 AMExcept it isn't, right? Thomas Edison started what was essentially the first industrial research laboratory that produced any number of important inventions, and then he made a lot of money on commercialization of electricity. Technologically and even in terms of engineering there is not AFAICT anything innovative in Teslas other than maybe some of their in cabin car software. The battery technology, with minor engineering improvements, is the same lithium ion batteries everyone is using. The concept of a battery powered car is at least 100 years old--including previous working models. The idea of starting with a luxury line first was not even something Tesla was first at--there were several other companies trying the same thing.

SpaceX I've already gone over, mind that they weren't even actually reusing most of their rockets until very recently, and they have been very opaque on how much and what they were doing to lower launch costs outside of reusability. They also consistently have overstated how much they could reduce launch costs--which are again opaque because they are a private company.

Edison literally developed the first investor owned electric utility, and there is substantial evidence to suggest his innovations were key at both the timing and pace of electrification in general. Musk has made no contributions anywhere close to that. It shouldn't be controversial to say what someone has and hasn't done.

Except that Edison didn't do those things, people who worked for him did.  He just took the credit, like Musk.

SpaceX, at Musk's direction, has developed an entirely new way of approaching launch vehicle R&D and it has been wildly successful.  Maybe Musk shouldn't get the credit for that, like Edison shouldn't get credit for developing an entirely new way of approaching R&D for electrical systems, but you can't judge them by different standards just to make Musk look bad.

I will say that Edison didn't let success turn his head the way Musk has.  Edison knew which lane he was swimming in.

Edison belongs to a period of time in which historians described to the great man of history thesis. Most people have moved on from that way of viewing the world.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 06, 2022, 10:12:08 AM
Right--I actually think the popular view of Edison is a big overstatement of his importance. But no--I don't think low-cost rocket launches and making "one car company among many" that sells EVs is somehow as important as electrification. Let's just stipulate Musk and Edison both get "equal personal credit" for the achievements of their respective countries.

Space launch stuff is mostly nerd food, I can probably name 50 things more important to the lives of earth's humans than cheaper space launches, most of which do not get 1 50th the press as space.

In 2021 around 600,000 EVs were sold in the United States. In China around 3.3 million were sold. I think putting things into a matter of scale maybe help understand Tesla's role, even if you think the deployment of EVs is a huge moment for humanity (I actually do not, I think it is an incremental improvement over ICE vehicles in most contexts--the most important virtue of EVs is it decouples pump fill up prices from the global commodity of oil which is more of a political view than humanitarian or environmental.)

Quote from: Berkut on November 06, 2022, 09:33:48 AMNot disputing it (I simply don't know), but if it is true, then surely that shell game cannot last much longer. In fact, I am not sure how it could have lasted as long as it has - if it costs them a lot more to put cargo into space then they say, then how do they remain solvent?

So serious question--how much time or effort have you invested in reading about the specifics of SpaceX's claims and how they hold up to scrutiny? Or are you, like most people, consuming space-enthusiast media that is designed to boost support for all space related activities in general, with a heavy focus on "cool things" like big rocket launches? It would be unsurprising if you haven't done the legwork that you would stumble upon deeper level analysis of a man's business when that man has made specific efforts to create a cult of personality around himself.

Notable in this effort is how Musk has erased the very names of the men who founded Tesla and came up with all of its foundational ideas from the official history--even going so far as to somehow christen himself as a "retroactive" founder of the company, despite not owning it until many years after it was founded.

It isn't accidental that a casual Musk fan is unaware of the work people have put into reporting on the many ways he distorts the truth.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 06, 2022, 10:18:24 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 06, 2022, 09:43:54 AM
Quote from: grumbler on November 06, 2022, 08:49:11 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 06, 2022, 08:14:10 AMExcept it isn't, right? Thomas Edison started what was essentially the first industrial research laboratory that produced any number of important inventions, and then he made a lot of money on commercialization of electricity. Technologically and even in terms of engineering there is not AFAICT anything innovative in Teslas other than maybe some of their in cabin car software. The battery technology, with minor engineering improvements, is the same lithium ion batteries everyone is using. The concept of a battery powered car is at least 100 years old--including previous working models. The idea of starting with a luxury line first was not even something Tesla was first at--there were several other companies trying the same thing.

SpaceX I've already gone over, mind that they weren't even actually reusing most of their rockets until very recently, and they have been very opaque on how much and what they were doing to lower launch costs outside of reusability. They also consistently have overstated how much they could reduce launch costs--which are again opaque because they are a private company.

Edison literally developed the first investor owned electric utility, and there is substantial evidence to suggest his innovations were key at both the timing and pace of electrification in general. Musk has made no contributions anywhere close to that. It shouldn't be controversial to say what someone has and hasn't done.

Except that Edison didn't do those things, people who worked for him did.  He just took the credit, like Musk.

SpaceX, at Musk's direction, has developed an entirely new way of approaching launch vehicle R&D and it has been wildly successful.  Maybe Musk shouldn't get the credit for that, like Edison shouldn't get credit for developing an entirely new way of approaching R&D for electrical systems, but you can't judge them by different standards just to make Musk look bad.

I will say that Edison didn't let success turn his head the way Musk has.  Edison knew which lane he was swimming in.

Edison belongs to a period of time in which historians described to the great man of history thesis. Most people have moved on from that way of viewing the world.
I don't think "most people" have moved on from that at all, there is still plenty of debate about the role that the individual has in shaping history.

Plenty of people want to believe that individuals don't actually matter, but that is a matter of philosophy, not history. I think that actually aligns nicely with my point - the refusal to acknowledge any of Musks accomplishments are not about any kind of evaluation of those accomplishments, but the rejection that any single person can in fact accomplish anything like that in a way that they deserve credit for at all to begin with. 

That view then means it matters not one bit whether or not he is an asshole or not, or whether SpaceX really is launching rockets at 1/10th the cost. None of it matters, because this argument assumes that even if it were true, someone else would have done it anyway.

It is a fascinating debate though. And one that is never going to be resolved, since the opposing hypothesis seem to be impossible to test.

I don't buy into it myself, and a big part of that is that it seems to me that those making the "great person is bunk" argument seem very selective in how they apply it. It also seems, to me, to take agency away from humans. We are all just flowing along on the flow of inevitability. Lastly, it seems like it is selective in how our angst is manifested as well. Musk gets no credit for SpaceX because that would happen anyway. OK. Then why are we mad at him for fucking up Twitter? Wasn't that going to happen anyway as well?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 06, 2022, 10:20:38 AM
The idea that an individual never makes a historically significant difference is weird.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 06, 2022, 10:31:11 AM
Berkut, I think that what CVC is noting is that the older historical view that "great Men" made history and that the study of these men is thus critical to understanding history doesn't stand up to modern historical analysis.  Edison, for instance, is somehow credited with inventing the light bulb and electrification, even though there were light bulbs and electrification in the UK before Edison's bulb was developed.  He just made a better mousetrap, and of no "Great Man" is it more applicable to say, "if not him, then someone else."

The accomplishments unique to one person, outside of the arts, is almost always drowned out by the accomplishments of the society around them.  Napoleon didn't create the Napoleonic Wars and they would have happened if he ate a bullet at Toulon.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 06, 2022, 10:38:28 AM
Quote from: grumbler on November 06, 2022, 10:31:11 AMNapoleon didn't create the Napoleonic Wars and they would have happened if he ate a bullet at Toulon.

Source?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 06, 2022, 10:38:58 AM
Quote from: grumbler on November 06, 2022, 10:31:11 AMBerkut, I think that what CVC is noting is that the older historical view that "great Men" made history and that the study of these men is thus critical to understanding history doesn't stand up to modern historical analysis.  Edison, for instance, is somehow credited with inventing the light bulb and electrification, even though there were light bulbs and electrification in the UK before Edison's bulb was developed.  He just made a better mousetrap, and of no "Great Man" is it more applicable to say, "if not him, then someone else."

The accomplishments unique to one person, outside of the arts, is almost always drowned out by the accomplishments of the society around them.  Napoleon didn't create the Napoleonic Wars and they would have happened if he ate a bullet at Toulon.
Yep, its a damn interesting discussion.

If Napoleon ate a bullet at Toulon, then certainly the conflict that bore his name still happened, because that conflict was not created by him for sure.

The shape of it, and the shape of the world that resulted, IMO, would have been radically different without Napoleon though.

That is an argument though, and I concede that it is impossible to prove, really. But so is the argument that absent Napoleon, the outcome would have been largely the same, just would have been named something else.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 06, 2022, 11:18:34 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 06, 2022, 10:18:24 AMthe refusal to acknowledge any of Musks accomplishments are not about any kind of evaluation of those accomplishments, but the rejection that any single person can in fact accomplish anything like that in a way that they deserve credit for at all to begin with. 

And what do we call your refusal to be honest about Musk's accomplishments--that they are largely accomplishments in attracting investor capital and not in innovating technology?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 06, 2022, 11:20:44 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 06, 2022, 10:18:24 AMI don't buy into it myself, and a big part of that is that it seems to me that those making the "great person is bunk" argument seem very selective in how they apply it. It also seems, to me, to take agency away from humans.

Yeah, this would be the take if you had a superficial and weak understanding of the criticisms of the "great man" theory. The reality is it is an idea that the sum activities of many millions is more deterministic than the decisions of one man.

Certainly both ideas are philosophical ways of looking at history and cannot be tested with the rigor of a scientific theorem, but both ideas should be portrayed accurately which your statement here does not do.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on November 06, 2022, 12:25:17 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 06, 2022, 08:14:10 AMTechnologically and even in terms of engineering there is not AFAICT anything innovative in Teslas other than maybe some of their in cabin car software. The battery technology, with minor engineering improvements, is the same lithium ion batteries everyone is using.
I disagree. Tesla was extremely innovative over the last ten years. Their battery management (software, cooling) was ahead of the competition. Also they were the first in having a central computer controlling everything in the car instead of distributed systems like all other car makers, which makes OTA updates for them much better. They even made their own hardware for this central computer, which is rather unusual for a carmaker. This has so far not been emulated by any of the legacy OEMs, maybe by some Chinese startups. They also made interesting design choices, e.g. the minimalist interieur and few choices for the exterior, which allows them to manufacture at a fairly low cost level. Commercially they pioneered having direct sales instead of the more usual dealer network and of course they offered the hyperchargers, a critical differentiating service.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 06, 2022, 01:13:45 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 06, 2022, 10:38:58 AMYep, its a damn interesting discussion.

If Napoleon ate a bullet at Toulon, then certainly the conflict that bore his name still happened, because that conflict was not created by him for sure.

The shape of it, and the shape of the world that resulted, IMO, would have been radically different without Napoleon though.

That is an argument though, and I concede that it is impossible to prove, really. But so is the argument that absent Napoleon, the outcome would have been largely the same, just would have been named something else.

Certainly there are historical figures whose personal characteristics helped shape the world they lived in; Napoleon's  well-known preference for taking the offensive both strategically and tactically meant that those declaring war on Napoleonic France found themselves defending against French attacks very quickly.  A different military or political leader in charge of France might have adopted a less aggressive posture and achieved some sort of compromise peace during the 1805-1815 period.  But the Coalitions against France would have continued regardless until that peace was achieved; there would have been war.

Th Great Man Theory of History, however, didn't postulate that some men influenced history more than others, it proposes that great men largely make history.  Look at how much of Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War is devoted to the leaders, and how little to economic or strategic considerations.  For a very long time the study of history was dominated by the study of biographies.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 06, 2022, 01:34:09 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 06, 2022, 11:18:34 AMAnd what do we call your refusal to be honest about Musk's accomplishments--that they are largely accomplishments in attracting investor capital and not in innovating technology?

And what do we cal your refusal to be honest about the accomplishments of pretty much every founder of major companies: that their success are all largely accomplishments in attracting investor capital and not in innovating technology?

No major company was created without investors.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on November 06, 2022, 01:58:56 PM
Quote from: grumbler on November 06, 2022, 01:34:09 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 06, 2022, 11:18:34 AMAnd what do we call your refusal to be honest about Musk's accomplishments--that they are largely accomplishments in attracting investor capital and not in innovating technology?

And what do we cal your refusal to be honest about the accomplishments of pretty much every founder of major companies: that their success are all largely accomplishments in attracting investor capital and not in innovating technology?

No major company was created without investors.
That are two different things.  No one is denying these accomplishments.

But Musk's supporters since to place him at some kind of super human genius of engineering.  Which I'm less and less convinced he is.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 06, 2022, 02:58:07 PM
Getting back to Musk's running Twitter into the ground: ends up they laid off people they actually needed and are begging some of them to return to work.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-06/twitter-now-asks-some-fired-workers-to-please-come-back

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 06, 2022, 04:30:05 PM
I expect there will be a bit of a premium to rehire folks you just laid off, unless they are desperate.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 06, 2022, 04:31:32 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 06, 2022, 11:18:34 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 06, 2022, 10:18:24 AMthe refusal to acknowledge any of Musks accomplishments are not about any kind of evaluation of those accomplishments, but the rejection that any single person can in fact accomplish anything like that in a way that they deserve credit for at all to begin with.

And what do we call your refusal to be honest about Musk's accomplishments--that they are largely accomplishments in attracting investor capital and not in innovating technology?
I don't agree with that reductionist evaluation of his accomplishments. 

But if I am wrong, I won't care. It's not like I have anything invested in the guy, I don't own any Tesla stock, and personally he is an obvious asshole.

I care about what he has accomplished - if you can prove to me that his accompishments are just moving money around and tricking other smart people into giving him billions which he then pretends to spend on amazing things....then ok? Again,  don't have anything emotionally invested in the guy - if the things he has done that I appreciate he turns out not to have done, then.....ok.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 06, 2022, 04:33:20 PM
Quote from: viper37 on November 06, 2022, 01:58:56 PM
Quote from: grumbler on November 06, 2022, 01:34:09 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 06, 2022, 11:18:34 AMAnd what do we call your refusal to be honest about Musk's accomplishments--that they are largely accomplishments in attracting investor capital and not in innovating technology?

And what do we cal your refusal to be honest about the accomplishments of pretty much every founder of major companies: that their success are all largely accomplishments in attracting investor capital and not in innovating technology?

No major company was created without investors.
That are two different things.  No one is denying these accomplishments.

But Musk's supporters since to place him at some kind of super human genius of engineering.  Which I'm less and less convinced he is.
We should definitely bring that up with them if one shows up.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on November 06, 2022, 04:33:27 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 06, 2022, 04:30:05 PMI expect there will be a bit of a premium to rehire folks you just laid off, unless they are desperate.
And all of them will be looking for a new job and will leave asap.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 06, 2022, 06:33:57 PM
Quote from: viper37 on November 06, 2022, 01:58:56 PMThat are two different things.  No one is denying these accomplishments.

But Musk's supporters since to place him at some kind of super human genius of engineering.  Which I'm less and less convinced he is.

Some Musk supporters are like that, but we've seen groupies like them for all kinds of people.  Musk groupies are no better nor worse than Bernie groupies or Trump groupies or Jobs groupies or any other kind.  Love is blind.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 07, 2022, 02:39:29 AM
if he does manage to destroy Twitter it'll be his greatest accomplishment to date though...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 07, 2022, 03:20:04 AM
It begins.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/comedian-kathy-griffin-suspended-twitter-mocking-ceo-elon-musk-rcna55916
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on November 07, 2022, 06:25:15 AM
Quote from: Josquius on November 07, 2022, 03:20:04 AMIt begins.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/comedian-kathy-griffin-suspended-twitter-mocking-ceo-elon-musk-rcna55916
A true free speech absolutist!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 07, 2022, 06:37:00 AM
I'm torn. On the one hand I'm pro shutting up Kathy Griffin, on the other hand showcasing Musk'a duplicitous douchiness appeals to me.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 07, 2022, 06:48:49 AM
I'm lying naked on the floor.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 07, 2022, 07:06:19 AM
Quote from: The Brain on November 07, 2022, 06:48:49 AMI'm lying naked on the floor.

Natalie Imbruglia appreciates your patronage ^_^
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 07, 2022, 08:14:01 AM
From the Paradox memes subreddit. :P

(https://preview.redd.it/vhv12sqwesx91.png?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=b3c8de5128f5bc64d56a92614dd5ec2218f6f8e1)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Legbiter on November 07, 2022, 08:22:53 AM
Situation for tech companies today doesn't look that great. With interest rates now above 0 tech companies can no longer cover over their negative cash flows with constant "funding". Twitter being profitable would mean 12 coders chained away in a windowless back office somewhere with a small adjacent office of 6 people taking care of the rest. Musk overpaid at least 10 times for it. :hmm: 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 07, 2022, 08:28:48 AM
Quote from: Syt on November 07, 2022, 08:14:01 AMFrom the Paradox memes subreddit. :P

(https://preview.redd.it/vhv12sqwesx91.png?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=b3c8de5128f5bc64d56a92614dd5ec2218f6f8e1)

 :lmfao:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 08:52:21 AM
What an immense blunder. I wonder if he even realizes it?

Buying Twitter is a stupid, stupid, stupid idea even if it was financially viable.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Legbiter on November 07, 2022, 09:03:55 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 08:52:21 AMWhat an immense blunder. I wonder if he even realizes it?

Buying Twitter is a stupid, stupid, stupid idea even if it was financially viable.

Considering he tried everything to get out of the deal...

But it's not his problem, those who lent him the money, oh yeah, it's their problem. :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 07, 2022, 09:34:25 AM
Quote from: Zanza on November 06, 2022, 12:25:17 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 06, 2022, 08:14:10 AMTechnologically and even in terms of engineering there is not AFAICT anything innovative in Teslas other than maybe some of their in cabin car software. The battery technology, with minor engineering improvements, is the same lithium ion batteries everyone is using.
I disagree. Tesla was extremely innovative over the last ten years. Their battery management (software, cooling) was ahead of the competition. Also they were the first in having a central computer controlling everything in the car instead of distributed systems like all other car makers, which makes OTA updates for them much better. They even made their own hardware for this central computer, which is rather unusual for a carmaker. This has so far not been emulated by any of the legacy OEMs, maybe by some Chinese startups. They also made interesting design choices, e.g. the minimalist interieur and few choices for the exterior, which allows them to manufacture at a fairly low cost level. Commercially they pioneered having direct sales instead of the more usual dealer network and of course they offered the hyperchargers, a critical differentiating service.

No one said Tesla has done nothing at all. AFAIK every car company in the world innovates new car stuff over 10 year windows.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 07, 2022, 09:36:52 AM
Quote from: grumbler on November 06, 2022, 01:34:09 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 06, 2022, 11:18:34 AMAnd what do we call your refusal to be honest about Musk's accomplishments--that they are largely accomplishments in attracting investor capital and not in innovating technology?

And what do we cal your refusal to be honest about the accomplishments of pretty much every founder of major companies: that their success are all largely accomplishments in attracting investor capital and not in innovating technology?

No major company was created without investors.

You seem to be reading arguments I never made since this response does not contradict anything I have said. In fact I have said it is genuinely impressive Musk's ability to raise capital. I guess for Musk fans it just never is enough if you aren't fawning, huh?

Quote from: Berkut on November 06, 2022, 04:33:20 PMWe should definitely bring that up with them if one shows up.

Oh I think you've been here all along.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 09:52:08 AM
:yawn:

Do show me where I claimed Musk was a "super engineering genius"?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 09:58:17 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 06, 2022, 11:18:34 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 06, 2022, 10:18:24 AMthe refusal to acknowledge any of Musks accomplishments are not about any kind of evaluation of those accomplishments, but the rejection that any single person can in fact accomplish anything like that in a way that they deserve credit for at all to begin with.

And what do we call your refusal to be honest about Musk's accomplishments--that they are largely accomplishments in attracting investor capital and not in innovating technology?
THis is so deliciously reductionist. 

"He just attracted investor capital".

Yeah, I suppose he did do that. But that isn't utterly generic - that is what every CEO of every company that is looking for investment does. 

What did he DO with that capital? How did he attract it? What was accomplished?

Henry Ford attracted investor capital  - I guess he doesn't deserve any credit for anything. He didn't invent the car, he just "attracted investor capital".

Bill Gates? Just attracted investor capital. Big deal.

It's fascinating what lengths people will go to in order to avoid recognizing the accomplishments of someone just because they don't like them.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on November 07, 2022, 10:41:34 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 07, 2022, 09:34:25 AMNo one said Tesla has done nothing at all. AFAIK every car company in the world innovates new car stuff over 10 year windows.
Yes, but Tesla was more innovative than most (all?) of their competition in the timeframe between the launch of the Model S in 2012 (of course the innovative phase was probably already some years earlier) and the Model 3 mass launched in late 2018. Some of which is down to Musk leadership, his willingness to risk it all, some luck and of course US government subsidies.  :P

Since having launched the Model 3, they seem to concentrate on operational excellence over innovation. Let's see if their new products actually are innovative again or more vaporware. Some potential there.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 10:49:25 AM
I don't see how anyone can know anything about a Tesla and say there isn't any innovation that other car companies have not done as well.

It is the first attempt at a autonomous car. It doesn't just talk to your smartphone, the entire car runs off a app-like interface. The car literally drives itself. Is there some other car out there that did that first?

Maybe its all a failed innovation. Maybe people don't want to be able to have their car drive up to them in the parking lot. Maybe they don't want a car that has an actual user interface that isn't from 1980. Maybe they don't like the idea of a car that is truly completely electric, or that has an integrated, nationwide charging network built for it.

But to say it isn't innovation? Go drive around in a Tesla. You might not like it. You might think it is too expensive. You might say the build quality is not up to its price point.  Hell, *I* don't own one despite thinking they are pretty fucking amazing, because, well, I am not going to spend that kind of money on any car.

But to dismiss them as not being innovative? That just betrays are rather incredible amount of emotional bias. They are incredibly innovative.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 07, 2022, 10:53:06 AM
Tesla is not, AFAIK, the first attempt at an autonomous car. In fact actual autonomous cars have been running on test tracks since the early 2010s before Tesla even was in that game (there were even a few prototype self-driving cars in the 1980s before Musk was even a businessman). It would help a lot if you acquainted yourself with the facts before you resumed your next bout of Musk-love.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on November 07, 2022, 10:56:10 AM
Musk's strategy of being vertically integrated with very few outside contractors is also pretty novel for the modern automaking industry and it's something he certainly championed after the experience of the Roadster (where Tesla acted more as an assembler of parts designed and/or built by others, although they ended up ditching the powertrain and building their own). I think it helped them in their initial phase, since it gave them a lot of control over the product and helped drive innovation, but it might hurt them in the long term. You can't really do everything, and do it well.

Tbf, I think Musk made a lot of risky calls with Tesla that paid off. He was certainly helped along by investors and subsidies (heck, Tesla is still losing money when you take out the subsidies, but I'm a fan of government subsidies to nudge the industry towards a socially desirable direction so no objection here :P )

But he has also had his fair share of failed businesses/dog & pony shows (The Boring Company  :rolleyes: ) that don't get talked as much. He's not infallible, and he might believe his own hubris at this point.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on November 07, 2022, 10:57:14 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 07, 2022, 10:53:06 AMTesla is not, AFAIK, the first attempt at an autonomous car. In fact actual autonomous cars have been running on test tracks since the early 2010s before Tesla even was in that game (there were even a few prototype self-driving cars in the 1980s before Musk was even a businessman). It would help a lot if you acquainted yourself with the facts before you resumed your next bout of Musk-love.

Also, Tesla's autonomous technology is lower tech compared to some of the competition. He's just pushing it faster.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 10:58:05 AM
It is the first attempt at an autonomous car that actually drives somewhere other then a test track. Which is rather obvious.

If we have to argue about whether or not a Tesla has innovated in the area of automobile autonomy, then there really isn't anything to argue about - you are not being honest or objective at that point. It would help if you cared about being honest instead of just trying to score another cheap point.

I don't love Musk, and I've had as much negative to say about him as anyone in the thread. You are just lying now. Why?

Being able to recognize that despite being an asshole, he has in fact accomplished a lot is not "love". It's just not irrational hate. There is something in between called "objectivity". Try it sometime.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 10:59:55 AM
Quote from: celedhring on November 07, 2022, 10:56:10 AMMusk's strategy of being vertically integrated with very few outside contractors is also pretty novel for the automaking industry and it's something he certainly championed after the experience of the Roadster (where Tesla acted more as an assembler of parts designed and/or built by others, although they ended up ditching the powertrain and building their own). I think it helped them in their initial phase, since it gave them a lot of control over the product and helped drive innovation, but it might hurt them in the long term. You can't really do everything, and do it well.

Tbf, I think Musk made a lot of risky calls with Tesla that paid off. He was certainly helped along by investors and subsidies (heck, Tesla is still losing money when you take out the subsidies, but I'm a fan of government subsidies to nudge the industry towards a socially desirable direction so no objection here :P )

But he has also had his fair share of failed businesses/dog & pony shows (The Boring Company  :rolleyes: ) that don't get talked as much. He's not infallible, and he might believe his own hubris at this point.
My argument is that he has accomplished a lot. That argument stands regardless of how much he has failed.

If I go to 8 Olympics and win the gold medal during one of them, the fact that I didn't win in the other 7 doesn't mean I didn't win the one time, or take away from that accomplishment.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 11:01:38 AM
Quote from: celedhring on November 07, 2022, 10:57:14 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 07, 2022, 10:53:06 AMTesla is not, AFAIK, the first attempt at an autonomous car. In fact actual autonomous cars have been running on test tracks since the early 2010s before Tesla even was in that game (there were even a few prototype self-driving cars in the 1980s before Musk was even a businessman). It would help a lot if you acquainted yourself with the facts before you resumed your next bout of Musk-love.

Also, Tesla's autonomous technology is lower tech compared to some of the competition. He's just pushing it faster.
The exact same argument can and has been made about every single technical innovation that has made it to market, ever.

There is always some example of someone else who totally did it better, for sure, but failed to actually get the better gadget to market.

That doesn't take away from the innovation of the technology that DID win the race to market. The ability to bring technology to market is innovation itself (along with a lot of luck and other factors of course).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on November 07, 2022, 11:09:13 AM
Mercedes-Benz already has better, more capable, autonomous cars in the market than Tesla does. I personally think Tesla won't win this one race. They don't have the headstart they enjoyed when they launched EVs, and their technology choice (essentially they rely solely on cameras instead of also using radar/lidar) may hamper them in the long term.

Again, I'm not dissing Tesla's achievements (and without Musk the company probably dies like any other automaker startup of the 2000s). The company played an amazing part in making EVs popular and showing them as commercially viable products and not novelties.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 07, 2022, 11:13:00 AM
Electric cars are 19th century tech. :yawn:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 11:15:04 AM
Quote from: celedhring on November 07, 2022, 11:09:13 AMMercedes-Benz already has better, more capable, autonomous cars in the market than Tesla does. I personally think Tesla won't win this one race. They don't have the headstart they enjoyed when they launched EVs, and their technology choice (essentially they rely solely on cameras instead of also using radar/lidar) may hamper them in the long term.

Again, I'm not dissing Tesla's achievements (and without Musk the company probably dies like any other automaker startup of the 2000s). The company played an amazing part in making EVs popular and showing them as commercially viable products and not novelties.

No argument from me. The most innovative company is often not the one who ends up winning in the long run.

My point is simply that to look at Tesla and claim that the only thing Musk did of note was "attract investment" betrays some kind of emotional investment in hating the guy, not any kind of objective evaluation of what Tesla accomplished.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 07, 2022, 11:40:50 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 07, 2022, 09:36:52 AMYou seem to be reading arguments I never made since this response does not contradict anything I have said. In fact I have said it is genuinely impressive Musk's ability to raise capital. I guess for Musk fans it just never is enough if you aren't fawning, huh?

That's because I was just repeating your argument back at you.  You are reading arguments that Berkut never made, so it seems fair to read arguments that you never made.  I guess for Musk haters it is never enough if you aren't blindly hating, huh?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 07, 2022, 11:48:35 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 07, 2022, 10:53:06 AMTesla is not, AFAIK, the first attempt at an autonomous car. In fact actual autonomous cars have been running on test tracks since the early 2010s before Tesla even was in that game (there were even a few prototype self-driving cars in the 1980s before Musk was even a businessman). It would help a lot if you acquainted yourself with the facts before you resumed your next bout of Musk-love.

So the fact that a bunch of companies failed at producing an autonomous car means that the one that succeeded is not innovative?  Is that really an argument you want to leave out there?

It would help a lot if you learned the meaning of words before you assume your next bout of irrational Musk-hatred.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on November 07, 2022, 12:01:19 PM
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589639376186724354?s=20&t=b_G2MIJ4C2s8gPd9IWK9lw

 :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on November 07, 2022, 12:02:09 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 07, 2022, 12:01:19 PMhttps://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589639376186724354?s=20&t=b_G2MIJ4C2s8gPd9IWK9lw

 :lol:

Tweet appears as removed. What did it say?  :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 07, 2022, 12:02:57 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 09:52:08 AM:yawn:

Do show me where I claimed Musk was a "super engineering genius"?

You called him a genius on page 6 of this thread and the rest of your posts are consistent with that belief.

Not sure why you want to back away from the claim now - oh except for the fact he is not really a genius.  :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on November 07, 2022, 12:03:13 PM
QuoteTo independent-minded voters:

Shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties, therefore I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the Presidency is Democratic.

The day before the midterms, tweets to his 110 million followers. Classy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 07, 2022, 12:03:44 PM
I see it. He's telling people to vote for a republican congress. Also, wonder if he paid 8 bucks for his blue checkmark, or if his 44 billion covers it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 07, 2022, 12:11:58 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 07, 2022, 12:03:13 PM
QuoteTo independent-minded voters:

Shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties, therefore I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the Presidency is Democratic.

The day before the midterms, tweets to his 110 million followers. Classy.

A deadlocked government is one that can't pass laws to control tech giants.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 12:26:12 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 07, 2022, 12:02:57 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 09:52:08 AM:yawn:

Do show me where I claimed Musk was a "super engineering genius"?

You called him a genius on page 6 of this thread and the rest of your posts are consistent with that belief.

Not sure why you want to back away from the claim now - oh except for the fact he is not really a genius.  :P
Let's see what I actually said. Interesting that you went to the trouble of looking up my quote, but did not bother to actually *include* the quote.

I suspect that is because the quote won't say what you want me to have said, so decided you would just leave that out, because you are a dishonest fuck. Let's find out, shall we?

Quote from: BerkutMusk is most certainly a genius if you define it was some kind of incredibly intelligent person with unique drive, talent, and vision. He is also a douchebag, and you can make a good argument about his stability or lack thereof.

Ahh, yes, CC again is shown to be a dishonest asshole. Ironic really, that you show the exact same lack of honesty and willfull desire to mislead people that you claim to hate in Musk so much.

I define the word explicitly, and there is nothing there about "super engineering" at all. I then follow it up with "...he is also a douchebag" and question his stability.

How is calling him an unstable douchebag "consistent" with your claim that I am some kind of fanboy?

Musk has nothing on you for being a dishonest douchebag, that is for sure.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 07, 2022, 12:26:53 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 07, 2022, 12:03:13 PM
QuoteTo independent-minded voters:

Shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties, therefore I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the Presidency is Democratic.

The day before the midterms, tweets to his 110 million followers. Classy.

I guess there is a reason that I'd titled the thread the way that I did. -_-
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 07, 2022, 12:30:17 PM
Ok Berkut, you asked when you called him a genius.  I knew you had, and it didn't take much to find the reference.   

You emulate your hero well.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on November 07, 2022, 12:31:51 PM
I guess the question is would humanity be better off if Musk had never existed.

The jury is still out.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 07, 2022, 12:37:23 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 07, 2022, 12:31:51 PMI guess the question is would humanity be better off if Musk had never existed.

The jury is still out.

We'd focus on someone else. Maybe bezos would become obsessed social media in the absence of musk doing it and show more douchiness. Most of the annoyance of musk is because of his chorus of fanboys going on about how he'll Make Space Great Again, or whatever aspect of hero worship they've latched onto at the particular moment.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 12:38:54 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 07, 2022, 12:31:51 PMI guess the question is would humanity be better off if Musk had never existed.

The jury is still out.

Really?  Tesla and SpaceX are still huge net positives.

All I see him doing now is self-destructing Twitter (and losing himself billions of dollars), and I'm not sure how much of a negative that is.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 12:39:49 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 07, 2022, 12:37:23 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 07, 2022, 12:31:51 PMI guess the question is would humanity be better off if Musk had never existed.

The jury is still out.

We'd focus on someone else. Maybe bezos would become obsessed social media in the absence of musk doing it and show more douchiness. Most of the annoyance of musk is because of his chorus of fanboys going on about how he'll Make Space Great Again, or whatever aspect of hero worship they've latched onto at the particular moment.

Jeff Bezos though is smart enough to not make himself the centre of attention like Musk.  Bezos can still influence the public debate through owning the Washington Post, but doesn't make himself the face of the newspaper.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 07, 2022, 12:41:27 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 12:38:54 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 07, 2022, 12:31:51 PMI guess the question is would humanity be better off if Musk had never existed.

The jury is still out.

Really?  Tesla and SpaceX are still huge net positives.

All I see him doing now is self-destructing Twitter (and losing himself billions of dollars), and I'm not sure how much of a negative that is.

If you believe that those two are net positives then the twitter foley should bother you. His greatest accomplishment is raising capital. Others have had vision, but he brings money. If the shine leaves the apple because he's doing boneheaded business moves in addition to just being repugnant than the money dries up.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 07, 2022, 12:49:10 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 12:38:54 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 07, 2022, 12:31:51 PMI guess the question is would humanity be better off if Musk had never existed.

The jury is still out.

Really?  Tesla and SpaceX are still huge net positives.

All I see him doing now is self-destructing Twitter (and losing himself billions of dollars), and I'm not sure how much of a negative that is.

SpaceX is nerd wank. Not really sure how that's a net positive to the world.

On the flipside, it is trivially easy to see how him broadcasting to his followers that they should vote to gum of the system is a problem.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 07, 2022, 12:56:28 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 07, 2022, 12:30:17 PMOk Berkut, you asked when you called him a genius.  I knew you had, and it didn't take much to find the reference.   

You emulate your hero well.

He asked you to point out where he called him a "super engineering genius," and you couldn't, because your claim was a lie.  You knew it was a lie, and couldn't find anything to support the lie.

I think that we have found Donald Trump's sock account.  No one lies as gleefully and unsuccessfully as Trump, except you.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 01:00:45 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 07, 2022, 12:41:27 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 12:38:54 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 07, 2022, 12:31:51 PMI guess the question is would humanity be better off if Musk had never existed.

The jury is still out.

Really?  Tesla and SpaceX are still huge net positives.

All I see him doing now is self-destructing Twitter (and losing himself billions of dollars), and I'm not sure how much of a negative that is.

If you believe that those two are net positives then the twitter foley should bother you. His greatest accomplishment is raising capital. Others have had vision, but he brings money. If the shine leaves the apple because he's doing boneheaded business moves in addition to just being repugnant than the money dries up.

He's largely past the point of needing to raise large sums of capital though - both his major businesses are profitable.

And it's possible that Musk losing his controlling interest in Tesla might be for the best at this point (though he'd still be the largest shareholder I believe).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 01:02:56 PM
Quote from: garbon on November 07, 2022, 12:49:10 PMSpaceX is nerd wank. Not really sure how that's a net positive to the world.

On the flipside, it is trivially easy to see how him broadcasting to his followers that they should vote to gum of the system is a problem.

SpaceX re-usable rocket has brought down the cost of getting into orbit by almost an order of magnitude.  That's an easy net positive.  Starlink is huge in getting high-speed, low-latency internet to underdeveloped parts of the world (and in Ukraine).

Not sure how much a Elon Musk tweet is going to sway votes.  All I can see it is making advertisers less likely to want to advertise on his platform.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 01:07:48 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 01:00:45 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 07, 2022, 12:41:27 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 12:38:54 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 07, 2022, 12:31:51 PMI guess the question is would humanity be better off if Musk had never existed.

The jury is still out.

Really?  Tesla and SpaceX are still huge net positives.

All I see him doing now is self-destructing Twitter (and losing himself billions of dollars), and I'm not sure how much of a negative that is.

If you believe that those two are net positives then the twitter foley should bother you. His greatest accomplishment is raising capital. Others have had vision, but he brings money. If the shine leaves the apple because he's doing boneheaded business moves in addition to just being repugnant than the money dries up.

He's largely past the point of needing to raise large sums of capital though - both his major businesses are profitable.

And it's possible that Musk losing his controlling interest in Tesla might be for the best at this point (though he'd still be the largest shareholder I believe).
More to the point, I would guess that those of us who have the insane view that SpaceX and Tesla are net positives almost certainly agree that his fucking about with Twitter is a terrible idea.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 01:08:11 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 01:02:56 PM
Quote from: garbon on November 07, 2022, 12:49:10 PMSpaceX is nerd wank. Not really sure how that's a net positive to the world.

On the flipside, it is trivially easy to see how him broadcasting to his followers that they should vote to gum of the system is a problem.

SpaceX re-usable rocket has brought down the cost of getting into orbit by almost an order of magnitude.  That's an easy net positive.  Starlink is huge in getting high-speed, low-latency internet to underdeveloped parts of the world (and in Ukraine).

Not sure how much a Elon Musk tweet is going to sway votes.  All I can see it is making advertisers less likely to want to advertise on his platform.
You are such a fanboy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 01:10:49 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 07, 2022, 12:30:17 PMOk Berkut, you asked when you called him a genius.  I knew you had, and it didn't take much to find the reference.   

You emulate your hero well.
Now you are lying about the lie. I asked no such thing. I asked when I called him a "super engineering genius". You claimed that I had, and weirdly enough didn't bother to actually show that I had done so, because it is painfully obvious that I had done no such thing, and in fact what I had said was not even remotely supportive of the claim specifically, or the general attempt to paint me as some kind of Musk groupie.

It's interesting how you lie, you know you lie, and you know that everyone knows you are lying, but you are confident in the lie anyway.

It seems like a familiar pattern....
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 01:12:02 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 01:00:45 PMAnd it's possible that Musk losing his controlling interest in Tesla might be for the best at this point (though he'd still be the largest shareholder I believe).
It's an interesting question. 

A good argument to be made that what he did that needed to be done with Tesla is (mostly) complete, and he should just get out of the way now.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 07, 2022, 01:17:53 PM
Quote from: Zanza on November 07, 2022, 06:25:15 AMA true free speech absolutist!

I think a policy of not permitting fake names is emminently defensible.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 01:20:28 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 01:08:11 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 01:02:56 PM
Quote from: garbon on November 07, 2022, 12:49:10 PMSpaceX is nerd wank. Not really sure how that's a net positive to the world.

On the flipside, it is trivially easy to see how him broadcasting to his followers that they should vote to gum of the system is a problem.

SpaceX re-usable rocket has brought down the cost of getting into orbit by almost an order of magnitude.  That's an easy net positive.  Starlink is huge in getting high-speed, low-latency internet to underdeveloped parts of the world (and in Ukraine).

Not sure how much a Elon Musk tweet is going to sway votes.  All I can see it is making advertisers less likely to want to advertise on his platform.
You are such a fanboy.

Really?

I thiought I was pretty clear about the man.  I put him in the same category as Steve Jobs.  A fascinating and important figure who is a total asshole to the people around him.  And certainly neither of them were infallible, with plenty of business failures. (Jobs: NeXT, Lisa, Musk: Boring Company, Hyperloop, probably Twitter)

Let's be clear - he's making a total and complete has of owning Twitter.  It's fascinating to watch in a car-crash sort of way.  But I also don't think that Twitter is so important to the world that destroying it has much effect to the world other than on Musk's bottom line.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 07, 2022, 01:21:24 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 07, 2022, 01:17:53 PM
Quote from: Zanza on November 07, 2022, 06:25:15 AMA true free speech absolutist!

I think a policy of not permitting fake names is emminently defensible.

It seems he is mostly reinforcing it when it affects him or people he directly cares about, while enforcement is lacking or very slow for other folks.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 07, 2022, 01:22:24 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 07, 2022, 01:21:24 PMIt seems he is mostly reinforcing it when it affects him or people he directly cares about, while enforcement is lacking or very slow for other folks.

Was that in the link?  I missed it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 07, 2022, 01:24:21 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 07, 2022, 01:22:24 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 07, 2022, 01:21:24 PMIt seems he is mostly reinforcing it when it affects him or people he directly cares about, while enforcement is lacking or very slow for other folks.

Was that in the link?  I missed it.

Nope.

But on my Twitter I see accounts I follow highlighting other accounts that are clearly intended to impersonate them (and without any of the "parody" tags), that have not been sanctioned. While at the same time, accounts that are clearly taking the piss out of Elon seem to be banned with 24 - 48h turnaround.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 07, 2022, 02:03:35 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 07, 2022, 01:24:21 PMNope.

But on my Twitter I see accounts I follow highlighting other accounts that are clearly intended to impersonate them (and without any of the "parody" tags), that have not been sanctioned. While at the same time, accounts that are clearly taking the piss out of Elon seem to be banned with 24 - 48h turnaround.

That is less defensible.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 02:20:41 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 01:20:28 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 01:08:11 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 01:02:56 PM
Quote from: garbon on November 07, 2022, 12:49:10 PMSpaceX is nerd wank. Not really sure how that's a net positive to the world.

On the flipside, it is trivially easy to see how him broadcasting to his followers that they should vote to gum of the system is a problem.

SpaceX re-usable rocket has brought down the cost of getting into orbit by almost an order of magnitude.  That's an easy net positive.  Starlink is huge in getting high-speed, low-latency internet to underdeveloped parts of the world (and in Ukraine).

Not sure how much a Elon Musk tweet is going to sway votes.  All I can see it is making advertisers less likely to want to advertise on his platform.
You are such a fanboy.

Really?

I thiought I was pretty clear about the man.  I put him in the same category as Steve Jobs.  A fascinating and important figure who is a total asshole to the people around him.  And certainly neither of them were infallible, with plenty of business failures. (Jobs: NeXT, Lisa, Musk: Boring Company, Hyperloop, probably Twitter)

Let's be clear - he's making a total and complete has of owning Twitter.  It's fascinating to watch in a car-crash sort of way.  But I also don't think that Twitter is so important to the world that destroying it has much effect to the world other than on Musk's bottom line.
I was being sarcastic.

I completely agree with you - hence you must be a Musk groupie, since that is what I have been labelled.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 07, 2022, 02:21:12 PM
Quote from: grumbler on November 07, 2022, 11:48:35 AMSo the fact that a bunch of companies failed at producing an autonomous car means that the one that succeeded is not innovative?  Is that really an argument you want to leave out there?

Tesla does not currently ship an autonomous car to customers.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 02:28:51 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 02:20:41 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 01:20:28 PMReally?

I thiought I was pretty clear about the man.  I put him in the same category as Steve Jobs.  A fascinating and important figure who is a total asshole to the people around him.  And certainly neither of them were infallible, with plenty of business failures. (Jobs: NeXT, Lisa, Musk: Boring Company, Hyperloop, probably Twitter)

Let's be clear - he's making a total and complete has of owning Twitter.  It's fascinating to watch in a car-crash sort of way.  But I also don't think that Twitter is so important to the world that destroying it has much effect to the world other than on Musk's bottom line.
I was being sarcastic.

I completely agree with you - hence you must be a Musk groupie, since that is what I have been labelled.

:thumbsup:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 07, 2022, 02:32:30 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 11:15:04 AM
Quote from: celedhring on November 07, 2022, 11:09:13 AMMercedes-Benz already has better, more capable, autonomous cars in the market than Tesla does. I personally think Tesla won't win this one race. They don't have the headstart they enjoyed when they launched EVs, and their technology choice (essentially they rely solely on cameras instead of also using radar/lidar) may hamper them in the long term.

Again, I'm not dissing Tesla's achievements (and without Musk the company probably dies like any other automaker startup of the 2000s). The company played an amazing part in making EVs popular and showing them as commercially viable products and not novelties.

No argument from me. The most innovative company is often not the one who ends up winning in the long run.

My point is simply that to look at Tesla and claim that the only thing Musk did of note was "attract investment" betrays some kind of emotional investment in hating the guy, not any kind of objective evaluation of what Tesla accomplished.



Quote from: celedhring on November 07, 2022, 12:02:09 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 07, 2022, 12:01:19 PMhttps://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589639376186724354?s=20&t=b_G2MIJ4C2s8gPd9IWK9lw

 :lol:

Tweet appears as removed. What did it say?  :lol:

Telling everybody to vote for the Republicans.

I don't know what you want me to Berkut. I have long been a big fan of Elon Musk but he seems determined to undermine and destroy the county and our institutions out of some kind of weird egoism. To me creating false narratives about free speech and encouraging support for the Republicans under the circumstances makes him out to be a really bad actor. You said yourself that he is getting very hard to defend. Yet you keep doing it. I feel very frustrated and betrayed by him. But it isn't like he owes me anything, I just felt like he was sort of on my side here. He clearly isn't and frankly he is becoming incredibly dangerous. IMO.

But there is clearly some way you want me to think about this. What is it?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 07, 2022, 02:34:25 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 12:38:54 PMReally?  Tesla and SpaceX are still huge net positives.

I'd be interested in seeing this expanded upon. Maybe this is where the disconnect comes from.

I personally observe that a lot of people (I'm not saying you), speak about SpaceX and Tesla not as impressive and successful businesses--in line with say, IBM or Shell Oil), but "major contributors to improving humanity." I do not really see or even understand this at all in my observation as to what these two companies have done, but it is at least suggested almost as an "obvious" thing by those who believe it.

In your mind why, specifically, are Tesla and SpaceX major net positives to human society?

Tesla at least purports to be contributed to our fight against climate change. But there is significant evidence out there that switching a huge portion of consumer light vehicles to lithium ion batteries is not going to be even a meaningful reduction in emissions when you fully factor in the manufacture and charging of the cars. In fact even if you don't factor in that the emissions from consumer light vehicles are relatively paltry in comparison to major drivers of emissions.

The development of the Steam video game service is really cool and has made tons of people happy. It has also made Valve many billions of dollars. I think we need to separate "something cool people like" and "greater humanitarian purpose", Steam has achieved one of those, not both. I largely see Tesla in the same vein, but am open to explanations otherwise.

With SpaceX, I just feel like rocket launches are so far removed from things that are meaningful to real human welfare that it's hard for me to not say the entire endeavor is nerd wank. There are certainly real and meaningful benefits accrued to society from space and space commercialization, but most of it is on the margins. The Apollo program is really famous but I would think Norman Borlaug's much less publicized development of dwarf wheat strains for the Indian subcontinent was a massively larger contributor to human welfare than the Apollo program. A huge % of space shit seems to fall into the "cool" but not intrinsically some great contributor to human society for me.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 07, 2022, 02:44:10 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 07, 2022, 02:21:12 PMTesla does not currently ship an autonomous car to customers.

I believe that every Tesla built since the 2000 model year has the option to include Tesla Autopilot, an Autonomous Level 2 system.  If you have information to the contrary, I'd like to see it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 02:46:47 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 07, 2022, 02:34:25 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 12:38:54 PMReally?  Tesla and SpaceX are still huge net positives.

I'd be interested in seeing this expanded upon. Maybe this is where the disconnect comes from.

SpaceX:
-re-usable rockets has dramatically reduced the cost of going into LEO.  That's allowed all kinds of more satellite launches and all kinds of businesses, such as
-StarLink.  Not possible w/o low-cost launches.  HIgh-speed, low-latency internet anywhere on the earth.  Not a big deal to you or I, but huge in rural areas and developing countries
-w/o SpaceX, the US would have no ability to launch astronauts to the ISS.  The West would still be relying on Roscosmos.

Tesla:
-if renewables are used to power vehicles it will be a significant reduced in greenhouse gasses.  Don't make perfect the enemy of the good
-helped popularize not only their own electric vehicles, but the entire idea of electric vehicles
-seems set to be the first major new car company founded in what - 80 years?  Over 100 in the US at least.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 07, 2022, 02:50:32 PM
I mean yeah all that is amazing and that is why I was previously a big fan of Musk.

But if he goes all in on the culture war and uses his influence to entrench the Republicans in power, all that goes away pretty fast. I don't need him to go out there and champion left wing causes, but come on man. I can only tolerate so much, presuming my personal approval matters at all (which it doesn't).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 02:56:22 PM
Quote from: Valmy on November 07, 2022, 02:50:32 PMI mean yeah all that is amazing and that is why I was previously a big fan of Musk.

But if he goes all in on the culture war and uses his influence to entrench the Republicans in power, all that goes away pretty fast. I don't need him to go out there and champion left wing causes, but come on man. I can only tolerate so much, presuming my personal approval matters at all (which it doesn't).

I think Musk now ripping off the mask and endorsing Republicans is stupid as he runs a major social network and is terrible for business.

But do you think this will "move the needle" in US elections?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 07, 2022, 02:59:33 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 02:56:22 PMI think Musk now ripping off the mask and endorsing Republicans is stupid as he runs a major social network and is terrible for business.

But do you think this will "move the needle" in US elections?

I don't think so in this election but it will in the future. Musk is a hero to many.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 03:10:43 PM
Quote from: Valmy on November 07, 2022, 02:32:30 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 11:15:04 AM
Quote from: celedhring on November 07, 2022, 11:09:13 AMMercedes-Benz already has better, more capable, autonomous cars in the market than Tesla does. I personally think Tesla won't win this one race. They don't have the headstart they enjoyed when they launched EVs, and their technology choice (essentially they rely solely on cameras instead of also using radar/lidar) may hamper them in the long term.

Again, I'm not dissing Tesla's achievements (and without Musk the company probably dies like any other automaker startup of the 2000s). The company played an amazing part in making EVs popular and showing them as commercially viable products and not novelties.

No argument from me. The most innovative company is often not the one who ends up winning in the long run.

My point is simply that to look at Tesla and claim that the only thing Musk did of note was "attract investment" betrays some kind of emotional investment in hating the guy, not any kind of objective evaluation of what Tesla accomplished.



Quote from: celedhring on November 07, 2022, 12:02:09 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 07, 2022, 12:01:19 PMhttps://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589639376186724354?s=20&t=b_G2MIJ4C2s8gPd9IWK9lw

 :lol:

Tweet appears as removed. What did it say?  :lol:

Telling everybody to vote for the Republicans.

I don't know what you want me to Berkut. I have long been a big fan of Elon Musk but he seems determined to undermine and destroy the county and our institutions out of some kind of weird egoism. To me creating false narratives about free speech and encouraging support for the Republicans under the circumstances makes him out to be a really bad actor. You said yourself that he is getting very hard to defend. Yet you keep doing it. I feel very frustrated and betrayed by him. But it isn't like he owes me anything, I just felt like he was sort of on my side here. He clearly isn't and frankly he is becoming incredibly dangerous. IMO.

But there is clearly some way you want me to think about this. What is it?
My only point is that the evaluation that people are making about Musks accomplishments is clearly colored by the fact that they hate the guy.

That's it.

Musk is a clear asshole, and almost certainly not mentally stable in some profound manner. I am not defending him at all, or anything he has done OUTSIDE his actual accomplishments in business and technology.

As always, however, I find it interesting how emotional people get, and how hard it is for people to actually evaluate anything objectively. 

"Musk is an asshole!"

Agreed!

"Musk is a contemptible human being!"

It appears that way!

"Musk taking over Twitter is not good for anyone!"

Yep!

"He is such a jerk! He never even actually accomplished anything of note anyway! He is clearly a moron!"

Uh.....no. That is clearly not true. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 03:15:09 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 02:56:22 PM
Quote from: Valmy on November 07, 2022, 02:50:32 PMI mean yeah all that is amazing and that is why I was previously a big fan of Musk.

But if he goes all in on the culture war and uses his influence to entrench the Republicans in power, all that goes away pretty fast. I don't need him to go out there and champion left wing causes, but come on man. I can only tolerate so much, presuming my personal approval matters at all (which it doesn't).

I think Musk now ripping off the mask and endorsing Republicans is stupid as he runs a major social network and is terrible for business.

But do you think this will "move the needle" in US elections?
I actually do think it might move the needle. Not much, but it will move it.

It is yet another way that people who might otherwise feel apprehensive about giving into their tribalism and bigotry will feel ok about jumping on the right wing, Conservitard bandwagon.

Musk could become as toxic as Donald Trump, and I would despise him for it, and would not try to minimize the damage that does or can do.

But it still wouldn't change the fact that unlike Trump, he accomplished some damn amazing things.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 07, 2022, 03:15:48 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 07, 2022, 02:03:35 PMThat is less defensible.

Yeah, and now the update is that the report was denied for an account that was clearly designed to impersonate (not only is the handle changed to match the target account, but the account name was made to deceive - changing only a few letters that could easily be scanned to seem like the real deal).

Every sign I see is consistent with Musk having a thin-skinned tantrum over things that affect him, quickly making up new rules to make himself feel better, but not applying them to anyone else outside his little bubble.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 03:22:02 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 07, 2022, 02:34:25 PMWith SpaceX, I just feel like rocket launches are so far removed from things that are meaningful to real human welfare that it's hard for me to not say the entire endeavor is nerd wank. There are certainly real and meaningful benefits accrued to society from space and space commercialization, but most of it is on the margins. The Apollo program is really famous but I would think Norman Borlaug's much less publicized development of dwarf wheat strains for the Indian subcontinent was a massively larger contributor to human welfare than the Apollo program. A huge % of space shit seems to fall into the "cool" but not intrinsically some great contributor to human society for me.
I don't think the ability to throw a metal disc farther then someone else has any great impact on human society.

But I would not argue that the current Olympic gold medal holder in the discuss has not accomplished anything because I don't personally value the thing they worked towards.

"There are real and meaningful benefits to space and space commercializaton". If that is true, then clearly his accomplishments have been real and meaningful as well, regardless of how you feel about the overall "marginal" utility of space and space commercialization.

And someone noting those accomplishments is simply being objective. Someone attempting to dismiss them as not actual accomplishments because the person in question is an asshole, is being emotional, not rational.

Maybe the current discuss Olympic gold medal holder kicks his dog. Doesn't mean he didn't win the damn medal, and noticing that he won the medal doesn't mean you like people who kick their dogs.

This really isn't complicated. I don't think.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 07, 2022, 03:40:58 PM
So let's put SpaceX more in perspective--for one, almost all SpaceX rockets are built as feature-light and simple as possible. This is one of the major ways they reduce launch costs (by the way, reusing the first stage is "only" about a 30% reduction in launch costs, it is not the order of magnitude many people seem to assume.) But what are the trade offs of designing rockets these ways? It creates rockets that are less adaptable, less able to handle certain situations, and less able to handle very complex payloads and missions.

It ends up...that is damn near perfect for launching stuff to ISS or to low orbit for a satellite swarm. There is a reason it would not bode well for something like one of NASA's exploration missions to Jupiter, as one example, or their recent asteroid intercept. SpaceX's rockets in current are also fairly unmodifiable, for example they cannot have additional stages stacked on them.

This is all to say, SpaceX to take the Olympic discus thrower comparison further, has not thrown a disc further than anyone else. In fact it hasn't come close to the mission parameters and requirements for some of the more complicated long range space missions.

What they have done is been a major player (but not the only, or the first) in lower costs of commercial launches of simple payloads--and that is a good thing.

What I perceive from your comments here is me stating my view on what Musk has actually done as "denigrating." That is not the case. I think what Bill Gates did was really impressive. But he didn't invent GUIs, he didn't invent operating systems, he did not invent the personal computer, he was largely not responsible for the explosion of lower price IBM clone PCs in the 1990s. It isn't saying Bill Gates is bad to point out the divergence between what he actually did and what he didn't do.

Unless you acquired billions of dollars via sheer inheritance, it is generally the case any billionaire has done something impressive in their life, and Musk is no different.

If you've actually listened to Musk interviews--the Rogan one is a good example. He literally says "I'm not a businessman I'm an engineer." He doesn't have an engineering degree nor did he go to engineering school. He is not an engineer. He wants to be thought of in line with guys like Banting & Best who isolated insulin saving millions of lives, or Louis Pasteur et al. He specifically doesn't want to be seen as a historical peer of figures like Bill Gates and John Rockefeller. What he wants and what he is, are at divergence. Pointing that out doesn't equate to saying he has done nothing with his life.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 03:43:26 PM
Glad to see you have come around.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on November 07, 2022, 04:31:21 PM
 :rolleyes:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on November 07, 2022, 04:56:55 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 02:56:22 PMI think Musk now ripping off the mask and endorsing Republicans is stupid as he runs a major social network and is terrible for business.


Is it terrible for business?

The auto industry has a zillion players, and Tesla may have ~4% market share now. If 1/3 of the country is inclined to buy his products because of his politics, and 1/3 disinclined (and 1/3 left indifferent), that could be a strong play.

Also, regardless of what he says on Twitter, he is unlikely to influence voting. But republicans probably will take over at least part of congress and they seem like just the sort of corrupt morons that would legislatively look after someone who acts like he is on their team before an election. A lot of his business interests are sensitive to regulation and legislation.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 07, 2022, 05:15:43 PM
So designing launch systems without unnecessary bells and whistles is now a bad thing?

The measure of how effective a commercial system is is how much it costs to successfully do what it is designed to do.  SpaceX has the least expensive system for the task of getting satellites into orbit.  The claim that the design features of SpaceX launchers are somehow bugs because some other system is more modular is absurd.  Falcon doesn't need to be modular to deliver all the launch services it is contracted for.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 05:20:42 PM
The better part is noticing that one product is really good at exactly what it does, but not good at things it was not meant to do, is somehow and indictment of the product.

The Falcon sucks because it isn't suited to sending someting to Jupiter? WTF? 

It's not designed to send anything to Jupiter! That's like complaining a Tesla 3 sucks because it isn't a truck.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 05:28:06 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on November 07, 2022, 04:56:55 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 02:56:22 PMI think Musk now ripping off the mask and endorsing Republicans is stupid as he runs a major social network and is terrible for business.


Is it terrible for business?

The auto industry has a zillion players, and Tesla may have ~4% market share now. If 1/3 of the country is inclined to buy his products because of his politics, and 1/3 disinclined (and 1/3 left indifferent), that could be a strong play.

Also, regardless of what he says on Twitter, he is unlikely to influence voting. But republicans probably will take over at least part of congress and they seem like just the sort of corrupt morons that would legislatively look after someone who acts like he is on their team before an election. A lot of his business interests are sensitive to regulation and legislation.

First of all I suggested it was bad for the Twitter business.  Twitter is fundamentally an advertising company.  Advertisers want to stay away from controversies.  Someone like Tucker Carlson gets great ratings, but his advertisers are extremely low-rent and can not be paying premium prices.

But lets take Tesla.  Who is most likely to buy an electric car?  People who care about the environment.  And unfortunately "the environment" has become a partisan issue, so those people are primarily democrats.  So Musk being identified as a Republican is likely bad for business.  And Republicans are less likely to buy electric anyways.

And even SpaceX.  SpaceX's biggest customer is the US government.  If SpaceX is perceived as being partisan then Democrats in congress are less likely to fund money that would go to SpaceX.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 05:35:10 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 05:20:42 PMThe better part is noticing that one product is really good at exactly what it does, but not good at things it was not meant to do, is somehow and indictment of the product.

The Falcon sucks because it isn't suited to sending someting to Jupiter? WTF?

It's not designed to send anything to Jupiter! That's like complaining a Tesla 3 sucks because it isn't a truck.

More than that - complaining that Falcon 9 isn't stackable.  Well that ignores the fact it can be launched in parallel as Falcon Heavy.  I believe HASA is looking at using Falcon Heavy for launching some deep space probes.

It also ignores the fact that SpaceX is developing a much larger and heavier rocket.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 07, 2022, 05:45:53 PM
I have had enough of the fuckwads here throwing around accusations of dishonesty.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: ulmont on November 07, 2022, 05:56:23 PM
https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/1589691741711765504?s=20&t=bvwlQH_vH5dtX8V79NkRKg
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 07, 2022, 06:52:46 PM
Tiny contribution to the "Is Musk good at his job?" debate:

QuoteElon Musk Is Bad at This
The Musk era of Twitter has so far been defined by unhinged tweets, fleeing advertisers, and botched layoffs.

Elon Musk has spent the past 12 years tweeting whatever comes into his mind, often without major negative consequences. That was before he owned the place. Now, less than two weeks after his $44 billion purchase, the world's richest man is finding that his actions—which recently included tweeting a baseless conspiracy theory to Hillary Clinton about the assault on Paul Pelosi—may actually have consequences. Advertisers are fleeing, the employees remaining after a round of mass layoffs are alienated, and onlookers are completely vexed by a freewheeling approach that has coincided with a rise in hate speech on the platform, among other problems.

Musk's fans see the billionaire as a visionary, but it's worth noting that many casual observers—people whose only real understanding of Musk is as the guy who put the fancy electric cars on their streets—have also internalized the heuristic that he is Good at Business and the type of man who spends his waking moments dreaming of how to save humanity from its existential problems. But what the past two weeks demonstrate is that Musk is, at best, a mediocre executive—and undoubtedly a terrible, distracted manager.

Musk is obviously wildly financially successful, and the companies he owns have a reputation for taking futuristic-sounding ideas and dragging them into the present. But what Musk is showing us in real time is the folly of equating financial success with intellect, managerial savvy, and good judgment.
I reached out to some experts to see if I was possibly missing something about Musk's performance so far. Given Musk's current focus on advertisers leaving the platform, I called up Rick Webb, the COO of Timehop and a co-founder of the Barbarian Group, a major digital-ad agency. Webb also served as a marketing and sales consultant for Tumblr during its heyday. I asked him to assess Musk's first few days on the job, and he did not mince words.

"The advertisers are gone because of his awful tweets," Webb told me. "There's no room for debate. He stated his intentions up front. He cared about advertisers and didn't want them to leave and then he told us they've left." Webb suggested to me that Musk's now-deleted Paul Pelosi tweet was perhaps the most expensive tweet ever: It may have cost Twitter billions in advertising revenue. Companies including General Mills, Audi, and Pfizer are pulling their marketing from Twitter because they likely don't want their brands to be associated with anything remotely scandalous. High-level executives—CMO types—are the ones ultimately deciding what these brands spend on Twitter, and "those people are, to a T, conflict-avoidant," Webb said.

Musk seems to understand this—according to reporting from Kara Swisher, he realized that ad execs were freaking out and tried to quell concerns on a conference call last week. It did not go well. "There were CMOs who literally paused/shifted budgets DURING the call because of the uncertainty," Swisher tweeted. Worse yet, Musk has either alienated or fired some of the employees—such as Twitter's chief customer officer—who maintain crucial brand and agency relationships.

As bad as that sounds, Webb argues that the reality is worse: "What people might not understand is that the advertisers don't need Twitter. They barely cared about it at all before Musk. The only reason those people cared about Twitter ads is because they had personal relationships with members of Twitter's marketing team or because there are hundreds of Twitter account reps making them pay. And Elon may have fired those people." Twitter is much smaller than rivals like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, after all.

With each passing day, Musk seems to be digging a deeper hole. This morning, to the dismay of many brand advertisers who strive to be apolitical, Musk used his 114-million-follower platform to endorse the Republican slate of candidates for tomorrow's midterm elections. "The dude could've napped and saved billions of dollars," Webb said. "Every decision he's made has lost him money. It's astonishing."

Musk's marketing debacles are not the stuff of visionaries, but they pale in comparison to his management skills. Here's a brief summary of how he has steered the company so far.

Before assuming control of Twitter, the billionaire reportedly floated the idea that he could gut the company's workforce by nearly 75 percent, which created a sense of low-grade panic inside the company. Despite the specter of mass layoffs, Musk walked into Twitter headquarters like a court jester, filming content for his own Twitter feed. In his first hours, Musk fired some well-liked executives and, on his first full day, pompously asked engineers to print out their code so Tesla staffers could review it. (Later, he reversed course and asked staffers to shred their printed code.) When it came time for layoffs, he cut nearly half of the company via email (though word leaked beforehand and left many employees wondering about their fate) and, in an act of extreme cowardice, didn't even sign his name. Many staffers found out about their termination ahead of time, when their work accounts stopped functioning. The cuts—which hit or completely destroyed big chunks of the trust-and-safety, policy, machine-learning, social-good, accessibility, communications, ethical-AI, data-science, and research teams—caused real concern that the company may now be especially vulnerable to outages and attacks, which could be particularly dangerous during the midterms. Inside the company, managers scrambled. They told employees to work 80-hour weeks to build products for Musk (lest they be terminated too) and instructed employees to come up with ideas to tantalize their mercurial new owner. The vibe was like "hack week, but with a gun to your head," a Twitter employee told the New York Times podcast Hard Fork.

This is awful, chaotic management. Johnathan and Melissa Nightingale, who run the Raw Signal Group, a consultancy that focuses on coaching managers in the technology industry, told me that Musk is putting on a master class in what not to do to run an effective organization. "Absolutely nothing he's doing is cultivating an environment that helps people be creative, consistent, and innovative," Melissa Nightingale said. For the employees who remain, Musk has created an atmosphere of panic and uncertainty, which destroys trust and leads to employee resentment. Musk has created a vast network of ex-employees who will go on to talk trash and share nightmare stories about Twitter. This is already backfiring spectacularly: Some of the employees had skills necessary to build products Musk actually wants to launch and were terminated by mistake, Bloomberg reported, and the company is trying to lure them back.

Had Musk listened to people with experience running social networks (like those I cited in this magazine two weeks ago), he might have understood that they are complex, fragile systems and that staff reductions must be managed carefully. But instead, Musk surrounded himself with a group of yes-men advisers, many of whom also lack specific expertise. These men and Musk all operate under a hyper-rationalist managerial framework: They appear to have reasoned that Twitter was bloated and losing money on payroll, that change needed to come quickly, and that layoffs are naturally messy, so there's no need to handle them with care. That lack of care in particular is a hallmark of bad, shortsighted management, the Nightingales told me.

"When we say 'care,' we mean it ��both in an empathetic sense, but also in a professional, attention-to-detail sense," Melissa Nightingale said. The pair argued that Musk's haphazard cuts and alienation of his employees may work in the short term by balancing the company's budget, but disaster might soon follow. "If you start looking long term and evaluating his decisions by metrics like How many labor-discrimination suits will he face? or How many people will work for him again?, it looks different."

The Nightingales argued that Musk's managerial decisions show a lack of human understanding that is key to running any business—and especially a business like Twitter. "He may really understand things from an engineering perspective," Johnathan Nightingale said. "But humans are different. And care is a major input in creating a human system."

Unfortunately for Musk, Twitter is less of an engineered machine and more of a chaotic collection of humans. "He loves to talk about Twitter as a great public square," Melissa Nightingale told me. "But public squares are built with care. They are not machines ... Public squares are for humans and designed by humans. And Musk has just fired half of them."

There is always a chance that this somehow all works out for Musk (The Verge reported Monday afternoon that user growth is currently at an all time high) and an even greater chance that his confident, unapologetic, and wrongheaded style will only endear him to his fans. But even if he does manage to salvage part of his $44 billion investment, what we are seeing is the opposite of a business mastermind at work. Musk is not leading Twitter with careful vision, and he is certainly not dragging us all into the future with him. He's bumbling his way through a job he's unqualified for. He's treating a human problem like an engineering problem, torching bridges and embarrassing himself in the process. As Johnathan Nightingale put it, "The entire history of capitalism is a lesson that you can be very successful and also very terrible." In this sense, Musk is an excellent teacher.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/11/elon-musk-twitter-poor-management-layoffs-advertisers/672029/ (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/11/elon-musk-twitter-poor-management-layoffs-advertisers/672029/)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 07, 2022, 07:10:40 PM
Yeah that matches my read as well.

I guess there's one scenario where it works out. If all the new accounts being created are actually real people who've avoided Twitter because it's too "woke" or whatever (as opposed to mostly bots and trolls signing on to take advantage of the chaos) and Twitter stabilizes with a new political centre more to Musk's liking - but with no significant stream of continual outrages - then maybe the advertisers will come back and Musk will make lots of money while being able to influence politics to his liking.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on November 07, 2022, 07:12:32 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 05:28:06 PMFirst of all I suggested it was bad for the Twitter business.  Twitter is fundamentally an advertising company.  Advertisers want to stay away from controversies.  Someone like Tucker Carlson gets great ratings, but his advertisers are extremely low-rent and can not be paying premium prices.

But lets take Tesla.  Who is most likely to buy an electric car?  People who care about the environment.  And unfortunately "the environment" has become a partisan issue, so those people are primarily democrats.  So Musk being identified as a Republican is likely bad for business.  And Republicans are less likely to buy electric anyways.

Two things: 1) the demographics buying slightly premium to high end cars probably skews republican, and 2) as the world shifts to electric it is less of an environmental statement.

QuoteAnd even SpaceX.  SpaceX's biggest customer is the US government.  If SpaceX is perceived as being partisan then Democrats in congress are less likely to fund money that would go to SpaceX.

And this is where my point was before. Would you rather have team republican or team democrat on your side in congress for the next few years? It isn't just a SpaceX thing, of course, it is also a government support for EVs thing.

Another side is the foreign angle. Some of the continuing investment in the company is Saudi. It isn't crazy to think that twitter is going to be accommodating to governments like Saudi and China and Musk's other businesses will reap some of those rewards.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 07, 2022, 07:15:41 PM
Silly question, or maybe not so silly. Is Musk on the spectrum?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 07, 2022, 07:18:25 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on November 07, 2022, 07:12:32 PMAnother side is the foreign angle. Some of the continuing investment in the company is Saudi. It isn't crazy to think that twitter is going to be accommodating to governments like Saudi and China and Musk's other businesses will reap some of those rewards.

Yeah, I think it's a given that Musk will accommodate Saudi and Chinese interests in the next little while. I guess I had assumed he'd be doing so under duress because he hadn't thought things through (moreso with China), but I suppose it could've been a deliberately calculated business decision from the get-go.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 07:37:00 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 07, 2022, 05:45:53 PMI have had enough of the fuckwads here throwing around accusations of dishonesty.


There is an obvious solution to that. Stop being dishonest.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 07:41:35 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 07, 2022, 07:15:41 PMSilly question, or maybe not so silly. Is Musk on the spectrum?
I don't think there is much question that he is - in fact....I think that has even been acknowledged that he is ADD or something like that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 07, 2022, 07:43:38 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 07, 2022, 05:20:42 PMThe better part is noticing that one product is really good at exactly what it does, but not good at things it was not meant to do, is somehow and indictment of the product.

The Falcon sucks because it isn't suited to sending someting to Jupiter? WTF?

It's not designed to send anything to Jupiter! That's like complaining a Tesla 3 sucks because it isn't a truck.

No one said the Falcon sucks. Or that the Tesla sucked. Again, this is like me saying "Musk is an accomplished businessman but not a genius Tony Stark style inventor as he wants to be seen" and taking it to mean "Musk has done nothing." I said Tesla and SpaceX, in my opinion, are making minimal contributions to "humanity", I think they are successful businesses. Nothing more, nothing less. Me saying that was never me saying neither company did anything of value, with a business it's fairly easy to tell if it's doing something of value--has it managed to stay in business over a long period of time? If so it is demonstrating it has value in society, if a business isn't making a good value proposition it ceases to exist.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on November 07, 2022, 07:47:20 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 07, 2022, 07:15:41 PMSilly question, or maybe not so silly. Is Musk on the spectrum?

Yes. He has ASD, formerly known has Asperger's. He revealed it live on SNL when he hosted it in 2021.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 07, 2022, 07:51:54 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 07, 2022, 07:10:40 PMYeah that matches my read as well.

I guess there's one scenario where it works out. If all the new accounts being created are actually real people who've avoided Twitter because it's too "woke" or whatever (as opposed to mostly bots and trolls signing on to take advantage of the chaos) and Twitter stabilizes with a new political centre more to Musk's liking - but with no significant stream of continual outrages - then maybe the advertisers will come back and Musk will make lots of money while being able to influence politics to his liking.

One of Musk's immediate problems is he is the sole face of Twitter now. There is no executive team really other than him, nor a board of directors. That means anything he says or does is going to be tightly linked with Twitter's reputation. He bought Twitter in part because he was annoyed about "censorship", but the reality is if he cares about protecting his investment he may find himself significantly needing to edit and reduce his own personal behavior on the platform.

There's plenty of businesses, even ad-supported ones, owned by controversial (even far right) billionaires. But they very often avoid the public limelight and do not make themselves the center of attention. Musk has obviously done the exact opposite.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 07, 2022, 10:35:50 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on November 07, 2022, 07:12:32 PMAnd this is where my point was before. Would you rather have team republican or team democrat on your side in congress for the next few years?

It's a tough question.  On the one hand, you could pocket the billion dollar contract to knock out the Jewish space lasers.  On the other hand, what happens when they want proof you've captured the evil space lizards that abducted Queen Elizabeth and JFK Jr.?  All those vintage Dr. Who costumes costs serious money.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 07, 2022, 10:38:59 PM
Any political organization willing to give Marjorie Taylor Greene and Herschel Walker real, tangible power in the hope of squeezing out a couple more tax loopholes cannot be trusted.  The destruction of the nation is bad for business. A 24% tax vs a 26% tax on a smoking ruin is no great benefit.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 07, 2022, 10:42:34 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 07, 2022, 05:45:53 PMI have had enough of the fuckwads here throwing around accusations of dishonesty.

(https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/392/026/21b.jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on November 08, 2022, 03:40:20 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 07, 2022, 10:35:50 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on November 07, 2022, 07:12:32 PMAnd this is where my point was before. Would you rather have team republican or team democrat on your side in congress for the next few years?

It's a tough question.  On the one hand, you could pocket the billion dollar contract to knock out the Jewish space lasers.  On the other hand, what happens when they want proof you've captured the evil space lizards that abducted Queen Elizabeth and JFK Jr.?  All those vintage Dr. Who costumes costs serious money.

I doubt Elon Musk has the power to change the direction of US politics, and if he does it will take more commitment than a tweet that he favors a divided government and we should vote republican. But he really does have an interest in legislation, and legislators in him. He is also from South Africa and has three citizenships so I'm not sure he is the most likely to put his business interests behind the general health of the US.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 08, 2022, 11:49:04 AM
Quote from: alfred russel on November 08, 2022, 03:40:20 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 07, 2022, 10:35:50 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on November 07, 2022, 07:12:32 PMAnd this is where my point was before. Would you rather have team republican or team democrat on your side in congress for the next few years?

It's a tough question.  On the one hand, you could pocket the billion dollar contract to knock out the Jewish space lasers.  On the other hand, what happens when they want proof you've captured the evil space lizards that abducted Queen Elizabeth and JFK Jr.?  All those vintage Dr. Who costumes costs serious money.

I doubt Elon Musk has the power to change the direction of US politics, and if he does it will take more commitment than a tweet that he favors a divided government and we should vote republican. But he really does have an interest in legislation, and legislators in him. He is also from South Africa and has three citizenships so I'm not sure he is the most likely to put his business interests behind the general health of the US.

Well the Democrats threw him a pretty big bone for his Tesla interests this term. So clearly doing nice things for Musk doesn't give you anything, is that a good message for the politicians to take on? And a divided government is going to empower the executive branch to steer policy since the legislature will be paralyzed. I don't know how those benefit him.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on November 09, 2022, 03:31:59 PM
Quote from: grumbler on November 06, 2022, 06:33:57 PM
Quote from: viper37 on November 06, 2022, 01:58:56 PMThat are two different things.  No one is denying these accomplishments.

But Musk's supporters since to place him at some kind of super human genius of engineering.  Which I'm less and less convinced he is.

Some Musk supporters are like that, but we've seen groupies like them for all kinds of people.  Musk groupies are no better nor worse than Bernie groupies or Trump groupies or Jobs groupies or any other kind.  Love is blind.
Very true.  And I wasn't pointing anyone on this board.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 09, 2022, 07:22:07 PM
Tesla has been dropping like a rock.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 09, 2022, 07:33:02 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 09, 2022, 07:22:07 PMTesla has been dropping like a rock.

Goddamnit Elon
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 09, 2022, 07:38:31 PM
It's rather fascinating to watch him just destroy his entire career and everything he has done.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on November 09, 2022, 08:07:30 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 09, 2022, 07:38:31 PMIt's rather fascinating to watch him just destroy his entire career and everything he has done.

(https://expresselevatortohell.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/citizen-kane-2.jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: CountDeMoney on November 09, 2022, 08:47:36 PM
Quote from: Valmy on November 07, 2022, 02:59:33 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 07, 2022, 02:56:22 PMI think Musk now ripping off the mask and endorsing Republicans is stupid as he runs a major social network and is terrible for business.

But do you think this will "move the needle" in US elections?

I don't think so in this election but it will in the future. Musk is a hero to many.

grumbler says that love is blind, and there are all sorts of groupies--but you can figure out the attraction, and there's a logical path to it.

When it comes to Musk, I really don't understand the nihilist/GamerGate/cryptobruh fanbase attraction to the Bond villain archetype.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 09, 2022, 09:10:53 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 09, 2022, 08:47:36 PMgrumbler says that love is blind, and there are all sorts of groupies--but you can figure out the attraction, and there's a logical path to it.

When it comes to Musk, I really don't understand the nihilist/GamerGate/cryptobruh fanbase attraction to the Bond villain archetype.

Musk is kind of an aspie nerd, but (almost) everyone thinks he's super bright - and he's undeniably very rich, so if you don't think he's super bright then that's just you being jelly. He says all kinds of dumb shit - with internet memes and for the lulz - and he's never had to face any consequences. He's rich and successful and gets to have lots of sex with all kinds of chicks.

Bascially he's what they wish they were AND he plays to the gallery for them. So they love him.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 10, 2022, 11:07:49 AM
I hadn't really noticed much different at Twitter, but the rollout of the $8 verification system seems to have been a prompt for a huge uptick in the creation of troll / impersonator accounts, to the point my feed now feels significantly lower quality than it was previously (much of this is people retweeting the impostors because they are funny, but the net effect is largely mucking up things if you were someone who had a curated feed.)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on November 10, 2022, 11:52:02 AM
Yeah, as a user the blue tick had value to me as a proof of identity. Now it's harder to navigate retweets and such. I don't know why Musk is turning it into a simple premium badge without proof of identity.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 10, 2022, 11:55:00 AM
Another enlightened Musk policy has been enacted on Twitter's workplace, remote working is now banned and everyone has to work from the office.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 10, 2022, 11:56:21 AM
Quote from: The Larch on November 10, 2022, 11:55:00 AMAnother enlightened Musk policy has been enacted on Twitter's workplace, remote working is now banned and everyone has to work from the office.

There's plenty of room at least.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 10, 2022, 11:56:22 AM
Quote from: celedhring on November 10, 2022, 11:52:02 AMYeah, as a user the blue tick had value to me as a proof of identity. Now it's harder to navigate retweets and such. I don't know why Musk is turning it into a simple premium badge without proof of identity.
Because he has no fucking clue what he is doing?

Brilliant narcissists think their smartness applies to all things, and experience and knowledge doesn't matter because in the narrow spaces of their own expertise, their success came to them "naturally".

They almost certainly have no ability to notice that they had a huge amount of luck that went along with their brilliance.

So they think they can go do anything, that they can "figure it out" just like they did when they started a electric car company or a rocket company.

Frum had a pretty good article on Musk and Twitter:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/twitter-elon-musk-list-save-ruin/672021/

TLDR: Hire people who understand the business, shut up, and get out of the way. Give them your vision and then step aside.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on November 10, 2022, 12:03:29 PM
Tesla rolls out a lot of software features that get tested in production. I am not surprised that Twitter is doing the same. I remain surprised that Space X doesn't do it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 10, 2022, 12:09:13 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 10, 2022, 11:56:22 AM
Quote from: celedhring on November 10, 2022, 11:52:02 AMYeah, as a user the blue tick had value to me as a proof of identity. Now it's harder to navigate retweets and such. I don't know why Musk is turning it into a simple premium badge without proof of identity.
Because he has no fucking clue what he is doing?

Yeah, it's quite flabbergasting to see how little Musk seems to know about the business model of a social media company, and how badly (or at all) he's being advised about it. Him basically bouncing ideas and proposals with Twitter users that reacted badly to his early proposals is equally surprising.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PJL on November 10, 2022, 12:12:12 PM
Turns out running a social media company is even more difficult than rocket science for some people.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 10, 2022, 12:29:00 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on November 10, 2022, 12:03:29 PMTesla rolls out a lot of software features that get tested in production. I am not surprised that Twitter is doing the same. I remain surprised that Space X doesn't do it.

Space X kind-of does.  They've built all kinds of evolutions and iterations of their Starship rocket.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on November 10, 2022, 12:37:33 PM
The CISO, chief privacy officer, and chief compliance officers all quit last night.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 10, 2022, 01:25:52 PM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on November 10, 2022, 12:37:33 PMThe CISO, chief privacy officer, and chief compliance officers all quit last night.
Yeah I saw this:
QuoteCasey Newton
@CaseyNewton
According to messages shared in Twitter Slack, Twitter's CISO, chief privacy office, and chief compliance officer all resigned last night.

An employee says it will be up to engineers to "self-certify compliance with FTC requirements and other laws."

I'm fully aware I'm a cost to the business I work for - but as privacy lawyer advising a company with a big digital presence, I don't think I've ever heard of a worse idea (and where I work we have engineers who care about privacy) :lol: :ph34r:

But frankly it seems insane if the plan is to try to directly monetise Twitter. He wants people to pay for things through subscriptions, is talking about ways of monetising content (again I think Twitter missed the boat on that with Substack and Patreon) or even the stuff about Twitter as a digital wallet. I simply would not trust my card details to company without a CISO, privacy or compliance team.

I think there's something to this take (and perhaps a bit to the general STEM discourse in recent years):
QuoteJames Ball
@jamesrbuk
I think this is the core of Musk's doomed efforts.

Lots of his challenges are static: getting to space is hard but the challenge stays the same.

Self-driving is a bit dynamic. And he's found it somewhat harder.
Content moderation and safety is fully dynamic. Fix one way in and they'll find another. You're in a dynamic, living system – it's game theory etc.

You will never find one new trick that solves it. It's a forever job – Sisyphus pushing up that boulder.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on November 10, 2022, 05:21:09 PM
Twitter verification
Quote from: celedhring on November 10, 2022, 11:52:02 AMYeah, as a user the blue tick had value to me as a proof of identity. Now it's harder to navigate retweets and such. I don't know why Musk is turning it into a simple premium badge without proof of identity.

Cases in point:
https://twitter.com/stanzipotenza/status/1590741168471494658

https://twitter.com/drewharwell/status/1590822878274097152

Well, if there's ever an issue, I'm sure you can just reach out to Twitter's communication team for reassurance and ...

https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/1590794421418790935

Oh.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on November 10, 2022, 06:55:56 PM
https://twitter.com/TesIaReal
 :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on November 10, 2022, 07:24:25 PM
Quotecurrently an emergency twitter all-hands going on with Elon Musk answering employee Q's

Elon was asked: "How are you going to deal with the expected attrition and align everyone on a shared vision?"

Elon Answer: "I don't know....we all need to be more hardcore."

https://twitter.com/MikeIsaac/status/1590810660887461888?t=P819258frbdVXf4fmq7Wgg&s=19
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on November 10, 2022, 09:50:15 PM
Twitter is absolute chaos now. Basically no moderation. I don't know what is real and what isn't  :lol:

This has been an insane week  :lmfao:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on November 10, 2022, 10:05:18 PM
I admire Musk's ability to throw one hell of a party.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on November 10, 2022, 10:57:04 PM
(https://tinypic.host/images/2022/11/11/Screenshot_20221110-225428.png)

:lmfao:

(https://tinypic.host/images/2022/11/11/Screenshot_20221110-230703.png)

Incredible stuff

(https://tinypic.host/images/2022/11/11/Screenshot_20221110-231659.png)

Elon basically forcing companies to apologize that medicine isn't free
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 10, 2022, 11:06:16 PM
You know, Musk might be destroying Twitter.

But....would that be such a bad thing?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on November 10, 2022, 11:20:00 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 10, 2022, 11:06:16 PMYou know, Musk might be destroying Twitter.

But....would that be such a bad thing?

I'm Twitter agnostic but this is way too hilarious to pass up
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 11, 2022, 01:16:06 AM
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhMPog1WQAEXD2I?format=jpg&name=medium)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 11, 2022, 03:06:38 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 10, 2022, 11:06:16 PMYou know, Musk might be destroying Twitter.

But....would that be such a bad thing?

From an Iranian colleague, I understand that Twitter is one of the primary communication lifelines that Iranian protestors use to organize and disseminate information in their ongoing uprising against the Theocrats.

So yeah...I think it would, unfortunately.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 11, 2022, 09:17:20 AM
:lol:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhPy9eDagAA5I4F?format=jpg&name=small)

On a personal level the company I work for is hiring in privacy and data science teams more generally and have apparently been hit by an absolute wave of very good CVs in the last week from Twitter people (fired and not). I imagine after that initial wave of "firings" lots of people who've done well enough to make a move and care about what they'll do will be trying to get out.

In a normal business leaders are really focused on how they retain the people who really care and are good. Even if everything somehow stabilises I suspect those are the people who'll leave and it might just be long slow degradation - limited resources/bad brand on the outside and good people not around on the inside.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Legbiter on November 11, 2022, 03:52:14 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 11, 2022, 09:17:20 AM:lol:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhPy9eDagAA5I4F?format=jpg&name=small)

Honest Chiquita.  :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on November 11, 2022, 04:50:36 PM
Thats just bananas.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 11, 2022, 05:06:02 PM
Quote from: FunkMonk on November 10, 2022, 10:57:04 PM(https://tinypic.host/images/2022/11/11/Screenshot_20221110-231659.png)

Apparently Lilly took a beating in the stock exchange and their stock price dropped by something like 5% because of that tweet impersonating them. How long until Musk is sued by one of these impersonated companies?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on November 11, 2022, 08:17:46 PM
Some dude spent 8 bucks to make EliLily lose billions.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PDH on November 11, 2022, 11:23:32 PM
Seen on the webs:

"Can Elon Musk buy FOX News next?"
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Habbaku on November 12, 2022, 11:45:16 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 11, 2022, 08:17:46 PMSome dude spent 8 bucks to make EliLily lose billions.

The correlation is hilarious, but the causation is spurious.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on November 12, 2022, 01:06:15 PM
Quote from: Habbaku on November 12, 2022, 11:45:16 AMThe correlation is hilarious, but the causation is spurious.

I agree, but I wonder if twitter has any legal exposure on this...It will be hard to disprove the correlation as our legal system is not competent to assess that, and the BS account for Eli Lilly was a "verified user".
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 12, 2022, 02:17:12 PM
On LinkedIn of all places I'm seeing defences of this move.
Can't find them again but some cope at work about how this is all a great plan that is going to work.
In reply to a post about it perfectly shows why you should research things before launch.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 12, 2022, 08:35:58 PM
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhVgyhtWYAEPJ56?format=png&name=small)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on November 12, 2022, 09:38:54 PM
No one said the war on woke wouldn't have casualties. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on November 12, 2022, 10:24:54 PM
Elon fired half of Twitter just a couple weeks before the World Cup.

It's definitely going to go down and they won't be able bring it back online  :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 13, 2022, 12:01:16 PM
Quote from: FunkMonk on November 12, 2022, 10:24:54 PMElon fired half of Twitter just a couple weeks before the World Cup.

It's definitely going to go down and they won't be able bring it back online  :lol:

What's the connection between the World Cup and Twitter?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on November 13, 2022, 12:24:01 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 13, 2022, 12:01:16 PM
Quote from: FunkMonk on November 12, 2022, 10:24:54 PMElon fired half of Twitter just a couple weeks before the World Cup.

It's definitely going to go down and they won't be able bring it back online  :lol:

What's the connection between the World Cup and Twitter?

Traffic spikes during games. I in pasts WCs they have been quite large.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 13, 2022, 12:25:52 PM
Right before the US mid terms was not ideal either.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 13, 2022, 12:32:14 PM
Quote from: celedhring on November 13, 2022, 12:24:01 PMTraffic spikes during games. I in pasts WCs they have been quite large.
Yeah and actually it'll possibly hit communities on Twitter who are maybe less affected so far.

This has been lots of fun on more political/business-y Twitter - but there's many millions who are just there to tweet about BTS or Arsenal in their respective communities. Any issues during a World Cup (especially verified accounts, perhaps) are going to cause problems for, I suspect, a far vaster audience/chunk of Twitter than what we've seen so far.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 13, 2022, 12:48:11 PM
Quote from: celedhring on November 13, 2022, 12:24:01 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 13, 2022, 12:01:16 PM
Quote from: FunkMonk on November 12, 2022, 10:24:54 PMElon fired half of Twitter just a couple weeks before the World Cup.

It's definitely going to go down and they won't be able bring it back online  :lol:

What's the connection between the World Cup and Twitter?

Traffic spikes during games. I in pasts WCs they have been quite large.

Ah I see. Makes sense :)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 13, 2022, 04:17:05 PM
Somebody should tell Elon that pissing off US senators at this point is not exactly a brilliant move.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhdGmepUUAAvZvx?format=jpg&name=large)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhdniqdVQAAHA-s?format=jpg&name=large)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 13, 2022, 04:39:42 PM
Someone claiming to be Ed Markey argues with someone who claims to be Elon Musk.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on November 13, 2022, 04:47:24 PM
I wonder if Musk may actually be going insane?  I mean literally, Bobby Fischer style insane.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 13, 2022, 04:47:54 PM
Quote from: DGuller on November 13, 2022, 04:47:24 PMI wonder if Musk may actually be going insane?  I mean literally, Bobby Fischer style insane.

How would you tell?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 15, 2022, 10:08:19 AM
Musk, champion of free speach, fires guy for correcting his disinformation on Twitter

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/14/23458247/elon-musk-fires-engineer-correcting-twitter

This is the hero some people want.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 15, 2022, 10:27:00 AM
Quote from: HVC on November 15, 2022, 10:08:19 AMMusk, champion of free speach, fires guy for correcting his disinformation on Twitter

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/14/23458247/elon-musk-fires-engineer-correcting-twitter

This is the hero some people want.
I don't think it is....

I mean, I literally do not know anyone who thinks Musk is good for Twitter. I am sure they are out there, but....

I think the best you can spin this is that Twitter sucks, so watching Musk destroy it has some schadenfreude to it....
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 15, 2022, 10:32:47 AM
How much has Twitter increased in value after Musk's takeover, since it now has access to his ascended business savvy?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Habbaku on November 15, 2022, 10:34:21 AM
Latest estimates have the increase at -$35 billion.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 15, 2022, 10:36:41 AM
To the moon!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 15, 2022, 11:48:31 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 15, 2022, 10:27:00 AM
Quote from: HVC on November 15, 2022, 10:08:19 AMMusk, champion of free speach, fires guy for correcting his disinformation on Twitter

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/14/23458247/elon-musk-fires-engineer-correcting-twitter

This is the hero some people want.
I don't think it is....

I mean, I literally do not know anyone who thinks Musk is good for Twitter. I am sure they are out there, but....

I think the best you can spin this is that Twitter sucks, so watching Musk destroy it has some schadenfreude to it....

I've found the whole affair immensely entertaining; it probably is the death of Twitter was having any value at all, which it is debatable the degree to which it had value, but that isn't my problem.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on November 15, 2022, 11:50:26 AM
What if: the turning of Twitter into 4chan will not mean the death of Twitter, but the 4chan-ification of public discourse?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Oexmelin on November 15, 2022, 12:11:33 PM
Musk is really showing his expertise at digging holes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on November 15, 2022, 12:17:52 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 13, 2022, 04:17:05 PMSomebody should tell Elon that pissing off US senators at this point is not exactly a brilliant move.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhdGmepUUAAvZvx?format=jpg&name=large)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhdniqdVQAAHA-s?format=jpg&name=large)
Quote from: The Larch on November 13, 2022, 04:17:05 PMSomebody should tell Elon that pissing off US senators at this point is not exactly a brilliant move.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhdGmepUUAAvZvx?format=jpg&name=large)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhdniqdVQAAHA-s?format=jpg&name=large)

Regarding Markey's last tweet to Elon...I don't think it is cool for sitting US Senators to threaten people with congressional regulation during a twitter slap fight.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on November 15, 2022, 12:21:52 PM
Participating in public arguments with your employees, who know vastly more about the product and service than you do, does not seem to be a good use of time for someone who is supposed to be running multiple multinational corporations.

I think there was an article or interview or something where Musk characterized himself as not a micromanager but a "nanomanager" and that seems true.

Anyway, supposedly Twitter's 2FA for users went down yesterday because Elon made his engineers turn off some services that run in the background. So there's that lol
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on November 15, 2022, 12:50:02 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on November 15, 2022, 12:17:52 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 13, 2022, 04:17:05 PMSomebody should tell Elon that pissing off US senators at this point is not exactly a brilliant move.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhdGmepUUAAvZvx?format=jpg&name=large)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhdniqdVQAAHA-s?format=jpg&name=large)
Quote from: The Larch on November 13, 2022, 04:17:05 PMSomebody should tell Elon that pissing off US senators at this point is not exactly a brilliant move.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhdGmepUUAAvZvx?format=jpg&name=large)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhdniqdVQAAHA-s?format=jpg&name=large)

Regarding Markey's last tweet to Elon...I don't think it is cool for sitting US Senators to threaten people with congressional regulation during a twitter slap fight.

Yeah.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 15, 2022, 01:06:57 PM
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-15/spacex-said-in-talks-to-raise-capital-above-150-billion-value?srnd=premium

Looks like SpaceX is doing a funding round which would value the company at $150bn. This is about 50% more valuation than Boeing, as a comparison, and continues my amazement at Elon's ability to distort reality to generate investment capital.

Since SpaceX is private, we don't really know their revenue. However, in traditional investing how investors value a company is generally an expression of what they anticipate future revenue to be.

I don't know off hand how big the commercial launch industry is, but I would not be surprised to find out that the total value of the entire global commercial launch industry is less than Boeing's aerospace business (which involves supplying many thousands of airframes for many airlines and militaries around the world.) Note that I'm comparing the total global commercial launch industry to Boeing, SpaceX does not have a monopoly on the global launch industry. Essentially a $150bn valuation is expecting what is certainly a simply impossible multiplier of revenue at SpaceX, just wild.

I take my hats off to it though, convincing rich investors to keep giving you huge amounts of money is not a talent I possess, but it is certainly a handy one to have.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Habbaku on November 15, 2022, 01:50:23 PM
Quote from: Tamas on November 15, 2022, 12:50:02 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on November 15, 2022, 12:17:52 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 13, 2022, 04:17:05 PMSomebody should tell Elon that pissing off US senators at this point is not exactly a brilliant move.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhdGmepUUAAvZvx?format=jpg&name=large)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhdniqdVQAAHA-s?format=jpg&name=large)
Quote from: The Larch on November 13, 2022, 04:17:05 PMSomebody should tell Elon that pissing off US senators at this point is not exactly a brilliant move.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhdGmepUUAAvZvx?format=jpg&name=large)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhdniqdVQAAHA-s?format=jpg&name=large)

Regarding Markey's last tweet to Elon...I don't think it is cool for sitting US Senators to threaten people with congressional regulation during a twitter slap fight.

Yeah.

Cool.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 15, 2022, 01:50:44 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 15, 2022, 01:06:57 PMhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-15/spacex-said-in-talks-to-raise-capital-above-150-billion-value?srnd=premium

Looks like SpaceX is doing a funding round which would value the company at $150bn. This is about 50% more valuation than Boeing, as a comparison, and continues my amazement at Elon's ability to distort reality to generate investment capital.
(snip)

You'd think that the bubble would burst at some point, but...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on November 15, 2022, 03:23:03 PM
Quote from: Oexmelin on November 15, 2022, 12:11:33 PMMusk is really showing his expertise at digging holes.
He missed his career path.  He would have made one hell of an infantryman.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 15, 2022, 03:53:59 PM
Quote from: viper37 on November 15, 2022, 03:23:03 PM
Quote from: Oexmelin on November 15, 2022, 12:11:33 PMMusk is really showing his expertise at digging holes.
He missed his career path.  He would have made one hell of an infantryman.

Except that he never stops digging, no matter how deep the hole.

I don't see how those he is seeking as investors don't recognize that he is as flighty as they come.  Why invest in a guy who has a zero attention span?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 15, 2022, 03:56:45 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 15, 2022, 01:06:57 PMhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-15/spacex-said-in-talks-to-raise-capital-above-150-billion-value?srnd=premium

Looks like SpaceX is doing a funding round which would value the company at $150bn. This is about 50% more valuation than Boeing, as a comparison, and continues my amazement at Elon's ability to distort reality to generate investment capital.

Since SpaceX is private, we don't really know their revenue. However, in traditional investing how investors value a company is generally an expression of what they anticipate future revenue to be.
We've gone around and round on Musk, but I certainly cannot argue anything you are saying here.

I will note that valuation is not about anticipated future revenue, it is about anticipated future stock value.

It's tulip bulbs all the way down!

There isn't anything magical about Musk here - this is an ongoing thing in tech industries in general. Just look at all the virtual currency mania or the valuation of any number of tech companies compared to "traditional" industries.

I am sure Musk is happy to ride that tiger though.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 15, 2022, 04:03:52 PM
IIRC, when the whole thing about Musk wanting to buy Twitter started there were some rumours about Musk using the operation as an excuse to capitalize on a chunk of his Tesla shares and turn them into money/other stock, as Tesla was considered to be highly overvalued (wasn't it said that on market value Tesla was worth as much as several other big, traditional car companies put together?) and due for a sharp downwards market adjustment, which would mean that he'd stand to loose a lot of money.

It'd seem that Musk's companies' shares being wildly overvalued is a common thread if he's seeking such a high evaluation for SpaceX.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 15, 2022, 04:17:29 PM
Hehe, yeah, trying to sell of overvalued company shares by buying Twitter at a valuation of $44 fucking billion is rather....dumb.

That is recognizing that the tree you are hiding under is almost soaked through by the rain, and deciding you better go hide under the tree right next to it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on November 15, 2022, 06:37:46 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 15, 2022, 04:17:29 PMHehe, yeah, trying to sell of overvalued company shares by buying Twitter at a valuation of $44 fucking billion is rather....dumb.

That is recognizing that the tree you are hiding under is almost soaked through by the rain, and deciding you better go hide under the tree right next to it.
Well, we're seeing this from the rational investor pov.

Instead, look at this from marijuana addict pov.

You're high as hell.  You make a dumb offer on social media one night on a marijuana binge.  Your ego prevents you from backtracking. 

Finally, rational people around you makes you realize what a monumental fuck up it is.

He tries to back out of it, but it's too late, Twitter execs had him, they made him sign a buying promise he can't easily get out of.

Now, he's trying to make the best of it.  Twitter can not generate enough profits on its own to recuperate the price he paid for.

He's probably better to run it into the ground, sell whatever IP/assets he can and declare bankruptcy and make a tax write-off for the loss that would offset the profit he will make by selling his overpriced Tesla shares, while at the same time he boost publicity for a new offering of SpaceX shares.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 15, 2022, 06:45:08 PM
Well, your marijuana addict perspective is interesting, but not very knowledgeable or persuasive.  Stick to passive weed consumption.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 15, 2022, 06:50:27 PM
Quote from: viper37 on November 15, 2022, 06:37:46 PMmarijuana binge

The cool word for this is "sleeping." :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on November 15, 2022, 08:04:37 PM
Quote from: grumbler on November 15, 2022, 06:45:08 PMWell, your marijuana addict perspective is interesting, but not very knowledgeable or persuasive.  Stick to passive weed consumption.
Yeah, it is known that drug users are known for their rational decision making process.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on November 15, 2022, 09:16:52 PM
Quote from: viper37 on November 15, 2022, 08:04:37 PM
Quote from: grumbler on November 15, 2022, 06:45:08 PMWell, your marijuana addict perspective is interesting, but not very knowledgeable or persuasive.  Stick to passive weed consumption.
Yeah, it is known that drug users are known for their rational decision making process.

Known by who?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 15, 2022, 11:35:34 PM
This has to be crushing his soul

QuoteTwitter insiders are calling Elon Musk by a new nickname, Elmo. It's spreading on the platform.

https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-insiders-users-calling-elon-musk-by-the-nickname-elmo-2022-11
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 15, 2022, 11:36:31 PM
Is Twitter now: Elmo's World?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on November 16, 2022, 01:10:52 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on November 15, 2022, 09:16:52 PM
Quote from: viper37 on November 15, 2022, 08:04:37 PM
Quote from: grumbler on November 15, 2022, 06:45:08 PMWell, your marijuana addict perspective is interesting, but not very knowledgeable or persuasive.  Stick to passive weed consumption.
Yeah, it is known that drug users are known for their rational decision making process.

Known by who?
Science, obviously.  It seems to be a well known scientific fact on this board that marijuana is a harmless drug that does not cause any side effects. Whatever any studies shows must be false.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 16, 2022, 01:15:15 AM
Quote from: viper37 on November 16, 2022, 01:10:52 AMScience, obviously.  It seems to be a well known scientific fact on this board that marijuana is a harmless drug that does not cause any side effects. Whatever any studies shows must be false.


I don't think it is harmless drug and I don't use it.

I just don't think it should be illegal is all.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 16, 2022, 09:07:27 AM
I think it's fair to say marijuana is significantly less harmful than two very legal drugs--alcohol and tobacco. Probably more harmful than caffeine (one of the other legal drugs.)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 16, 2022, 10:26:19 AM
Sugar causes far more health problems than marijuana.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 16, 2022, 11:31:08 AM
Quote from: grumbler on November 16, 2022, 10:26:19 AMSugar causes far more health problems than marijuana.

*tweet*  Strawman.  10 yard penalty.

Viper said marijuana effects the decision making process.  He didn't say anything about health problems.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Gups on November 16, 2022, 11:34:35 AM
My approach to decision-making and marijuana usage is not to smoke at times when I may be called on to make decisions more important than what music to listen to.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Maladict on November 16, 2022, 11:45:27 AM
I guess nobody will work for Twitter by Friday?  :wacko:


QuoteElon Musk tells Twitter staff to work long hours or leave

By Noor Nanji
Business reporter, BBC News

Elon Musk has told Twitter staff that they must commit to working "long hours at high intensity" or else leave the company, according to reports.

In an email to staff, the social media firm's new owner said workers should agree to the pledge if they wanted to stay, the Washington Post reported.

Those who do not sign up by Thursday will be given three months' severance pay, Mr Musk said.

The BBC has contacted Twitter for comment.

In his email to staff, also seen by The Guardian, Mr Musk said that Twitter "will need to be extremely hardcore" in order to succeed.

"This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade," he said.


Workers were told that they needed to click on a link by 17:00 EST on Thursday, if they want to be "part of the new Twitter".

He added: "Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful."

The world's richest man has already announced half of Twitter's staff are being let go, after he bought the company in a $44bn (£38.7bn) deal.

Mr Musk said he had "no choice" over the cuts as the company was losing $4m (£3.51m) a day. He has blamed "activist groups pressuring advertisers" for a "massive drop in revenue".

A host of top Twitter executives have also stepped down following his purchase of the firm.

Last week, the entrepreneur told Twitter staff that remote working would end and "difficult times" lay ahead, according to reports.

In an email to staff, the owner of the social media firm said workers would be expected in the office for at least 40 hours a week, Bloomberg reported.

Mr Musk added that there was "no way to sugar coat the message" that the slowing global economy was going to hit Twitter's advertising revenues.

But tech investor Sarah Kunst said the real reason Twitter is facing difficulties is because Mr Musk's takeover has saddled the company with debt.

His behaviour since the takeover has also led some advertisers to pause their spending, she said.

"He's now trying to inflict that pain and uncertainty on the employees," she said.

She added that there was a question mark over how enforceable Mr Musk's email about hours to staff really was.

"Can you just send an email to staff who already work for you, and just unilaterally change their working contract? That remains to be seen."

Mr Musk himself leads Twitter, electric carmaker Tesla, rocket company SpaceX, and is involved in many other ventures.

He described his work habits in a US court on Wednesday, where he appeared to defend the eye-popping $56bn pay package he received from Tesla in 2018.

"I pretty much work all the time, with rare exceptions." he said.

Dan Ives, a senior equity analyst at Wedbush Securities, warned it was further evidence that Twitter's culture had "dramatically changed" with Mr Musk at the helm.

"Elon Musk is not going to be doing candlelight dinners and playing ping pong in Twitter's cafeteria and this is a shock to the system," he said.

"But he also needs to play nice in the sandbox because if key Twitter engineers and developers leave, this will be a major void in the Twitter ecosystem," he warned. "There's a careful balance ahead for him, in this tightrope act."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 16, 2022, 11:48:30 AM
Will Elmo promise to work zero hours per week? Is he serious about turning the ship around?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 16, 2022, 11:55:02 AM
QuoteBut tech investor Sarah Kunst said the real reason Twitter is facing difficulties is because Mr Musk's takeover has saddled the company with debt.

Yeah. No shit. I just do not understand leveraged buy outs and why they are allowed. They are horrible for customers, shareholders, and employees and seem like a great mechanism for taking healthy profitable companies and bankrupting them for no reason at all.

Not that Twitter was a healthy and profitable company but still. By allowing this sale the company just became much more likely to fail for a reason that has nothing to do with its profitability or the quality of its services.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 16, 2022, 12:06:19 PM
I think it makes sense for smaller companies. Gives them ability to expand relatively pain free. I worked for one that made some leveraged acquisitions, but that leaves a million or two on the books. A far cry from the massive debt of larger buy outs.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 16, 2022, 12:34:20 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 16, 2022, 11:31:08 AM
Quote from: grumbler on November 16, 2022, 10:26:19 AMSugar causes far more health problems than marijuana.

*tweet*  Strawman.  10 yard penalty.

Viper said marijuana effects the decision making process.  He didn't say anything about health problems.


* Tweet *  Failure to follow the thread, illegal procedure.  Ten yard penalty and loss of down.

Viper was claiming that " It seems to be a well known scientific fact on this board that marijuana is a harmless drug that does not cause any side effects" an the post immediately before mine was OvB observing that "I think it's fair to say marijuana is significantly less harmful than two very legal drugs..."  So, by that time, the discussion had shifted to general harm.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on November 16, 2022, 02:15:38 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 16, 2022, 09:07:27 AMI think it's fair to say marijuana is significantly less harmful than two very legal drugs--alcohol and tobacco. Probably more harmful than caffeine (one of the other legal drugs.)

There's the question of quantity, of course.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 16, 2022, 02:27:07 PM
I don't see any firm reasons most of the remaining Twitter engineers would stay with the company. It sounds like Musk is offering "more work, same pay" or take an option to get 3 months of severance and go into the job market--which for software engineers is still quite robust. There have been layoffs in some of the big Silicon Valley firms but the overall hiring for SWEs seems to still be really robust--and a lot of them have likely made literally a couple million dollars in the past 4-5 years from RSU payouts--when you factor in RSU payouts a lot of these more "prestige" tech firms have been paying some engineers $300-400k/yr.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 16, 2022, 02:29:15 PM
But if they stay they get to be associated with a total shitshow of a company.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PDH on November 16, 2022, 02:31:21 PM
Quote from: grumbler on November 16, 2022, 12:34:20 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 16, 2022, 11:31:08 AM*tweet*  Strawman.  10 yard penalty.

* Tweet *  Failure to follow the thread, illegal procedure.  Ten yard penalty and loss of down.

Wait, refs can't throw flags on refs...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 16, 2022, 02:32:22 PM
Quote from: The Brain on November 16, 2022, 02:29:15 PMBut if they stay they get to be associated with a total shitshow of a company.
:boff:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 16, 2022, 02:33:04 PM
Maybe, a la Trump, he is using Twitter as a tax write off?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 16, 2022, 03:29:11 PM
Being a Twitter employee at the moment must be one of the more demoralizing experiences in the workplace. One day you're working normally and the next a new guy comes, fires a bunch of people and starts putting a fire under your ass telling you that it's critical that you become a slave to the job for the foreseeable future with no apparent additional compensation whatsoever. It's as if Musk is actively trying to push people away from the company.

Also, what's with all this "we have to be hardcore" discourse lately? This will be studied in business management schools as an example of what not to do for many years to come.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 16, 2022, 03:49:40 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 16, 2022, 03:29:11 PMAlso, what's with all this "we have to be hardcore" discourse lately? This will be studied in business management schools as an example of what not to do for many years to come.
It seems to be a thing with tech companies at the minute - I think Zuckerberg talked about Meta needing to go on a war footing or something similar. Back to the early, scrappy, "hardcore" lean days etc.

Edit: I mean frankly it reminds me of imperial discourse - when they panic about decadence and need to revert to the more butch, martial virtues of the founders.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on November 16, 2022, 03:59:37 PM
There's no commodity in the business world that's more in demand than software engineers. Even my girlfriend's company - that makes MINING EQUIPMENT - needs them (and struggles to hire them). So if they are asked to go full XIXth century, they will just go get paid a fortune at another company.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Iormlund on November 16, 2022, 04:08:41 PM
I worked for people like that once.
When I arrived there was a team of very experienced, competent engineers. When I left only the (former) interns and a couple desperate guys were still there. Everyone else was new. Since there was no know -how retention the company missed deadlines, almost went bankrupt.

The only guy remaining there to this day is the one I brought to the team. He's a workaholic and I knew he'd fit right in. He's a manager now.


Every IT guy I know experiences LinkedIn like hot girls do Tinder. And none of them has even been at a FAANG.
Any half-way decent Twitter dev is going to grab that severance and run.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on November 16, 2022, 08:36:21 PM
Quote from: Valmy on November 16, 2022, 11:55:02 AMYeah. No shit. I just do not understand leveraged buy outs and why they are allowed. They are horrible for customers, shareholders, and employees and seem like a great mechanism for taking healthy profitable companies and bankrupting them for no reason at all.

Interests are tax deductible, so if the rates asked are equivalent, debt is cheaper than a stock emission to finance an acquisition.  They obviously are riskier.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 17, 2022, 08:39:35 PM
Feels like something's sinking in:
QuoteElon Musk
@elonmusk
How do you make a small fortune in social media?

Start out with a large one.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 17, 2022, 08:44:27 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 17, 2022, 08:39:35 PMFeels like something's sinking in:
QuoteElon Musk
@elonmusk
How do you make a small fortune in social media?
Start out with a large one.
LOL. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/elon-musk-silicon-valley-twitter-fires-staff/672148/?utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share



Good summary of pretty much how I feel about Musk these days.

QuoteHaving studied Musk's back catalog of undoubted successes, I am reluctant to dance on Twitter's grave, but he has taken on a project completely different from anything he has faced before, and he does not appear to know it. This reflects a structural problem with the mythology of genius that has enveloped him: Regarding yourself as special is useful, right up until the point when it's not.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on November 17, 2022, 09:02:37 PM
He should not have agreed to buy a company without due diligence. Such a dumb big dick energy move.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on November 17, 2022, 09:16:27 PM
Probably would have helped of he had spent the last two weeks learning about the company instead of poorly considered changes and then purging all of the employees: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/17/23465274/hundreds-of-twitter-employees-resign-from-elon-musk-hardcore-deadline
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on November 17, 2022, 09:26:34 PM
Everyone is saying goodbye to each other on Twitter like it's the end of days  :lol:

The one (and only) truly great thing about Twitter is that millions of people can experience a single event together in real time, so this seems appropriate.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 17, 2022, 09:30:30 PM
Quote from: FunkMonk on November 17, 2022, 09:26:34 PMThe one (and only) truly great thing about Twitter is that millions of people can experience a single event together in real time, so this seems appropriate.

I think that's a very insightful comment.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on November 17, 2022, 09:34:19 PM
The Saudis are probably pissed  :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 17, 2022, 10:38:26 PM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on November 17, 2022, 09:16:27 PMProbably would have helped of he had spent the last two weeks learning about the company instead of poorly considered changes and then purging all of the employees: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/17/23465274/hundreds-of-twitter-employees-resign-from-elon-musk-hardcore-deadline

From the article:
QuoteFor example, the team that maintains Twitter's core system libraries that every engineer at the company uses is gone after Thursday. "You cannot run Twitter without this team," the employee said.

It ends with:
QuoteTwitter no longer has a communications department to contact for comment.
... which I've seen elsewhere as well. It's kind of poetic :ccr:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 17, 2022, 10:43:02 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on November 17, 2022, 09:02:37 PMHe should not have agreed to buy a company without due diligence. Such a dumb big dick energy move.

Right--and almost entirely because he got mad that ex-CEO Agrawal wouldn't rub his dick, so he wanted to show he was just going to buy the company. Meanwhile Agrawal made millions off of the buyout (as a shareholder), and while there are conflicting reports about his golden parachute all the real business reporting indicated those were part of the acquisition agreement so very likely executed as well, the guy he was looking to "own" no longer has to run Twitter and made tens of millions of dollars in days.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on November 17, 2022, 10:46:33 PM
All Elon had to do was sit there and not do anything. Maybe wait a couple years and convince some idiots to buy Twitter off him. He'd walked off into the sunset with people saying he "saved" Twitter and he'd be an even richer man.

What a dumbass  :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 17, 2022, 10:50:03 PM
The thing about working at a place that's "extremely hardcore" (and I've done it a few times) is that you need a few things to make it work. The single most important thing you need, IMO, is some sort of animating idea, a reason, a mission.

So far it seems Elon has offered the following:

1) "I'm Elon Musk. I'm a fucking genius. You're not. Fuck you."

2) "Twitter sucks. The people who work at Twitter are shit."

3) A bunch of half-baked ideas sourced off the internet, implemented without any apparent understanding of software development or social media beyond the superficial.

None of them are particularly compelling IMO.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 17, 2022, 11:09:58 PM
Quote from: Valmy on November 16, 2022, 11:55:02 AM
QuoteBut tech investor Sarah Kunst said the real reason Twitter is facing difficulties is because Mr Musk's takeover has saddled the company with debt.

Yeah. No shit. I just do not understand leveraged buy outs and why they are allowed. They are horrible for customers, shareholders, and employees and seem like a great mechanism for taking healthy profitable companies and bankrupting them for no reason at all.

Basically shareholder sovereignty. 
LBOs are great for shareholders, they get big premiums for selling.  That's why they sell.

Debt holders are presumed to be able to protect themselves through contractual covenants, but they usually don't because for structural reasons debt is usually dumb. Also, written contract covenants can often be evaded.

But Musk-Twitter is not a classic LBO.  It's an LBO in the sense that it's a take private deal, with leverage.  But the point an LBO is that the cash equity piece of the deal is negligible.  You gut the company and run it for cash; if you make over interest cost it is pure cream; if not you fold up and lose little.

But Musk put in 27B personal cash as compared to 13B debt.  The debt is still crushing the company but Musk has a huge amount to lose.  It's a terrible risk-reward tradeoff.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 17, 2022, 11:10:33 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 17, 2022, 10:50:03 PMThe thing about working at a place that's "extremely hardcore" (and I've done it a few times) is that you need a few things to make it work. The single most important thing you need, IMO, is some sort of animating idea, a reason, a mission.

So far it seems Elon has offered the following:

1) "I'm Elon Musk. I'm a fucking genius. You're not. Fuck you."

2) "Twitter sucks. The people who work at Twitter are shit."

3) A bunch of half-baked ideas sourced off the internet, implemented without any apparent understanding of software development or social media beyond the superficial.

None of them are particularly compelling IMO.
With SpaceX and Tesla, at least the mission itself was pretty compelling, at least for a lot of people.

Twitter I guess might be kind of compelling, but it's not rockets.

I do expect that at least at SpaceX, Musk probably got away with a lot of bullshit because people would put up with a lot to work there because its, you know....a rocket company.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on November 17, 2022, 11:29:23 PM
Would it really be a bad thing if Musk burned Twitter to the ground using Saudi dollars as accelerant?  I hope he's done with Twitter soon and decides that fixing Fox News would be his next challenge.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on November 18, 2022, 12:04:25 AM
Quote from: DGuller on November 17, 2022, 11:29:23 PMWould it really be a bad thing if Musk burned Twitter to the ground using Saudi dollars as accelerant?
I was just getting on board Twitter to follow international news, so yes, it is a bad thing.  Now, I will have to find something else.  I do not adapt to change very well at my age.
:P

Some other social network is going to take over the journalistic business over time, I guess.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on November 18, 2022, 12:04:47 AM
Somebody with a grudge had money to waste
(https://i.redd.it/w98l4s3sqm0a1.jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 18, 2022, 12:05:30 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 17, 2022, 10:50:03 PMThe thing about working at a place that's "extremely hardcore" (and I've done it a few times) is that you need a few things to make it work. The single most important thing you need, IMO, is some sort of animating idea, a reason, a mission.

So far it seems Elon has offered the following:

1) "I'm Elon Musk. I'm a fucking genius. You're not. Fuck you."

2) "Twitter sucks. The people who work at Twitter are shit."

3) A bunch of half-baked ideas sourced off the internet, implemented without any apparent understanding of software development or social media beyond the superficial.

None of them are particularly compelling IMO.

The other, critical difference is that he has owned the company for barely three weeks.  He strode into a company that had a certain culture, threw out half the staff, and imposed a major culture change on the other half.  The likelihood that a significant portion of the existing staff were on board with his new culture was, and has proved to be, very low.

It's a different case when you have a company that is known to be "hardcore".  The applicants to those companies self-select.  They know what they're getting into.

The people who worked for Twitter a month ago signed up for a much different bargain.  I'm not surprised there's a mass exodus as a result of this.  Also, I feel really bad of the people who are still there only because of their life or visa situation.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 18, 2022, 01:31:14 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 17, 2022, 11:10:33 PMWith SpaceX and Tesla, at least the mission itself was pretty compelling, at least for a lot of people.

Exactly.

"We're going to space again!" - super fucking compelling if that's your jam.

"We're making electric cars and saving the planet! Cutting edge tech that no one has done before!" -  also very compelling.

QuoteTwitter I guess might be kind of compelling, but it's not rockets.

Twitter could be compelling, I think, but Musk's pitch appears to be "every thing you did before is shit and you're lazy! Prove to me that you're good enough for me."

That said, maybe he has something that's compelling to some folks? Maybe some sort of "we'll make the all-in-one app" or something like that... but even that's more compelling for Musk's bottom line than as an aspiration, unless it's combined with significant financial upside for the people who stick it out.

QuoteI do expect that at least at SpaceX, Musk probably got away with a lot of bullshit because people would put up with a lot to work there because its, you know....a rocket company.

Agreed. Same with Tesla I think, though the shine may be wearing off there.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 18, 2022, 02:20:50 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 18, 2022, 01:31:14 AMMaybe some sort of "we'll make the all-in-one app" or something like that...

I'm having flashbacks to those old apps that rolled ICQ, IRC, Messenger etc. into one unified client :D
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 18, 2022, 03:11:22 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 17, 2022, 11:09:58 PMDebt holders are presumed to be able to protect themselves through contractual covenants, but they usually don't because for structural reasons debt is usually dumb. Also, written contract covenants can often be evaded.

AFAIK there has never been a junk market crash.  That suggests to me junk lenders know to price.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 18, 2022, 03:42:41 AM
https://www.businessinsider.com/pronatalism-elon-musk-simone-malcolm-collins-underpopulation-breeding-tech-2022-11

QuoteBillionaires like Elon Musk want to save civilization by having tons of genetically superior kids.

Inside the movement to take 'control of human evolution.'

Sitting in their toy-filled family room on a sunny September afternoon, Simone and Malcolm Collins were forced to compete with the wails of two toddlers as they mapped out their plans for humankind.

"I do not think humanity is in a great situation right now. And I think if somebody doesn't fix the problem, we could be gone," Malcolm half-shouted as he pushed his sniffling 18-month-old, Torsten, back and forth in a child-size Tonka truck.

Along with his 3-year-old brother, Octavian, and his newborn sister, Titan Invictus, Torsten has unwittingly joined an audacious experiment. According to his parents' calculations, as long as each of their descendants can commit to having at least eight children for just 11 generations, the Collins bloodline will eventually outnumber the current human population.

If they succeed, Malcolm continued, "we could set the future of our species."

Malcolm, 36, and his wife, Simone, 35, are "pronatalists," part of a quiet but growing movement taking hold in wealthy tech and venture-capitalist circles. People like the Collinses fear that falling birth rates in certain developed countries like the United States and most of Europe will lead to the extinction of cultures, the breakdown of economies, and, ultimately, the collapse of civilization. It's a theory that Elon Musk has championed on his Twitter feed, that Ross Douthat has defended in The New York Times' opinion pages, and that Joe Rogan and the billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen bantered about on "The Joe Rogan Experience." It's also, alarmingly, been used by some to justify white supremacy around the world, from the tiki-torch-carrying marchers in Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting "You will not replace us" to the mosque shooter in Christchurch, New Zealand, who opened his 2019 manifesto: "It's the birthrates. It's the birthrates. It's the birthrates."

Google searches for "population collapse" spiked this summer, after Musk continued to raise the issue in response to Insider's report that he'd fathered twins with one of his employees. According to the United Nations, more than a quarter of the world's countries now have pronatalist policies, including infertility-treatment benefits and "baby bonus" cash incentives. Meanwhile, a spate of new assisted reproductive technology startups are attracting big-name investors such as Peter Thiel and Steve Jurvetson, fueling a global fertility-services market that Research and Markets projects will reach $78.2 billion by 2025.

I reached out to the Collinses after I received a tip about a company called Genomic Prediction, where Musk's OpenAI cofounder Sam Altman was an early investor. (Altman, who is gay, also invests in a company called Conception. The startup plans to grow viable human eggs out of stem cells and could allow two biological males to reproduce. "I think having a lot of kids is great," Altman recently told an audience at Greylock's Intelligent Future event. "I want to do that now even more than I did when I was younger.")

Genomic Prediction is one of the first companies to offer PGT-P, a controversial new type of genetic testing that allows parents who are undergoing in vitro fertilization to select the "best" available embryos based on a variety of polygenic risk factors.

The Collinses became the public face of the technology after being featured in a May Bloomberg article, "The Pandora's Box of Embryo Testing Is Officially Open." After the piece went live, Malcolm said, they began hearing from wealthy pronatalists around the country.

"We are the Underground Railroad of 'Gattaca' babies and people who want to do genetic stuff with their kids," Malcolm told me.

The Collinses invited me to stay at their home in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, before we'd even spoken on the phone. (Following our first call, in which I disclosed that I was single but hoped to have children one day, Simone also emailed to invite me to join their matchmaking network for "high-achieving" individuals: "As you can probably tell, we're heavily invested in helping people have families, as the headwinds against having kids are strong these days!")

We are the Underground Railroad of 'Gattaca' babies and people who want to do genetic stuff with their kids.

While I didn't fill out the matchmaking form, which listed both "Four +" and "As many as possible" as options for how many children I wanted, I did take them up on a visit to their 18th-century farmhouse. Upon arrival, I was greeted at the gate by The Professor, a brown corgi with a slightly manic air, followed by Malcolm, cheerful and clean-cut in a black polo.

Inside, Simone, statuesque even one month shy of her delivery date, wore her pregnancy uniform of a crisp white oxford shirt, a long black skirt, Doc Martens, and red lipstick (ignoring, she would later tell me, her mother-in-law's plea not to "dress like a fucking pilgrim" in front of the press). Their wardrobes, Simone told me later, are meticulously curated to project the kind of gravitas their work requires. Beneath their thick, black-rimmed glasses — hers round, his rectangular — the couple look, as they would put it, "biologically young."

Together they write books and work in the VC and private-equity worlds. Simone has previously served as managing director for Dialog, the secretive retreat cofounded by Thiel. While they relate to the anti-institutional wing of the Republican Party, they're wary of affiliating with what they called the "crazy conservatives." Above all, they are focused on branding pronatalism as hip, socially acceptable, and welcoming — especially to certain people. Last year, they cofounded the nonprofit initiative Pronatalist.org.

Torsten, 1, whose nickname is "Toastie," got his name from his mother's Scandinavian heritage. Octavian, 3, was named after the ruler who ushered in the Roman Empire. Hannah Yoon

An obsession with producing heirs is hardly a new phenomenon. Elites have used lineage to consolidate money and power for most of human history. But as couples in the developed world are increasingly putting off parenthood until later in life — or abandoning it altogether — people like the Collinses are looking for hacks to make large families feasible in a modern, secular society.

They both said they were warned by friends not to talk to me. After all, a political minefield awaits anyone who wanders into this space. The last major figure to be associated with pronatalism was Jeffrey Epstein, who schemed to impregnate 20 women at a time on his New Mexico ranch. Genetic screening, and the underlying assumption that some humans are born better than others, often invites comparisons to Nazi eugenic experiments. And then there's the fact that our primary cultural reference point for a pronatalist society is the brutally misogynist world of "The Handmaid's Tale."

The Collinses, who call themselves "ruthless pragmatists," consider the inevitable backlash a small price to pay.

"We're frustrated that one of the inherent points of this culture is that people are super private within it," Simone said. They not only hope that their transparency will encourage other members of the upper class to have more children; they want to build a culture and economy around the high-birth-rate lifestyle.

The payoff won't be immediate, Simone said, but she believes if that small circle puts the right plans into place, their successors will "become the new dominant leading classes in the world."

The tech industry's biggest players have been preoccupied with their legacies for years. In the 2010s, the longevity craze swept Silicon Valley and industry titans like Jeff Bezos, 58, Sergey Brin, 49, and Larry Ellison, 78, poured billions of dollars into biotech companies they thought could help them defy death. Jeffrey Epstein reached out to scientists about freezing his head and penis to be revitalized hundreds of years later, while Peter Thiel, 55, was said to have sought blood transfusions from the young. (In response to the rumor, Thiel stated: "On the record, I am not a vampire.")

Antiaging research has had some success in targeting specific diseases, but as the Ellisons and Bezoses of the world get older, the chance of radical life extension in their lifetime becomes more unlikely. So some are turning to the next best thing: their progeny. For people who believe deeply in the genetic heritability of traits, passing on what they see as their superior DNA can be the ultimate path to influence.

The Genomic Prediction cofounder Stephen Hsu told me he knew many ultrahigh-net-worth, high-birth-rate parents.

"With everything these guys do, whether it's their investments or even their social lives, they're applying a very analytic, quantitative way of thinking. And that goes for reproduction too," Hsu said.

In 2018, Brin and his then-wife, Nicole Shanahan, who faced fertility troubles of their own, founded the Buck Institute's Center for Female Reproductive Longevity. Thiel, who has at least one child with his partner, has invested in the egg-freezing startup TMRW and a new period-tracking app called 28, which has stirred controversy over its affiliation with an antiabortion publication. Ellison, meanwhile, who has two children in their 30s, has reportedly resumed having kids — with his 31-year-old girlfriend.

While pronatalism is often associated with religious extremism, the version now trending in this community has more in common with dystopian sci-fi. The Collinses, who identify as secular Calvinists, are particularly drawn to the tenet of predestination, which suggests that certain people are chosen to be superior on earth and that free will is an illusion. They believe pronatalism is a natural extension of the philosophical movements sweeping tech hubs like the Silicon Hills of Austin, Texas. Our conversations frequently return to transhumanism (efforts to merge human and machine capabilities to create superior beings), longtermism (a philosophy that argues the true cost of human extinction wouldn't be the death of billions today but the preemptive loss of trillions, or more, unborn future people), and effective altruism (or EA, a philanthropic system currently focused on preventing artificial intelligence from wiping out the human population).

What these movements all have in common is a fixation on the future. And as that future starts to look more and more apocalyptic to some of the world's wealthiest people, the idea of pronatalism starts to look more heroic. It's a proposition uniquely suited to Silicon Valley's brand of hubris: If humanity is on the brink, and they alone can save us, then they owe it to society to replicate themselves as many times as possible.

"The person of this subculture really sees the pathway to immortality as being through having children," Simone said.

According to tech-industry insiders, this type of rhetoric is spreading at intimate gatherings among some of the most powerful figures in America. It's "big here in Austin," the 23andMe cofounder Linda Avey told me. Raffi Grinberg, a pronatalist who is the executive director of Dialog, said population decline was a common topic among the CEOs, elected officials, and other powerful figures who attended the group's off-the-record retreats. In February, the PayPal cofounder Luke Nosek, a close Musk ally, hosted a gathering at his home on Austin's Lake Travis to discuss "The End of Western Civilization," another common catchphrase in the birth-rate discourse.

Meanwhile, the Collinses said a mutual friend had been encouraging them to fly to Austin to meet with Claire Boucher, the musician known professionally as Grimes who is the mother of two of Musk's children. (Grimes, who follows about 1,470 people on Twitter, followed the Collinses while this piece was being reported.) It makes sense considering that Musk, who has fathered 10 known children with three women, is the tech world's highest-profile pronatalist, albeit unofficially. He has been open about his obsession with Genghis Khan, the 13th-century Mongol ruler whose DNA can still be traced to a significant portion of the human population. One person who has worked directly with Musk and who spoke on the condition of anonymity for this article recalled Musk expressing his interest as early as 2005 in "populating the world with his offspring."

Musk has increasingly used his public platform to advocate the cause, tweeting dozens of times in the past two years about the threat of population decline. "If the alarming collapse in birth rate continues, civilization will indeed die with a whimper in adult diapers," he tweeted in January.

These worries tend to focus on one class of people in particular, which pronatalists use various euphemisms to express. In August, Elon's father, Errol Musk, told me that he was worried about low birth rates in what he called "productive nations." The Collinses call it "cosmopolitan society." Elon Musk himself has tweeted about the movie "Idiocracy," in which the intelligent elite stop procreating, allowing the unintelligent to populate the earth.

"Contrary to what many think, the richer someone is, the fewer kids they have. I am a rare exception," he wrote in another tweet this past May. "Most people I know have zero or one kid."

Musk was echoing an argument made by Nick Bostrom, one of the founding fathers of longtermism, who wrote that he worried declining fertility among "intellectually talented individuals" could lead to the demise of "advanced civilized society." Émile P. Torres, a former longtermist philosopher who has become one of the movement's most outspoken critics, put it more bluntly: "The longtermist view itself implies that really, people in rich countries matter more."

A source who worked closely with Musk for several years described this thinking as core to the billionaire's pronatalist ideology. "He's very serious about the idea that your wealth is directly linked to your IQ," he said. The source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for this article, also said Musk urged "all the rich men he knew" to have as many children as possible.

Musk's ties to the EA and longtermist communities have been gradually revealed in recent months. In September, text logs released as part of Musk's legal battle with Twitter showed conversations between Musk and the prominent longtermist William MacAskill, who works at Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, where Musk is a major donor. In the messages, MacAskill offered to introduce Musk to Sam Bankman-Fried, a now-disgraced cryptocurrency entrepreneur who had donated millions of dollars to longtermist organizations.

MacAskill has never explicitly endorsed pronatalism, and he declined to be interviewed for this article. He did, however, devote a chapter of his best-selling book, "What We Owe the Future," to his fear that dwindling birth rates would lead to "technological stagnation," which would increase the likelihood of extinction or civilizational collapse. One solution he offered was cloning or genetically optimizing a small subset of the population to have "Einstein-level research abilities" to "compensate for having fewer people overall."

Malcolm said he was glad to see Musk bring these issues to the forefront. "He's not as afraid of being canceled as everyone else," Malcolm told me. "Any smart person with a certain cultural aesthetics of their life is looking at this world and saying, 'How do we create intergenerationally, durable cultures that will lead to our species being a diverse, thriving, innovative interplanetary empire one day that isn't at risk from, you know, a single asteroid strike or a single huge disease?'"

Sitting around the breakfast table after the 6 a.m. day-care drop-off and "morning strategy walk" the Collinses take every day, Malcolm read aloud a text message from his mother. She wanted to know how he and Simone planned to monetize their pronatalism "hobby." "Remember: Everything is transactional," she texted.

Born into a storied and monied family in Dallas, Malcolm said his ancestors included prominent members of the jayhawkers, antislavery activists who rebelled against the Confederate Army. Following his parents' divorce, Malcolm was shipped off to a "troubled teen" facility, an experience he compares to that depicted in the movie "Holes," in which children are sent to work at labor camps in the desert. Malcolm says his father managed to squander the family fortune throughout his five marriages. "He at one point had bought the most expensive thing at Christies," Malcolm said. "He has nothing now. No money."

Simone, meanwhile, came from polyamorous, tai-chi-practicing, hippie parents in Alameda, California. "I was kind of the black sheep of the family," she said. "Like, they would tell me to go out and drink and experiment, but I would rebel by staying home and doing my homework."

Before she met Malcolm, Simone was convinced she wanted to live her life single and child-free. But when she was 24, she decided to have her heart broken once just to say she'd done it. As she does with all her goals, she created a system: She made a profile on OKCupid, where a picture of her dressed as a Stormtrooper in a sultry pose was catnip for the nerds of Silicon Valley, and rated her dates out of 50. After a string of 16s, Malcolm scored a 42. She made him promise to break up with her after four months. "I resent being in love with him," she said. "I was so disturbed when I fell for him."

A year and a half later, Malcolm proposed to her via a viral campaign that landed on the front page of Reddit. Once they were married, Simone got a master's in technology policy at Cambridge, eager to keep pace with her husband's Stanford MBA.

During a stint at a venture-capital fund in South Korea, where the fertility rate has fallen to about 0.81, Malcolm became obsessed with the idea of what he calls "demographic catastrophe."

He was astounded by people's fatalistic take on it," Simone said. So, following up on a conversation Malcolm had broached on their second date, the couple committed to having seven to 13 children. Because of their relatively late start and Simone's preexisting fertility issues, they knew they would have to freeze their embryos for later use. In 2018, which they now call "The Year of the Harvest," they devoted themselves to producing and freezing as many viable embryos as possible.

After five rounds of IVF, Simone heard Stephen Hsu talking about his company Genomic Prediction on a podcast. Preimplantation testing for chromosomal abnormalities like down syndrome and single-gene disorders like cystic fibrosis has become a relatively common step in the IVF process, but only recently have some practitioners begun to offer tests for more complex genetic traits. While full-blown genetic engineering through CRISPR or similar technology is banned in most countries, the field of preimplantation genetic screening is still unregulated by the US Food and Drug Administration.

The Collinses decided to embark on a sixth round of IVF to use the service. Though Genomic Prediction's "LifeView" test officially offers risk scores only for 11 polygenic disorders — including schizophrenia and five types of cancer — they allowed the Collinses to access the raw genetic data for their own analysis.

Simone and Malcolm then took their data export to a company called SelfDecode, which typically runs tests on adult DNA samples, to analyze what the Collinses called "the fun stuff."

Sitting on the couch, Simone pulled up a spreadsheet filled with red and green numbers. Each row represented one of their embryos from the sixth batch, and the columns a variety of relative risk factors, from obesity to heart disease to headaches. (The "relative" part means these scores can only compare each embryo's risk to that of other individuals with different genetic constitutions, as opposed to "absolute" risk scores.)

The Collinses' top priority was one of the most disputed categories: what they called "mental-performance-adjacent traits," including stress, chronically low mood, brain fog, mood swings, fatigue, anxiety, and ADHD.

The tests they performed also provided a risk score for autism, a diagnosis Simone herself has received, which they decided not to take into account. Simone compared her autism to a "fine-tuned race car": Even if she struggles with certain "real-world" situations, she said, "If I'm on the track and I have my pit crew and I have the perfect fuel—"

"—she can dramatically outcompete other people," Malcolm said, finishing her sentence.

"I'm also really hesitant to select against any type of extreme mental peculiarity in a person," he added. "Unless it has to do just with severe low function."

With a large number of green columns and a score of 1.9, Embryo No. 3 — aka Titan Invictus (an experiment in nominative determinism) — was selected to become the Collinses' third child.

Even with all that planning, the Collinses may not be striking genetic gold. The field of behavioral genetics, which assumes a connection between genes and character traits, is heavily contested — if not outright rejected for its dangerous societal implications. "It's not clear how much genetics contributes to many of the things that they're looking for," Hank Greely, a Stanford Law professor who wrote "The End of Sex and the Future of Human Reproduction," told me.

Arguments that trace mental aptitude back to genetics are particularly controversial. Hsu, the Genomic Prediction cofounder, was forced to resign from his position at Michigan State University after the graduate-student union claimed Hsu believed "in innate biological differences between human populations, especially regarding intelligence." (Hsu responded to these allegations by saying: "If the GEU made the claim in your quote, they misrepresented my beliefs. I am quite explicit in my writing and in interviews that we do not know whether there are genetic group differences in intelligence between different ancestry groups.") Simone said two PGT-P startups planning to test for the "fun stuff" were fundraising in stealth mode because "they anticipate being essentially canceled as soon as they go public."

The Collinses themselves have been called "hipster eugenicists" online, something Simone called "amazing" when I brought it to her attention.

Malcolm's "going to want to make business cards that say 'Simone and Malcolm Collins: Hipster Eugenicists," she said with a laugh.

"It's funny that people are so afraid of being accused of Nazism," when they're just improving their own embryos, Simone added, after noting that her Jewish grandmother escaped Nazi-occupied France. "I'm not eliminating people. I mean, I'm eliminating from my own genetic pool, but these are all only Malcolm and me."

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 18, 2022, 03:54:55 AM
QuoteAlong with his 3-year-old brother, Octavian, and his newborn sister, Titan Invictus, Torsten has unwittingly joined an audacious experiment. According to his parents' calculations, as long as each of their descendants can commit to having at least eight children for just 11 generations, the Collins bloodline will eventually outnumber the current human population.

People have named their kids Optimus Prime for decades. BFD.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on November 18, 2022, 03:55:23 AM
Quote"Any smart person with a certain cultural aesthetics of their life is looking at this world and saying, 'How do we create intergenerationally, durable cultures that will lead to our species being a diverse, thriving, innovative interplanetary empire one day that isn't at risk from, you know, a single asteroid strike or a single huge disease?'"

(https://i.imgflip.com/5mln8o.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 18, 2022, 03:59:46 AM
Why do eugenics nuts always assume smart people have smart kids.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on November 18, 2022, 04:01:21 AM
What kind of genius names their first kid Octavian  :hmm:  ?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 18, 2022, 04:01:56 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on November 18, 2022, 04:01:21 AMWhat kind of genius names their first kid Octavian  :hmm:  ?


The kind of genius who names their daughter Titan Invictus instead of, say, Titania Invicta?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 18, 2022, 04:04:34 AM
Why did Torsten get a normal name?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 18, 2022, 04:09:27 AM
Quote from: The Brain on November 18, 2022, 04:04:34 AMWhy did Torsten get a normal name?

 :D
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 18, 2022, 04:49:58 AM
Quote from: The Brain on November 18, 2022, 04:04:34 AMWhy did Torsten get a normal name?

Yeah, that confused me, too, having known and met plenty Torstens in my life. Though I guess for USians it might be "exotic"? Kinda like "Britta" on Community.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 18, 2022, 05:07:46 AM
One thing is having kids, a very different one is actually raising them.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 18, 2022, 05:16:35 AM
Is Elmo donating sperm on a large scale btw? If he's serious about spreading his genes then natural methods aren't exactly geniusy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Maladict on November 18, 2022, 07:36:06 AM
Quote from: Syt on November 18, 2022, 02:20:50 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 18, 2022, 01:31:14 AMMaybe some sort of "we'll make the all-in-one app" or something like that...

I'm having flashbacks to those old apps that rolled ICQ, IRC, Messenger etc. into one unified client :D

Those were the days. But doing it now would create horrendous privacy concerns.

Although being concerned about privacy is probably something only the olds do nowadays.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Darth Wagtaros on November 18, 2022, 08:23:58 AM
Quote from: The Larch on November 18, 2022, 05:07:46 AMOne thing is having kids, a very different one is actually raising them.
That's what the minimum wage nannies are for.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 18, 2022, 08:45:45 AM
Quote from: HVC on November 18, 2022, 03:59:46 AMWhy do eugenics nuts always assume smart people have smart kids.
Why would you assume that smart people would not have smart kids? Is there some reason to think that intelligence is not heritable?

The science certainly suggests otherwise - IQ is generally highly heritable (although of course influenced by a large number of other factors).

That is not eugenics.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on November 18, 2022, 09:51:17 AM
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 18, 2022, 12:05:30 AMThe other, critical difference is that he has owned the company for barely three weeks.  He strode into a company that had a certain culture, threw out half the staff, and imposed a major culture change on the other half.  The likelihood that a significant portion of the existing staff were on board with his new culture was, and has proved to be, very low.

It's a different case when you have a company that is known to be "hardcore".  The applicants to those companies self-select.  They know what they're getting into.

The people who worked for Twitter a month ago signed up for a much different bargain.  I'm not surprised there's a mass exodus as a result of this.  Also, I feel really bad of the people who are still there only because of their life or visa situation.

Hopefully twitter suffers a catastrophic failure, because while i'm not in tech, it would seem to be a very negative precedent for corporate drones if you can drastically slash staff, totally disregard employee morale, and the business continues to chug along without significant problems.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Darth Wagtaros on November 18, 2022, 09:53:24 AM
Quote from: alfred russel on November 18, 2022, 09:51:17 AM
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 18, 2022, 12:05:30 AMThe other, critical difference is that he has owned the company for barely three weeks.  He strode into a company that had a certain culture, threw out half the staff, and imposed a major culture change on the other half.  The likelihood that a significant portion of the existing staff were on board with his new culture was, and has proved to be, very low.

It's a different case when you have a company that is known to be "hardcore".  The applicants to those companies self-select.  They know what they're getting into.

The people who worked for Twitter a month ago signed up for a much different bargain.  I'm not surprised there's a mass exodus as a result of this.  Also, I feel really bad of the people who are still there only because of their life or visa situation.

Hopefully twitter suffers a catastrophic failure, because while i'm not in tech, it would seem to be a very negative precedent for corporate drones if you can drastically slash staff, totally disregard employee morale, and the business continues to chug along without significant problems.
So the last 20 years (at least)?  A C level can burn a company to the ground and walk away far richer than when they started.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 18, 2022, 10:13:06 AM
My read on how Musk has (mis)managed Twitter staff is he learned bad lessons from Tesla/SpaceX in terms of what might work in a more general sense.

Tesla and SpaceX both employ lots of engineers, who probably came to those companies from staider/established auto and aerospace firms. They very likely went to Tesla and SpaceX specifically to be bleeding edge, work on new tech, do things that they are deeply passionate about. It is a well-known thing that employees who are really passionate about what a company does are willing to put in longer hours and even accept lower pay. That's one reason for example computer programmers for game development companies frequently take jobs in gaming that pay less and work them harder than what they'd face if they worked at some generic enterprise software corp.

From an owner/manager perspective, there are tons of advantages to having people who drink your kool-aid vs people just coming to work for a paycheck. The idea of trying to create that same culture at Twitter certainly makes sense in that context.

What Musk majorly misunderstood though is Twitter isn't anything like a Tesla/SpaceX in its field. Twitter is a software company that runs a big web application, nothing it is doing or has done is particularly novel or exciting for someone already working in a software company. The list of companies that, tech stack wise, do work similar to Twitter is massive. Sure, Twitter is a little unique in that it's running a midsized and high-visibility social media network, but for the engineering people it's a big web app and there's lots of big web apps being ran by lots of big companies. Twitter is a lot closer to being Chrysler in comparison to Ford than it is Tesla in comparison to Ford.

The people who work there also know all of this, so when you cut 50% of the staff and then tell the remaining staff they need to do more work for no additional pay, they are basically just going to look at the broader job market where lots of companies working in web applications have job openings doing the same shit they were doing at Twitter without the bad work environment. Why wouldn't they leave?

Is it possible to build the sort of enthusiast workforce at a company like Twitter? I wouldn't say it is impossible, but it is definitely harder than it would be at Tesla or SpaceX because you aren't working in any technology that is that interesting or novel as compared to any job you could get at Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Alphabet, Facebook, Adobe etc etc. Those are just the tech majors, there are literally hundreds of firms with similar jobs that are less known to industry outsiders.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Solmyr on November 18, 2022, 10:20:19 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 18, 2022, 08:45:45 AM
Quote from: HVC on November 18, 2022, 03:59:46 AMWhy do eugenics nuts always assume smart people have smart kids.
Why would you assume that smart people would not have smart kids? Is there some reason to think that intelligence is not heritable?

The science certainly suggests otherwise - IQ is generally highly heritable (although of course influenced by a large number of other factors).

That is not eugenics.


IQ is not the same as intelligence or being smart, though.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on November 18, 2022, 10:31:35 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 18, 2022, 10:13:06 AMIs it possible to build the sort of enthusiast workforce at a company like Twitter? I wouldn't say it is impossible, but it is definitely harder than it would be at Tesla or SpaceX because you aren't working in any technology that is that interesting or novel as compared to any job you could get at Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Alphabet, Facebook, Adobe etc etc. Those are just the tech majors, there are literally hundreds of firms with similar jobs that are less known to industry outsiders.

As a veteran/survivor of what feels like 1,000 layoffs, and never at a company like Tesla or SpaceX, the motivation for remaining employees has always been rapid advancement and higher pay. I'm sure it will be the same at twitter.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 18, 2022, 11:19:12 AM
I mean after the 50% layoffs they had 75% of the remaining staff refuse to sign on to his demands, so whatever possibilities of rapid advancement there might have been didn't seem to appeal to most of them. Note that in the IT world if you're a senior developer or operations engineer / sysadmin, a lot of times the "manager track" career for people that supervise those positions is not seen as desirable. Lots of software engineers have zero desire to ever promote into management, which is maybe different from fields you've worked in, don't know. Many software companies actually create pretty robust "salary band increase in-place" mechanisms for developers/engineers so they can get more money without being pushed into management or a higher "ranked" position.

It isn't actually unheard of at many such companies for senior developers or engineers to make at or rarely above what their direct manager does--and the gap between manager and engineer/dev pay is often much narrower than is typical in non-tech industries.

For many of the guys who work in the NOC or etc keeping the lights on, Elon is basically offering them more work at the same pay--they would not be that interested in the fact that because lots of people were laid off they have less competition for promotions into the managerial ranks they don't want to join in the first place.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 18, 2022, 11:28:08 AM
Yeah, that's a good point Dorsey.

Last person standing is a pretty reliable way to get promoted. As long as you can keep your head down and play the politics well enough, you can do alright. And usually the most intense "everything is different now" stuff passes after a few months before a new normal settles in.

So yeah, good reason for a number of folks to remain.

Also - to be fair - departing staff often have a heightened sense of the negative impact of their departure. Still, it's a LOT of people reportedly gone I don't get a sense that Elon & co had a good idea of the impact of their initial layoffs, and the new wave of resignations seem even more unpredictable in terms of impact. It will be interesting to see how it plays out, but I don't assume it's a given either.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 18, 2022, 11:32:52 AM
The big concern for Twitter is if there are just so many people gone there's a complete lack of institutional knowledge of how key parts of Twitter work.  And while a new software engineer could over time figure things out, twitter might not have very much time if key parts of infrastructure start going down.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 18, 2022, 11:35:05 AM
If reporting is accurate this isn't a small layoff or restructuring, right? This is a) a company that just downsized by 50% and b) then had 75% of remaining employees refuse to sign a sign-or-leave contract. That means we are at like ~12.5% of the original size of the company.

Twitter isn't going to magically burst into flames and disappear, but if reporting is right that entire teams that handle things like internal tools and other critical infrastructure are now entirely unstaffed...that is going to be a non-viable situation in the short term.

There are reports that Twitter's NOC (their networking ops team basically) is basically zeroed out, which for a major public facing website is a serious infrastructure problem right now. There are already articles coming out every day saying Twitter is no longer complying with various FTC and EU regulatory requirements because the teams responsible for that compliance no longer exist.

I'm not saying there is no way that Twitter can exist as a smaller footprint company, but in the form Twitter existed a month ago it had a lot of operational and legal things it had to do all the time, and now can no longer do those things. This isn't a regular RIF or downsizing, this is largely the complete destruction of the company's staff. With enough money you can weather any storm, but this isn't like a bit of a layoff to reduce overhead, this is basically a new company now, that will have to basically build itself from the ground up--also in an industry it was already not competitive in and was losing money at, and in an environment where most of their customers (advertisers) have already left them behind.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 18, 2022, 11:36:38 AM
Basically Elon has now functionally paid $44bn for the Twitter branding and its user base (note this branding/userbase were generating $5bn/yr in revenue and negative profits), but gets to basically start up a new software company almost from scratch to try to turn a profit on it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 18, 2022, 11:37:03 AM
The impression from the outside is that Twitter is a sinking ship, basically because the new captain started opening holes in the hull for shits and giggles. There's little upside to remaining on the ship. Sure, you can get promoted, but sooner or later it all seems to be going down.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 18, 2022, 11:42:48 AM
I don't know that Twitter will really disappear, to me it's more looking at the business situation: because you've gutted almost all the expertise and workforce of the company, you have literally valued the blue bird brand and its low-monetization userbase at $44bn, which is 44x the best year of profit the company ever had. Even if Musk manages to limp the company through to a rebuild...I see almost no prospects that this will prove to be an investment of $44bn that makes that much sense versus...probably a fucking index fund, or just leaving that money in Tesla.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 18, 2022, 11:51:22 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 18, 2022, 11:42:48 AMI don't know that Twitter will really disappear, to me it's more looking at the business situation: because you've gutted almost all the expertise and workforce of the company, you have literally valued the blue bird brand and its low-monetization userbase at $44bn, which is 44x the best year of profit the company ever had. Even if Musk manages to limp the company through to a rebuild...I see almost no prospects that this will prove to be an investment of $44bn that makes that much sense versus...probably a fucking index fund, or just leaving that money in Tesla.

The workforce and the blue bird band have very little intrinsic value.  What was valuable was its user base.

While Twitter has a much smaller user base than Facebook, YouTube, Instagram - heck even TikTok has more users - but it's users included a crazy number of media and government officials that gave it an influence far beyond it's size.

If those users really do start leaving Twitter en masse then the whole enterprise is truly fucked.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 18, 2022, 11:58:48 AM
The way things are going, I wonder if the best solution is to simply switch off Twitter for a couple of months or so, reorganize everything with the resources available at the moment, do some sort of rebranding and starting the Twitter 2.0 phase once that's done. Otherwise it seems that stuff will simply start falling on the wayside as it keeps crumbling, and there seems to be a real risk of regulator fines looming if they keep operating with such a small workforce that privacy topics start getting overlooked.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 18, 2022, 12:07:17 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 18, 2022, 10:13:06 AMMy read on how Musk has (mis)managed Twitter staff is he learned bad lessons from Tesla/SpaceX in terms of what might work in a more general sense.

Tesla and SpaceX both employ lots of engineers, who probably came to those companies from staider/established auto and aerospace firms. They very likely went to Tesla and SpaceX specifically to be bleeding edge, work on new tech, do things that they are deeply passionate about. It is a well-known thing that employees who are really passionate about what a company does are willing to put in longer hours and even accept lower pay. That's one reason for example computer programmers for game development companies frequently take jobs in gaming that pay less and work them harder than what they'd face if they worked at some generic enterprise software corp.

From an owner/manager perspective, there are tons of advantages to having people who drink your kool-aid vs people just coming to work for a paycheck. The idea of trying to create that same culture at Twitter certainly makes sense in that context.

What Musk majorly misunderstood though is Twitter isn't anything like a Tesla/SpaceX in its field. Twitter is a software company that runs a big web application, nothing it is doing or has done is particularly novel or exciting for someone already working in a software company. The list of companies that, tech stack wise, do work similar to Twitter is massive. Sure, Twitter is a little unique in that it's running a midsized and high-visibility social media network, but for the engineering people it's a big web app and there's lots of big web apps being ran by lots of big companies. Twitter is a lot closer to being Chrysler in comparison to Ford than it is Tesla in comparison to Ford.

The people who work there also know all of this, so when you cut 50% of the staff and then tell the remaining staff they need to do more work for no additional pay, they are basically just going to look at the broader job market where lots of companies working in web applications have job openings doing the same shit they were doing at Twitter without the bad work environment. Why wouldn't they leave?

Is it possible to build the sort of enthusiast workforce at a company like Twitter? I wouldn't say it is impossible, but it is definitely harder than it would be at Tesla or SpaceX because you aren't working in any technology that is that interesting or novel as compared to any job you could get at Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Alphabet, Facebook, Adobe etc etc. Those are just the tech majors, there are literally hundreds of firms with similar jobs that are less known to industry outsiders.
Maybe. What I'd say is I've known people who've worked for various bits of Meta and they all left eventually very disspirited and disheartened, but at the time I think they were enthusiasts.

Even in meetings and projects when what they are looking at is how to improve ad sales on Instagram the way it is framed and discussed internally is around "building communities". And lots of people really buy into that describing what they're doing. I think consciously stepping out of that is a necessary step on leaving those companies.

Which is where I think Musk's takeover is probably so damaging internally is I suspect the guys who are most enthusiastic for the "building communities" style view of what they do will be the ones who are most demoralised and looking for a way out. What he'll be left with, as you say, are the time servers and the guys who just want want to get paid.

I also think what he's saying is advertising for the wrong company - and there's something similar with Zuckerberg. This "it's going to be hardcore" etc line is something I think you can get away with if you're a young company, maybe if there's good stock options and there's something sort of evangelical about the project. If you're a big listed or private company with investors, under the scrutiny of regulators around the world and a large existing product and customer base, it is not going to be hardcore. You can cut loads of staff, fire functions that are seen as slowing things down (security, privacy, compliance) but ultimately you're still just paying people, not offering them stock options, and you're still a big company, with a big user base and investors and regulators paying attention.

It's like trying to live like you're 19 when you're 45 and have a mortgage and two kids. You can do it, but that won't make it the same.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 18, 2022, 12:10:33 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 18, 2022, 11:58:48 AMThe way things are going, I wonder if the best solution is to simply switch off Twitter for a couple of months or so, reorganize everything with the resources available at the moment, do some sort of rebranding and starting the Twitter 2.0 phase once that's done. Otherwise it seems that stuff will simply start falling on the wayside as it keeps crumbling, and there seems to be a real risk of regulator fines looming if they keep operating with such a small workforce that privacy topics start getting overlooked.

They could maybe get away with shutting down for a weekend, but any lengthy shut-down will just cause the user base to migrate to other platforms fairly rapidly.  I see lots of people on Twitter describing how to move to Mastodon, or about a beta for a social media company called Post, or just moving to instagram or whatever.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 18, 2022, 12:21:19 PM
Saw someone quoting a European Twitter employee to the effect of "Elon's email is about as legally binding as me sending him an email saying 'from now on I'll work 3 hours/ day k thx bye'. I'll just keep working as usual until I hear something formal from HR."

Does anyone know how much of Twitter's staff is in Europe? Presumably they can't managed the same way Elon's handling his California staff.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 18, 2022, 12:21:40 PM
https://twitter.com/ZoeSchiffer/status/1593649356661436417?s=20&t=ozmwM7-ZoUeGU-l1rVx3oQ

This tweet thread I think is kind of interesting because to me it shows Elon views Twitter's problems as...technical in nature. He wants to get "good developers" into his war room to solve the problem.

The issue is while I'm sure Twitter has IT processes and software optimizations that could be made, Twitter wasn't losing money because of "bad code". And it is unlikely to magically start making money by replacing any "bad code" with "good code." It was losing money because the valuation of Twitter's 400m users is X to advertisers, and X is not enough to make that much money. It would take something far different from code optimizations to change that basic calculus.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 18, 2022, 12:24:59 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 18, 2022, 12:07:17 PMThis "it's going to be hardcore" etc line is something I think you can get away with if you're a young company, maybe if there's good stock options and there's something sort of evangelical about the project.

Yeah, it's "ambitious start-up" rhetoric, not something for an established company.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 18, 2022, 12:26:32 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 18, 2022, 12:21:19 PMSaw someone quoting a European Twitter employee to the effect of "Elon's email is about as legally binding as me sending him an email saying 'from now on I'll work 3 hours/ day k thx bye'. I'll just keep working as usual until I hear something formal from HR."

Does anyone know how much of Twitter's staff is in Europe? Presumably they can't managed the same way Elon's handling his California staff.

There must be something about it, when this all started and the first round of firings was announced it was reported here that those firings were invalid under Spanish labour laws, so staff based in Spain couldn't be fired that way unless the proper legal procecdure was followed.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on November 18, 2022, 12:26:46 PM
Quote from: Solmyr on November 18, 2022, 10:20:19 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 18, 2022, 08:45:45 AM
Quote from: HVC on November 18, 2022, 03:59:46 AMWhy do eugenics nuts always assume smart people have smart kids.
Why would you assume that smart people would not have smart kids? Is there some reason to think that intelligence is not heritable?

The science certainly suggests otherwise - IQ is generally highly heritable (although of course influenced by a large number of other factors).

That is not eugenics.


IQ is not the same as intelligence or being smart, though.

Few things in real world are the same as other things.  However, many things are correlated, and in the real world correlation is often good enough.  If children IQ is correlated with parents' IQ, and IQ is correlated with intelligence, then barring some very strange covariance behavior, parents' intelligence is correlated with the intelligence of their children.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 18, 2022, 12:30:30 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 18, 2022, 12:10:33 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 18, 2022, 11:58:48 AMThe way things are going, I wonder if the best solution is to simply switch off Twitter for a couple of months or so, reorganize everything with the resources available at the moment, do some sort of rebranding and starting the Twitter 2.0 phase once that's done. Otherwise it seems that stuff will simply start falling on the wayside as it keeps crumbling, and there seems to be a real risk of regulator fines looming if they keep operating with such a small workforce that privacy topics start getting overlooked.

They could maybe get away with shutting down for a weekend, but any lengthy shut-down will just cause the user base to migrate to other platforms fairly rapidly.  I see lots of people on Twitter describing how to move to Mastodon, or about a beta for a social media company called Post, or just moving to instagram or whatever.

I'm just spitballing, but I don't thinkn it would be a bad thing if Twitter was taken offline for a while to reorganize behind closed doors rather than making all the drama public. Sure, the longer that offline period is, the riskier that alternatives will pop up, but I think that Twitter has enough inertia to whitstand a short period offline in order to do a comeback. Sure, it can't be a super long period, but just a weekend won't solve anything.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 18, 2022, 12:32:48 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 18, 2022, 12:21:19 PMSaw someone quoting a European Twitter employee to the effect of "Elon's email is about as legally binding as me sending him an email saying 'from now on I'll work 3 hours/ day k thx bye'. I'll just keep working as usual until I hear something formal from HR."

Does anyone know how much of Twitter's staff is in Europe? Presumably they can't managed the same way Elon's handling his California staff.
Oh absolutely - there is no way anything Musk is tweeting flies with European labour law. I'm not sure on numbers but they've got offices across Europe - couple in the UK, couple in Germany, France, Spain, Belgium and (like the rest of the tech companies) a big hub in Dublin.

In my world on a purely regulatory/data protection side it'll be interesting. European law on that applies to companies who are not based in Europe if they're targeting or monitoring Europeans. But it's regulated at a member state (and, in Germany, federal) level. If you're a non-European company in scope then the general rule is that you are fair game for all European regulators. But if you have a "main establishment" in a European country then its regulator, for most stuff, will have exclusive jurisdiction - that means an establishment that is capable of making decisions basically.

So most of the big tech companies have a "main establishment" in Ireland because they have a fairly relaxed regulator, but also they have 200 staff and they are, on behalf of the entire EU, tasked with regulating Meta, Google, Twitter etc. The result has been that Europe has fairly robust laws and absolutely pathetic enforcement/policing. The French have got so frustrated they're just coming up with pretexts on why issues aren't in Ireland's jurisdiction so they can fine Facebook :lol:

But the thing I wonder is whether Musk's firing of loads of people - including in Dublin - has accidentally blown up his "main establishment" in Europe and it's now a free for all for European data regulators including the really strict ones everyone tries to avoid like Berlin :hmm:

QuoteThey could maybe get away with shutting down for a weekend, but any lengthy shut-down will just cause the user base to migrate to other platforms fairly rapidly.  I see lots of people on Twitter describing how to move to Mastodon, or about a beta for a social media company called Post, or just moving to instagram or whatever.
On this worth flagging that I saw a couple of disabled BBC journalists who have physical issues with video or picture based platforms noting that they were a bit saddened at what's going on with Twitter because it is a further decline of a more text based social media in favour of Instagram or TikTok etc which just won't work for them.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 18, 2022, 12:33:02 PM
We get it DGuller - you scored well on your IQ tests back in the day :hug:

More seriously, though, there are of course strong correlations between parents and kids. I think the more interesting question is to what degree that correlation is down to genetics vs various social conditions - including nurturing of the parents, the effects of wealth, the effects of social class and peers etc).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on November 18, 2022, 12:34:10 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 18, 2022, 12:33:02 PMWe get it DGuller - you scored well on your IQ tests back in the day :hug:
I've never taken an IQ test.  I just really despise selective innumeracy that is politically motivated.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on November 18, 2022, 12:36:43 PM
I look at this as a threat because as a member of the professional managerial class, what I see is someone from the entrepreneurial class challenging the need for professional managers. For all the talk of turmoil, twitter is still on. My understanding traffic is at an all time high.

I literally wrote the last post while in a meeting with three other people about if we can finally implement the rationalized reporting structure to simplify the process of producing the results management sees by line of business. We came up with the structure two years ago but there has always been a reason not to do it. Does the structure even make sense anymore? Who knows, the people that came up with it are gone. Currently we decided not to implement it now because we ironically have layoffs impacting the accounting team that would be doing the implementation and it wouldn't be well received. However, what if instead of 4 people making that decision (which we all probably knew would be the outcome going in, which is why i was disengaged and posting on languish during the meeting) we fired 3 of us and let one person make it unilaterally without a meeting? Maybe the reports management gets wouldn't be as clean, but I don't think the sky would fall.

Or even more radically, what if we fired all of us, plus 90% of the accounting teams, and just did the minimum necessary to close the books for SEC reporting and didn't produce any specialized reporting at all for senior management?

If the CEO or CFO floated that idea to me I'd give a zillion reasons not to do it, many of which would be convincing and some of which might be true. But I'd definitely be concerned and threatened if a company tried it. That is from an accounting perspective, but it is easily transferrable to almost any other department or group.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 18, 2022, 12:39:29 PM
Quote from: DGuller on November 18, 2022, 12:34:10 PMI've never taken an IQ test.  I just really despise selective innumeracy that is politically motivated.

Fair enough.

Conversely, there's an argument about reducing complex social factors to simply numbers - especially if those numbers are then used for decision-making based on numeric models that leave out critical nuance.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 18, 2022, 12:40:53 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 18, 2022, 12:33:02 PMWe get it DGuller - you scored well on your IQ tests back in the day :hug:

More seriously, though, there are of course strong correlations between parents and kids. I think the more interesting question is to what degree that correlation is down to genetics vs various social conditions - including nurturing of the parents, the effects of wealth, the effects of social class and peers etc).

I was just googling, and apparently there is a strong connection between genetics and IQ heritability.  It is obviously not 100% as the various social conditions do play a factor as well, but it's not a non-factor either.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 18, 2022, 12:42:49 PM
On the topic of billionaires wanting to spread their genes to "win" at evolution: I remember some years ago reading an article about a Japanese billionaire who wanted to have a hundred kids. He was, apparently, pursuing it primarily via offering Thai women something like ~$1 million to have his kid. IIRC he was well on his way.

On the flipside of that, there was a story on Humans of New York about a dude who'd gotten the inside track as sperm donor to lesbian couples. He wasn't racking up numbers like this Japanese billionaire, but he was competitive with Musk - clocking in around 20 or so IIRC (and he hasn't stopped yet either).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PJL on November 18, 2022, 12:48:16 PM
The idea that most of humanity may end up being a descendant of Musk is rather scary.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 18, 2022, 12:50:48 PM
Quote from: PJL on November 18, 2022, 12:48:16 PMThe idea that most of humanity may end up being a descendant of Musk is rather scary.

I don't think the current trend suggests that's going to happen - he has 8. While 8 is a high number, there's a non-trivial number of folks who father 8 kids in this world.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 18, 2022, 01:12:37 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 18, 2022, 12:33:02 PMWe get it DGuller - you scored well on your IQ tests back in the day :hug:

More seriously, though, there are of course strong correlations between parents and kids. I think the more interesting question is to what degree that correlation is down to genetics vs various social conditions - including nurturing of the parents, the effects of wealth, the effects of social class and peers etc).
That is an interesting question - and one that has been asked, and answered, in fact. The answer is science, so subject to change as more evidence is gathered.

But like I said, the current science says that IQ is very heritable. What exactly "very" heritable means is subject to study, but there is little doubt at this point that IQ is in fact very significantyl influenced by genetics. 

Not in a simple manner however - IIRC, there are something like 500-1000 different genes that contribute.

And of course, we know that it is also heavily influenced by environment as well.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on November 18, 2022, 01:16:40 PM
Quote from: PJL on November 18, 2022, 12:48:16 PMThe idea that most of humanity may end up being a descendant of Musk is rather scary.

He is the genghis khan of our times.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 18, 2022, 01:18:05 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 18, 2022, 03:11:22 AMAFAIK there has never been a junk market crash.  That suggests to me junk lenders know to price.

there have been a number of market-wide meltdowns in junk

But that's not what I was getting at.  The mispricing is with specific issues in the context of individual LBO deals. There are many reasons why that can happen.  One example is this very deal - how many of the institutions supplying credit to the Twitter buyout are doing so because of interests in other Musk connected companies and deals, as opposed to a strict evaluation of the credit merits of the Twitter debt?  Another issue is principal-agent problems with the way that banks evaluate extensions of commercial credit.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 18, 2022, 02:03:28 PM
Twitter offices last month vs. now?

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fh3jxapWYAQVqXT?format=jpg&name=small)
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fh3kHuwXoAUdNjQ?format=jpg&name=small)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 18, 2022, 02:09:24 PM
Quote from: Syt on November 18, 2022, 02:03:28 PMTwitter offices last month vs. now?
[...]

Twitter in general - seems true today :lol:
QuoteZack Bornstein
@ZackBornstein
pre-elon twitter: pls free me from this hellsite

post-elon twitter: Everyday with you all has been a gift. I owe my career, my friendships, and my marriage to this community. I've fostered compassion and activism each and everyday with you all, fighting the good fight (1/40)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 18, 2022, 02:15:34 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 18, 2022, 12:21:40 PMhttps://twitter.com/ZoeSchiffer/status/1593649356661436417?s=20&t=ozmwM7-ZoUeGU-l1rVx3oQ

This tweet thread I think is kind of interesting because to me it shows Elon views Twitter's problems as...technical in nature. He wants to get "good developers" into his war room to solve the problem.

The issue is while I'm sure Twitter has IT processes and software optimizations that could be made, Twitter wasn't losing money because of "bad code". And it is unlikely to magically start making money by replacing any "bad code" with "good code." It was losing money because the valuation of Twitter's 400m users is X to advertisers, and X is not enough to make that much money. It would take something far different from code optimizations to change that basic calculus.

It wasn't.  While our foray into using cloud platforms for some work turned out to be much more expensive than originally estimated, our infrastructure is actually pretty cheap (https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1592774269733601281?s=20&t=A4MKh7m2a_lTB0SFf7eRIg) for the level of traffic we handle.  I have ideas for what the sources of the costs were, but they mainly concern product decisions.  We spent a lot of money, and hired a lot of people, to work on product changes that didn't pan out.  So far he's doing even worse on the product change front than previous management, albeit in a different way.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 18, 2022, 02:27:23 PM
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 18, 2022, 02:15:34 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 18, 2022, 12:21:40 PMhttps://twitter.com/ZoeSchiffer/status/1593649356661436417?s=20&t=ozmwM7-ZoUeGU-l1rVx3oQ

This tweet thread I think is kind of interesting because to me it shows Elon views Twitter's problems as...technical in nature. He wants to get "good developers" into his war room to solve the problem.

The issue is while I'm sure Twitter has IT processes and software optimizations that could be made, Twitter wasn't losing money because of "bad code". And it is unlikely to magically start making money by replacing any "bad code" with "good code." It was losing money because the valuation of Twitter's 400m users is X to advertisers, and X is not enough to make that much money. It would take something far different from code optimizations to change that basic calculus.

It wasn't.  While our foray into using cloud platforms for some work turned out to be much more expensive than originally estimated, our infrastructure is actually pretty cheap (https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1592774269733601281?s=20&t=A4MKh7m2a_lTB0SFf7eRIg) for the level of traffic we handle.  I have ideas for what the sources of the costs were, but they mainly concern product decisions.  We spent a lot of money, and hired a lot of people, to work on product changes that didn't pan out.  So far he's doing even worse on the product change front than previous management, albeit in a different way.

BvS - are you still at Twitter, or did you just used to work there?

Please go to the Back Room and share any insights you have on what's going on inside the company right now. :)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 18, 2022, 02:33:43 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on November 18, 2022, 12:36:43 PMI look at this as a threat because as a member of the professional managerial class, what I see is someone from the entrepreneurial class challenging the need for professional managers. For all the talk of turmoil, twitter is still on. My understanding traffic is at an all time high.

I literally wrote the last post while in a meeting with three other people about if we can finally implement the rationalized reporting structure to simplify the process of producing the results management sees by line of business. We came up with the structure two years ago but there has always been a reason not to do it. Does the structure even make sense anymore? Who knows, the people that came up with it are gone. Currently we decided not to implement it now because we ironically have layoffs impacting the accounting team that would be doing the implementation and it wouldn't be well received. However, what if instead of 4 people making that decision (which we all probably knew would be the outcome going in, which is why i was disengaged and posting on languish during the meeting) we fired 3 of us and let one person make it unilaterally without a meeting? Maybe the reports management gets wouldn't be as clean, but I don't think the sky would fall.

We have at times shut down the entire U.S. government for weeks at a time, the country didn't collapse. That doesn't mean it would work out so good if we just it down for 4 months.

Or even more radically, what if we fired all of us, plus 90% of the accounting teams, and just did the minimum necessary to close the books for SEC reporting and didn't produce any specialized reporting at all for senior management?

If the CEO or CFO floated that idea to me I'd give a zillion reasons not to do it, many of which would be convincing and some of which might be true. But I'd definitely be concerned and threatened if a company tried it. That is from an accounting perspective, but it is easily transferrable to almost any other department or group.

I'm not really sure what your brain is producing here. Are you suggesting that because Twitter isn't serving error 404 a few days after a bunch of people quit that...90% of people at most companies could just disappear with no impact?

That seems like an incredibly ill-supported line of thought.

Twitter isn't a sailing ship navigating the Cyclades that is prone to running aground and sinking if its crew is even a little bit lax.

You do realize a huge % of major companies come very close to complete shutdowns for major holidays, right? Even a week of most people being gone isn't going to be that big of a deal at a huge number of firms. That isn't any real evidence that some 90% of the firm's employees serve no corporate value.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 18, 2022, 02:39:33 PM
Yeah, I'm very curious about your perspective BvS... though obviously only share whatever you're comfortable sharing.

... but are you really supposed to go see Elon with a list of your check-ins and screenshots of your "most salient code"?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 18, 2022, 02:40:37 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 18, 2022, 02:27:23 PM
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 18, 2022, 02:15:34 PMBvS - are you still at Twitter, or did you just used to work there?

Please go to the Back Room and share any insights you have on what's going on inside the company right now. :)

It's complicated, but I've had a ringside seat to this shitshow from the beginning.  I will definitely post something today or tomorrow on this.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 18, 2022, 02:50:27 PM
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1593447646470889473

Some jokester posts that he was fired from Twitter managing badge access, but then Elon Musk had to call him to let everyone into the building.

He later clarified he was joking.

So Musk tweets a response "Thanks for helping out. You're a lifesaver!"

FFS Musk... stop being such an internet troll.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Legbiter on November 18, 2022, 03:05:51 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 18, 2022, 02:09:24 PM
Quote from: Syt on November 18, 2022, 02:03:28 PMTwitter offices last month vs. now?
[...]

Twitter in general - seems true today :lol:
QuoteZack Bornstein
@ZackBornstein
pre-elon twitter: pls free me from this hellsite

post-elon twitter: Everyday with you all has been a gift. I owe my career, my friendships, and my marriage to this community. I've fostered compassion and activism each and everyday with you all, fighting the good fight (1/40)


Interesting experiment Musk is doing. Can you run a social media company with just one crazy CEO, a dozen code monkeys in a human veal pen somewhere and nothing but a skeleton crew in the front office?  :hmm:

We'll know pretty soon I think.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Darth Wagtaros on November 18, 2022, 03:16:11 PM
So now it seems that this is all part of the Plan. Musk is purposely doing this to get rid of all the lazy snowflakes and piss off the libtard Californians. Then once he has purged the company of the impure element he'll move the headquarters to Texas or Florida where the governors like him and are pro-business and pro-America.

While it is true he could do all of that without the drama and such, the fact that he is doing it this way is proof that he is a badass.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 18, 2022, 03:19:19 PM
Posted this in the wrong thread...

Twitter HQ last night, apparently: https://twitter.com/JoshuaPHilll/status/1593432939127361542
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 18, 2022, 03:20:14 PM
Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on November 18, 2022, 03:16:11 PMSo now it seems that this is all part of the Plan. Musk is purposely doing this to get rid of all the lazy snowflakes and piss off the libtard Californians. Then once he has purged the company of the impure element he'll move the headquarters to Texas or Florida where the governors like him and are pro-business and pro-America.

While it is true he could do all of that without the drama and such, the fact that he is doing it this way is proof that he is a badass.

He definitely loves his drama.

We'll see how it goes, and how much the drama pays out for him.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 18, 2022, 03:21:22 PM
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 18, 2022, 02:40:37 PMIt's complicated, but I've had a ringside seat to this shitshow from the beginning.  I will definitely post something today or tomorrow on this.

Appreciate it if you can. :hug:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PJL on November 18, 2022, 03:48:23 PM
Always nice to see a view from
Quote from: Barrister on November 18, 2022, 03:21:22 PM
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 18, 2022, 02:40:37 PMIt's complicated, but I've had a ringside seat to this shitshow from the beginning.  I will definitely post something today or tomorrow on this.

Appreciate it if you can. :hug:

Me too - always nice to see the view from the coalface. Though with Twitter, I guess you saw the canary dying as soon as the deal was done.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on November 18, 2022, 03:56:06 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 18, 2022, 02:33:43 PMI'm not really sure what your brain is producing here. Are you suggesting that because Twitter isn't serving error 404 a few days after a bunch of people quit that...90% of people at most companies could just disappear with no impact?

That seems like an incredibly ill-supported line of thought.

Of course I'm not suggesting that. But if it gets through the foreseeable future without such a problem, it is indicating such at least for twitter, and it doesn't take much to see that if that is the case for twitter it probably isn't the only company to have been so overstaffed.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 18, 2022, 04:20:53 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 18, 2022, 03:19:19 PMPosted this in the wrong thread...

Twitter HQ last night, apparently: https://twitter.com/JoshuaPHilll/status/1593432939127361542

Deleted. What was it?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 18, 2022, 04:47:01 PM
Quote from: Josquius on November 18, 2022, 04:20:53 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 18, 2022, 03:19:19 PMPosted this in the wrong thread...

Twitter HQ last night, apparently: https://twitter.com/JoshuaPHilll/status/1593432939127361542

Deleted. What was it?

Works for me... try this one: https://twitter.com/christoq/status/1593429063317626880

It's the scrolling lightboard on Twitter HQ calling Elmo all kinds of names.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 18, 2022, 05:00:04 PM
Oddly it seems to be blocked in the UK and works with a Canadian vpn server.

That's cool.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 18, 2022, 05:27:16 PM
Quote from: Josquius on November 18, 2022, 05:00:04 PMOddly it seems to be blocked in the UK and works with a Canadian vpn server.

That's cool.

Something is strange with it as I can click on it and it works but then if I click again it won't show the tweet.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 18, 2022, 05:29:35 PM
Yeah that's really weird - I can see it in a quote tweet by the same guy:
https://twitter.com/christoq/status/1593706542960111616?s=20&t=W5pC-bgFz0gEiDoVW-hYag

Very odd :huh:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 18, 2022, 06:20:37 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 18, 2022, 12:33:02 PMMore seriously, though, there are of course strong correlations between parents and kids. I think the more interesting question is to what degree that correlation is down to genetics vs various social conditions - including nurturing of the parents, the effects of wealth, the effects of social class and peers etc).

Studies on identical twins raised separately still show a strong correlation of IQ with their birth parents.  However, theer are caveats:  first, the number of genes associated with intelligence is very large, and no individual gene appears to be dominant in research to date, and secondly that intellectual achievement (as opposed to just IQ results) is highly correlated with socio-economic status and parental involvement in the child's intellectually-stimulating activities.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on November 18, 2022, 08:48:48 PM
I've never found a high IQ to be very useful.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on November 18, 2022, 09:53:10 PM
Musk emails remaining Twitter staff to find "anyone who actually writes software" (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/11/musk-emails-remaining-twitter-staff-to-find-anyone-who-actually-writes-software/)

QuoteAfter laying off half of Twitter's employees and issuing a stay-or-leave ultimatum to the rest, Elon Musk sent an email to the remaining staff today seeking responses from "anyone who actually writes software."

"Anyone who actually writes software, please report to the 10th floor at 2 pm today. Before doing so, please email a bullet point summary of what your code commands have achieved in the past ~6 months, along with up to 10 screenshots of the most salient lines of code," Musk wrote in the first of three emails reportedly sent around midnight PT Friday.

Musk's emails were published in full by Business Insider and also reported by Fortune, CNBC, and Reuters. His emails requested in-person meetings with coders despite Twitter informing staff that it was closing all office buildings and disabling employee badge access until Monday.

"If you're working remotely, please email the request below nonetheless and I will try to speak [to] you via video. Only those who cannot physically get to Twitter HQ or have a family emergency are excused," Musk wrote in a second email. "These will be short, technical interviews that allow me to better understand the Twitter tech stack."

[...]


He might have started with that...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 19, 2022, 01:19:21 AM
What about this bit...

QuoteMusk prefers that Twitter coders fly to San Francisco for the short interviews. "If possible, I would appreciate it if you could fly to SF to be present in person. I will be at Twitter HQ until midnight and then back again tomorrow morning," he wrote in another email.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on November 19, 2022, 02:28:14 AM
So that's by now about 70-80% staff reduction within three weeks. The utter chaos for the remaining employees must be really bad.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 19, 2022, 03:18:49 AM
Musk put up a poll on whether Trump should be reinstated.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on November 19, 2022, 03:49:38 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 06, 2022, 11:20:44 AMThe reality is it is an idea that the sum activities of many millions is more deterministic than the decisions of one man.

Hari Seldon has entered the chat.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on November 19, 2022, 04:15:26 AM
Quote from: viper37 on November 18, 2022, 09:53:10 PMMusk emails remaining Twitter staff to find "anyone who actually writes software" (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/11/musk-emails-remaining-twitter-staff-to-find-anyone-who-actually-writes-software/)

QuoteAfter laying off half of Twitter's employees and issuing a stay-or-leave ultimatum to the rest, Elon Musk sent an email to the remaining staff today seeking responses from "anyone who actually writes software."

"Anyone who actually writes software, please report to the 10th floor at 2 pm today. Before doing so, please email a bullet point summary of what your code commands have achieved in the past ~6 months, along with up to 10 screenshots of the most salient lines of code," Musk wrote in the first of three emails reportedly sent around midnight PT Friday.

Musk's emails were published in full by Business Insider and also reported by Fortune, CNBC, and Reuters. His emails requested in-person meetings with coders despite Twitter informing staff that it was closing all office buildings and disabling employee badge access until Monday.

"If you're working remotely, please email the request below nonetheless and I will try to speak [to] you via video. Only those who cannot physically get to Twitter HQ or have a family emergency are excused," Musk wrote in a second email. "These will be short, technical interviews that allow me to better understand the Twitter tech stack."

[...]


He might have started with that...

So after blindly firing like half the people working there, he is letting who remains interview for keeping their job, assuming they can make it to San Francisco in time?

Surely if you can actually code, working at Twitter does not worth this amount of stress and humiliation?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 19, 2022, 05:05:19 AM
Very revently there's been lots of layoffs at other tech companies too.
I'm glad I was made redundant and found a new job a week or so before it all started happening.
As yeah, having twitter on your cv and having a perfectly valid well publicised reason for looking for something new at the moment should make things very easy for them.
It's those without the big names on their cv trying to find a job at the same time I worry for.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 19, 2022, 08:09:39 AM
Quote from: Tamas on November 19, 2022, 04:15:26 AMSurely if you can actually code, working at Twitter does not worth this amount of stress and humiliation?
This is his genius at work.

Once he is done, he will fire everyone who remains - they are the true low performers, as evidenced by the fact that they didn't leave.

Then he will hire everyone who walked back.

Profit.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on November 19, 2022, 09:56:57 AM
I wonder how many of those that are left are on H1B visa?  If you lose your job, you have 60 days to find another one or you're gone.  In that situation, you'll probably crawl on your knees to SF to talk to Musk if you have to, until you get another job lined up.  It doesn't seem wise to quit without having another job lined up while a whole bunch of people in your exact situation are already on the job market after layoffs.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 19, 2022, 11:56:42 AM
Quote from: grumbler on November 18, 2022, 06:20:37 PMStudies on identical twins raised separately still show a strong correlation of IQ with their birth parents.  However, theer are caveats:  first, the number of genes associated with intelligence is very large, and no individual gene appears to be dominant in research to date, and secondly that intellectual achievement (as opposed to just IQ results) is highly correlated with socio-economic status and parental involvement in the child's intellectually-stimulating activities.

Interesting.

I wonder what the correlations are like between other traits - creative talent, emotional intelligence, social aptitude, self discipline etc.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 19, 2022, 05:06:01 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 19, 2022, 11:56:42 AMInteresting.

I wonder what the correlations are like between other traits - creative talent, emotional intelligence, social aptitude, self discipline etc.
It would be interesting to know that, but researchers would have to create valid means of testing those traits to find out.

Psychiatry uses a concept call "the Big Five components of personality" which are

According to this report (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5068715/) contained in the National Library of Medicine, only openness to experience and neuroticism have significant genetic components (found by comparing twin studies with non-twin studies).

I'd have guessed neuroticism and extraversion.  Openness to experience would have been my guess for the most driven by environment, not the least.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 19, 2022, 08:36:33 PM
Quote from: garbon on November 19, 2022, 03:18:49 AMMusk put up a poll on whether Trump should be reinstated.

And "Yes" seems to have won, so Elon has just announced that they're lifting his ban.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 20, 2022, 02:36:21 AM
(https://preview.redd.it/bfhm6gwi201a1.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=7e319c07f67c157536dd56810b213d0cea3f46c6)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Iormlund on November 20, 2022, 04:53:11 AM
Quote from: DGuller on November 19, 2022, 09:56:57 AMI wonder how many of those that are left are on H1B visa?

I'd assume most coders are.


Quote from: Zanza on November 19, 2022, 02:28:14 AMSo that's by now about 70-80% staff reduction within three weeks. The utter chaos for the remaining employees must be really bad.

70-80% overall staff. A large part of those 20-30% are probably doing clerical functions and thus lack the knowhow to cover for those that left.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: frunk on November 20, 2022, 07:55:46 AM
Quote from: Syt on November 20, 2022, 02:36:21 AM(https://preview.redd.it/bfhm6gwi201a1.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=7e319c07f67c157536dd56810b213d0cea3f46c6)

Not to mention he bought the damn thing.  If he was being diligent he should of gotten this briefing before the purchase.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on November 20, 2022, 08:54:59 AM
That does not seem to be the appropriate level of detail for the CEO.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 20, 2022, 09:32:20 AM
Quote from: frunk on November 20, 2022, 07:55:46 AM
Quote from: Syt on November 20, 2022, 02:36:21 AM(https://preview.redd.it/bfhm6gwi201a1pg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=7e37f67c157536dd56810b213d0cea3f46c6)

Not to mention he bought the damn thing.  If he was being diligent he should of gotten this briefing before the purchase.

The "he tried to get out of it and how he is stuck is pulling a batwoman" explanation increasingly makes sense.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 20, 2022, 01:38:13 PM
What's "pulling a batwoman"?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 20, 2022, 03:07:13 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 20, 2022, 01:38:13 PMWhat's "pulling a batwoman"?

Batgirl sorry.
Recognising it all as a disaster and figuring the best way to salvage it is a tax write off.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on November 20, 2022, 03:09:17 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 20, 2022, 01:38:13 PMWhat's "pulling a batwoman"?

The other baddies made me do it, but I really love you? :unsure:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 20, 2022, 03:50:11 PM
Quote from: Zanza on November 20, 2022, 08:54:59 AMThat does not seem to be the appropriate level of detail for the CEO.

Yeah, I really doubt that a CEO's place is "down in the trenches" so to speak, taking care of the nitty gritty parts of the business. This situation is also relevant because it shows that, for Musk, Twitter's problem is one that can be solved by hard skills like coding great software, or whatever, rather than one that needs of softer skills like developing a viable and profitable business model. I guess that engineers sometimes don't make for great executives.

As has been said before, Twitter is not a novelty start-up that needs its employees to put up the hours to develop something from scratch, it's a mature operation that needs to be well managed.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on November 20, 2022, 03:53:24 PM
The business school I often do work for is pretty adamant that C-level types should understand the technical details of how the business works, and imho that's not unreasonable. That doesn't mean they have to micromanage those aspects, of course, or partake in that kind of ridiculous demonstration of power as Musk has done.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 20, 2022, 03:55:39 PM
Quote from: celedhring on November 20, 2022, 03:53:24 PMC-level types

:huh: :unsure:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on November 20, 2022, 03:56:30 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 20, 2022, 03:55:39 PM
Quote from: celedhring on November 20, 2022, 03:53:24 PMC-level types

:huh: :unsure:

What?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 20, 2022, 03:57:24 PM
Quote from: celedhring on November 20, 2022, 03:56:30 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 20, 2022, 03:55:39 PM
Quote from: celedhring on November 20, 2022, 03:53:24 PMC-level types

:huh: :unsure:

What?

What the hell is a C-level type?  :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on November 20, 2022, 03:59:16 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 20, 2022, 03:57:24 PM
Quote from: celedhring on November 20, 2022, 03:56:30 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 20, 2022, 03:55:39 PM
Quote from: celedhring on November 20, 2022, 03:53:24 PMC-level types

:huh: :unsure:

What?

What the hell is a C-level type?  :P

The highest executive level in a organization, the "Chiefs", i.e. the CEO, the CIO, the CFO, etc...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 20, 2022, 04:01:31 PM
Quote from: celedhring on November 20, 2022, 03:59:16 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 20, 2022, 03:57:24 PM
Quote from: celedhring on November 20, 2022, 03:56:30 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 20, 2022, 03:55:39 PM
Quote from: celedhring on November 20, 2022, 03:53:24 PMC-level types

:huh: :unsure:

What?

What the hell is a C-level type?  :P

The highest executive level in a organization, the "Chiefs", i.e. the CEO, the CIO, the CFO, etc...

Ok, so top level executives then.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 20, 2022, 04:32:57 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 20, 2022, 03:50:11 PMI guess that engineers sometimes don't make for great executives.

Whether this statement is true or not--let us be clear Elon Musk is not an engineer. By education or by training or any other means.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 20, 2022, 04:39:00 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 20, 2022, 04:32:57 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 20, 2022, 03:50:11 PMI guess that engineers sometimes don't make for great executives.

Whether this statement is true or not--let us be clear Elon Musk is not an engineer. By education or by training or any other means.

For some reason I thought that was his background. Went to check on wiki and he has two bachelor's degrees, one in Physics and another one in Economics, and was going to start a PhD on materials science when he went into business.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 20, 2022, 04:53:43 PM
You should read this thread:

https://twitter.com/capitolhunters/status/1593307541932474368?s=20&t=PwoXkYlqagyknvHYtCPLNw

It turns out Elon does not actually have a Physics degree, but diligent research will show he has lied about it for around 27 years--and more importantly, his reasons for lying about it go beyond just ego but also tie into his legal immigration status in the United States back in the 1990s. It ends up he very likely lived illegally in the United States for at least one year.

While that full thread is worth a read (it sources tons of primary materials here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zPeWaaCZHqfq0tnkPwc61A6bGHySdj91), this is a quickish summary:

1. Elon was raised in South Africa and attended college for a few months there in early adulthood. His mother had Canadian citizenship, which he used to expedite a visa for himself to Canada. His stated goal was ultimately arriving in the United States and he viewed Canadian residency as a path to making that easier than going straight from South Africa.

2. He moves in with a second cousin in Canada and works odd jobs, manual labor, for about one year. He then enrolls in a Canadian university for a time.

3. He moves to the United States to pursue classes at the University of Pennsylvania. This most likely occurs through him getting a transfer from the Canadian university, which also would have facilitated his F-1 visa.

4. There is no evidence of him legitimately graduating from UPenn in 1994 or 1995--which are years he has claimed to have graduated.

5. We instead of evidence he dropped out of UPenn in 1995 receiving no degree, and moved to California with brother Kimbal to attempt to get into the early Internet boom.

6. This is where Musk starts to show both his savvy and his bad ethics. He interviews extensively at a small Silicon Valley startup, but does not take the position. What he does take is the startup's business plan, and copies it to make his own business--Global Link. Global Link putters around for around a year, and tech investor Mohr Davidow likes what he sees and buys Global Link for $3m. The original startup guy whose business plan he ripped off eventually sued Musk and lost (it isn't really a tort to steal someone's non-patented "idea.")

7. Davidow has Rich Sorkin come in to be CEO of Global Link, rebranded 2Zip, and Elon is made a top executive. This is where Elon's education became a problem. This is 1996 and his F-1 visa would have been expiring, and he had few options to get a legitimate alternative visa. H-1B wasn't possible because it actually required a college degree. A "genius" visa for someone of "extraordinary ability" was highly scrutinized then and now, and Elon's experience of doing some self-taught computer programming for 8 months at his own startup simply would not have qualified for this visa. It appears very likely he simply lived out most of 1996 and into 1997 illegally resident in the country.

8. In 1997 he finally gets a college degree--but not in physics, he gets a degree in Economics from UPenn. He also has  a strange "blank diploma" from this time as well that cannot be easily explained, but his only diploma with any program written on it indicates an Economics degree from the Wharton business school.

9. At various times between 1997 and now, he has been questioned about his claimed physics degree at various times, and always has given shady or confusing answers. The evidence suggests he simply never had and does not have a physics degree. He was enrolled as a physics student, has actually admitted he was behind on classes--he was stuck getting poor grades in 2nd year physics classes as a third year student, then dropped out.

10. According to the research, despite its prestige as an Ivy League school, Wharton has a bit of a bad reputation for being susceptible to "massage" degrees for people of means. It appears very likely that in 1997, with big money backers supporting him, Musk was able to "arrange" something with Wharton to take a few business classes and combine those with his old credits to be issued an Economics degree--given the timeline he could not have completed Wharton's full economics curriculum, so he would've had to have gotten a special program of study approved at this time--which apparently is not super uncommon for people of means.

11. The researchers have pulled Penn Physics department newsletters from all of the relevant years, despite them announcing all of their graduates, Elon's name never appears on any graduation list. Further, while UPenn itself has done several events where it touts Elon as a graduate, the Physics department never has--it appears they are not part of the "game" that the business school engages in.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 20, 2022, 05:09:39 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 20, 2022, 04:53:43 PMdespite its prestige as an Ivy League school, Wharton has a bit of a bad reputation for being susceptible to "massage" degrees for people of means

Didn't Trump get his degree from Wharton as well?  :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 20, 2022, 05:25:36 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 20, 2022, 03:50:11 PM
Quote from: Zanza on November 20, 2022, 08:54:59 AMThat does not seem to be the appropriate level of detail for the CEO.

Yeah, I really doubt that a CEO's place is "down in the trenches" so to speak, taking care of the nitty gritty parts of the business. This situation is also relevant because it shows that, for Musk, Twitter's problem is one that can be solved by hard skills like coding great software, or whatever, rather than one that needs of softer skills like developing a viable and profitable business model. I guess that engineers sometimes don't make for great executives.

As has been said before, Twitter is not a novelty start-up that needs its employees to put up the hours to develop something from scratch, it's a mature operation that needs to be well managed.
I will play Devils Advocate here.

I think an executive at a technology company is in fact very well served by having a reasonably advanced understanding of the technology stack for the company they are running.

It isn't a necessary skill - you can be a very good exec without knowing that. But it is in fact a useful skill and knowledge for that particular kind of executive, which I think Musk is in fact.

But it is ridiculous to imagine that the way to learn that is by having a meeting with your engineers. Is their technology stack not internally documented? That seems rather hard to believe. And makes me think demanding such a meeting is more about the show of the meeting then actually trying to understand that tech stack.

Finally....while I think the CEO of Twitter, if they are a technical CEO, is well served by a solid understanding of Twitters technology....I don't think that is remotely useful information for the guy running SpaceX and Tesla. The kind of "engineering CEO" who is served by that level of detailed knowedge cannot possibly be a part time CEO, running multiple tech companies, each of which serves a radically different kind of technological service.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 20, 2022, 05:28:37 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 20, 2022, 05:09:39 PMDidn't Trump get his degree from Wharton as well?  :lol:

I was just gonna say.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 20, 2022, 05:42:24 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 20, 2022, 05:25:36 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 20, 2022, 03:50:11 PM
Quote from: Zanza on November 20, 2022, 08:54:59 AMThat does not seem to be the appropriate level of detail for the CEO.

Yeah, I really doubt that a CEO's place is "down in the trenches" so to speak, taking care of the nitty gritty parts of the business. This situation is also relevant because it shows that, for Musk, Twitter's problem is one that can be solved by hard skills like coding great software, or whatever, rather than one that needs of softer skills like developing a viable and profitable business model. I guess that engineers sometimes don't make for great executives.

As has been said before, Twitter is not a novelty start-up that needs its employees to put up the hours to develop something from scratch, it's a mature operation that needs to be well managed.
I will play Devils Advocate here.

I think an executive at a technology company is in fact very well served by having a reasonably advanced understanding of the technology stack for the company they are running.

It isn't a necessary skill - you can be a very good exec without knowing that. But it is in fact a useful skill and knowledge for that particular kind of executive, which I think Musk is in fact.

But it is ridiculous to imagine that the way to learn that is by having a meeting with your engineers. Is their technology stack not internally documented? That seems rather hard to believe. And makes me think demanding such a meeting is more about the show of the meeting then actually trying to understand that tech stack.

Finally....while I think the CEO of Twitter, if they are a technical CEO, is well served by a solid understanding of Twitters technology....I don't think that is remotely useful information for the guy running SpaceX and Tesla. The kind of "engineering CEO" who is served by that level of detailed knowedge cannot possibly be a part time CEO, running multiple tech companies, each of which serves a radically different kind of technological service.

Understanding for sure, I don't think anyone could disagree with that, but that's not what Musk is doing as you also say. One thing is undestanding how the company and its software work, which is comendable, and another is doing this kind of meets for showmanship about how brilliant he is redesigning the company on the fly and putting all his employees on edge. Most of the stuff that Musk is doing to Twitter is being done wide open and in public for everyone to see, rather than through the proper internal channels, like the call for any "employee who can code" to go and meet him in person and show him their stuff. It's quite head scratching to me.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 20, 2022, 05:51:39 PM
Some of what the tweetstorm says seems plausible and evidenced.  Some of it doesn't.  The whole Wharton School slam is ludicrous, and his evidence is that Trump graduated from there.

1.  The fact that Trump graduated from there isn't by itself evidence of anything, and
2.  Wharton School does not give out undergraduate degrees; you have to have one already to get in.  That's sloppy reporting, because it is also true of every other school of business.  UPenn issued Musk's degree(s?). 

The illogical Wharton attack damages the cred of this guy for anything that cannot be independently verified.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 20, 2022, 06:01:07 PM
Quote from: grumbler on November 20, 2022, 05:51:39 PMSome of what the tweetstorm says seems plausible and evidenced.  Some of it doesn't.  The whole Wharton School slam is ludicrous, and his evidence is that Trump graduated from there.

1.  The fact that Trump graduated from there isn't by itself evidence of anything, and
2.  Wharton School does not give out undergraduate degrees; you have to have one already to get in.  That's sloppy reporting, because it is also true of every other school of business.  UPenn issued Musk's degree(s?). 

The illogical Wharton attack damages the cred of this guy for anything that cannot be independently verified.

What's sloppy is you not knowing how business schools work in the United States. The vast majority of colleges have business schools that admit students during their undergraduate course of study (often during junior year) and offer Bachelor of Science degrees typically in Business Administration with a specific Major listed.

I don't know if you assumed Wharton only issues MBAs (which are only given to graduate students), but that is not the case.

At many colleges undergraduate degrees in Management, Accounting, Finance, and sometimes Economics are offered through the undergraduate business schools. Obviously, it varies from place to place, but it is not generally a rule you require a degree to enter business school at most universities.

This is from Wharton's own website, FWIW:

QuoteWharton offers a four-year, blended program of business and liberal arts and sciences. Unlike most other business programs in which you must wait until your junior year to begin business courses. During your freshman year, you will take Wharton 101, a gateway course that introduces the School's various business disciplines and engages students in learning about their personal strengths and leadership potential, and 2-3 other required business courses. You also will be able to integrate your Wharton and non-Wharton courses throughout your four years of study at Penn.

The University of Virgina's undergraduate school of commerce admits students in Junior year, as stated on their website:

QuoteThe McIntire School of Commerce is an upper-division school at the University of Virginia. This means that students typically:

Apply in their second year
Enter the School in their third year after completing two years of liberal arts and business prerequisites

The Cornell School of Business offers two undergraduate programs:

QuoteAre you looking to pursue a bachelor's degree? Choose from two undergraduate business programs in the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. Each program is offered by a top-ranked school—the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management and the Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration—and will give you a distinct set of experiences to match your interests and ambitions.

This would have been very, very easy for you to have researched and it is clear you didn't. I expect no meaningful acceptance you were blind wrong on this one as I know better at this point.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 20, 2022, 06:11:06 PM
Also it shows a pretty serious ignorance of Trump to think Wharton only admits graduates--Trump fairly famously transferred to Wharton after 2 years of undergraduate studies at Fordham, and also pretty famously Trump's father was able to help him get admitted, Trump also similarly helped Don Jr get admitted to Wharton in the 1990s--all of this well reported on during Trump's Presidency.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 20, 2022, 10:47:31 PM
I'll take the hit on the existence of undergrad education at some of the B-schools, including Wharton.  Stanford doesn't have that, nor Harvard, nor Ross when I was at Michigan (but they do now), so I didn't check far enough.

As for the "fairly famously" stuff, that phrase is a euphemism for "as no one knows."  And, again, the existence of Donald Trump or Donald Trump Jr is independent of the existence of Elon Musk.  There's no evidence that Wharton has ever granted degrees to the underserving, the fact that someone really really wants that to be true notwithstanding.

That also doesn't change the fact that Musk isn't able to credibly deny that he was in the US illegally for at least a year.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 21, 2022, 02:28:46 AM
In more 3d chess genius moves, when Twitter head of ad sales resigned musk begged her to stay, and then later fired her. You can't quit, you're fired!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 02:42:46 AM
Quote from: grumbler on November 20, 2022, 10:47:31 PMThere's no evidence that Wharton has ever granted degrees to the underserving, the fact that someone really really wants that to be true notwithstanding.

"Undeserving" has no meaning in this discussion, and there is a reason no one used such a stupid term until you just used it to try and confuse the issue.

Schools determine who deserves a degree, so anyone issued a degree was deemed deserving. What would have meaning is comparing Musk's official transcript to the intended outline of study for someone given his degree. That would help explain how someone can complete 2 years of an undergraduate physics program in three years, and then leave campus (i.e. drop out) and somehow have a degree in economics 2 years after that. Mind you we also know that during that 2-year interim he was living on the other side of the country running his first company--it is hard to imagine he was completing a correspondence course in economics in his spare time with UPenn.

What does seem likely is he was given "experiential credit" for some of his business work, which is something the school can do if it so chooses, but probably wouldn't be something either Wharton or Musk would love being highly publicized.

What also seems without much doubt is he does not have a Physics degree--as seen from the legal case he was involved in showing he has a 1997 Economics degree which leaves an almost 2 full year gap in his visa situation from back then--assuming he procured an H1B once he got his degree in 1997. Even more damning is the fact someone took the time to pull the published list of physics department undergraduates who attained graduation back in that time, and Musk's name never appeared on the list.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on November 21, 2022, 02:57:36 AM
When I was studying in the US in the 2000s, as a foreigner under an F-1 it was possible to apply to temporarily drop your courses and spend a year doing practical training (as in doing paid work) before completing your degree. But that employment had to be related to the degree you were pursuing, and the whole thing would have left a paper trail (the school had to approve it, USCIS had to approve it, and you were issued a bunch of stuff and had to provide proof of employment every - I think - 60 days?).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 21, 2022, 03:51:18 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 18, 2022, 12:42:49 PMOn the topic of billionaires wanting to spread their genes to "win" at evolution: I remember some years ago reading an article about a Japanese billionaire who wanted to have a hundred kids. He was, apparently, pursuing it primarily via offering Thai women something like ~$1 million to have his kid. IIRC he was well on his way.

On the flipside of that, there was a story on Humans of New York about a dude who'd gotten the inside track as sperm donor to lesbian couples. He wasn't racking up numbers like this Japanese billionaire, but he was competitive with Musk - clocking in around 20 or so IIRC (and he hasn't stopped yet either).

Is this the super religious Jewish guy who said he was aiming for 18 or something as its a holy number and after that it would be 36?

I must admit in the past I've often been tempted by this. It does seem a good thing all round. I doubt my gf would approve however.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 21, 2022, 08:41:41 AM
So apparently Elon's free speech absolutism does have its limits, and he has categorically ruled out lifting the ban to Alex Jones.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 09:18:50 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 02:42:46 AM
Quote from: grumbler on November 20, 2022, 10:47:31 PMThere's no evidence that Wharton has ever granted degrees to the underserving, the fact that someone really really wants that to be true notwithstanding.

"Undeserving" has no meaning in this discussion, and there is a reason no one used such a stupid term until you just used it to try and confuse the issue.

Schools determine who deserves a degree, so anyone issued a degree was deemed deserving. What would have meaning is comparing Musk's official transcript to the intended outline of study for someone given his degree. That would help explain how someone can complete 2 years of an undergraduate physics program in three years, and then leave campus (i.e. drop out) and somehow have a degree in economics 2 years after that. Mind you we also know that during that 2-year interim he was living on the other side of the country running his first company--it is hard to imagine he was completing a correspondence course in economics in his spare time with UPenn.

What does seem likely is he was given "experiential credit" for some of his business work, which is something the school can do if it so chooses, but probably wouldn't be something either Wharton or Musk would love being highly publicized.

What also seems without much doubt is he does not have a Physics degree--as seen from the legal case he was involved in showing he has a 1997 Economics degree which leaves an almost 2 full year gap in his visa situation from back then--assuming he procured an H1B once he got his degree in 1997. Even more damning is the fact someone took the time to pull the published list of physics department undergraduates who attained graduation back in that time, and Musk's name never appeared on the list.
I suspect that if this is exactly as "damning" as you imagine it might be....it's still pretty not very damning.

The extent that any particular person is going to be SHOCKED, SHOCKED I SAY at such perfidy is, I think, exactly and precisely aligned with how much they despised Musk before they found out he might have been in the country "illegally" or dropped out of college without getting his degree and then fudged about that later.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 09:21:10 AM
Quote from: celedhring on November 21, 2022, 02:57:36 AMWhen I was studying in the US in the 2000s, as a foreigner under an F-1 it was possible to apply to temporarily drop your courses and spend a year doing practical training (as in doing paid work) before completing your degree. But that employment had to be related to the degree you were pursuing, and the whole thing would have left a paper trail (the school had to approve it, USCIS had to approve it, and you were issued a bunch of stuff and had to provide proof of employment every - I think - 60 days?).
I would more generally observe that there are a lot, A LOT, of people who immigrate to the US, end up staying here nominally legally, who at some point in the process was likely technically supposed to have left while something was sorted out or resolved.

That part, at least, is pretty much a non-issue for me. Who fucking cares? Of all the not-strictly legal immigrants working in the US, we should care that Elon Musk might not have been entirely legal at some point in the distant past?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 09:24:56 AM
Before it gets confused - again, this is not about me defending Musk as much as it is about my previous observation that those who get worked up over things like this (or argue that he hasn't actually accomplished much) are exhibiting classic confirmation bias.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on November 21, 2022, 09:31:12 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 09:21:10 AM
Quote from: celedhring on November 21, 2022, 02:57:36 AMWhen I was studying in the US in the 2000s, as a foreigner under an F-1 it was possible to apply to temporarily drop your courses and spend a year doing practical training (as in doing paid work) before completing your degree. But that employment had to be related to the degree you were pursuing, and the whole thing would have left a paper trail (the school had to approve it, USCIS had to approve it, and you were issued a bunch of stuff and had to provide proof of employment every - I think - 60 days?).
I would more generally observe that there are a lot, A LOT, of people who immigrate to the US, end up staying here nominally legally, who at some point in the process was likely technically supposed to have left while something was sorted out or resolved.

That part, at least, is pretty much a non-issue for me. Who fucking cares? Of all the not-strictly legal immigrants working in the US, we should care that Elon Musk might not have been entirely legal at some point in the distant past?

Oh, I really DGAF if Musk stayed in the US illegally for a time, I have friends that did the same. Just wanted to point out there's a plausible alternative.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 09:34:04 AM
Quote from: celedhring on November 21, 2022, 09:31:12 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 09:21:10 AM
Quote from: celedhring on November 21, 2022, 02:57:36 AMWhen I was studying in the US in the 2000s, as a foreigner under an F-1 it was possible to apply to temporarily drop your courses and spend a year doing practical training (as in doing paid work) before completing your degree. But that employment had to be related to the degree you were pursuing, and the whole thing would have left a paper trail (the school had to approve it, USCIS had to approve it, and you were issued a bunch of stuff and had to provide proof of employment every - I think - 60 days?).
I would more generally observe that there are a lot, A LOT, of people who immigrate to the US, end up staying here nominally legally, who at some point in the process was likely technically supposed to have left while something was sorted out or resolved.

That part, at least, is pretty much a non-issue for me. Who fucking cares? Of all the not-strictly legal immigrants working in the US, we should care that Elon Musk might not have been entirely legal at some point in the distant past?

Oh, I really DGAF if Musk stayed in the US illegally for a time, I have friends that did the same. Just wanted to point out there's a plausible alternative.
Yeah, my experience with US immigration, from both the standpoint of someone who knows a lot of people who have experienced it themselves, and as an employer is that if you can get to a permanent immigration status without ever once being out of compliance, that is a pretty amazing accomplishment!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on November 21, 2022, 09:34:51 AM
I haven't invested in any venture musk is a part of, but I think part of the appeal of him as a CEO is that he is rather uniquely outside the corporate drone mindset. If there are a dozen or twenty major automakers in the world, Tesla is the only one with a CEO that is going on Joe Rogan and getting high. The appeal is that zigging when everyone else zags can be the smart choice even if the odds are that zagging is more likely to pay off.

In that sense, Musk going out and making "bold" statements is brand building in a way that might actually be destructive for most other corporate leaders.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 10:24:00 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 09:18:50 AMI suspect that if this is exactly as "damning" as you imagine it might be....it's still pretty not very damning.

The extent that any particular person is going to be SHOCKED, SHOCKED I SAY at such perfidy is, I think, exactly and precisely aligned with how much they despised Musk before they found out he might have been in the country "illegally" or dropped out of college without getting his degree and then fudged about that later.

I don't think the immigration part of it is that big of a deal--the lies about his degree are also not a tremendously big deal aside from a narrow context in that there have been a number of CEOs forced out of publicly traded companies for lying about their degrees--it is seen as a form of public shareholder deception, but even that would be muted by the fact by all accounts the one publicly traded company Musk runs has returned exorbitantly for shareholders. The level of offense that resume inflation is deemed to be for a CEO tends to correlate to how well they are otherwise doing as CEO, i.e. it's a sin that is forgiven for a highly performing one and often not if someone is more middling.

But the Twitter thread, and also the original post I responded to setting this off, gets to the "meat of it." The reason it is important to note that Musk doesn't have a degree in any kind of STEM field is because Musk really cares about people believing he is an "engineer." Now, not every engineer has to be a PE, although in many fields it is seen as an important step in one's career. But I don't know any "real" field of engineering where it is considered appropriate to call yourself an engineer when you don't even have an engineering degree. Note I put "real" in quotes, this is because there has been some "title inflation" in the world, thus we have things like "sales engineers" and things like that, but Musk clearly doesn't use the word that way. When he was on Rogan he specifically talked about being an engineer, in the context of working with SpaceX's engineering team, I can assure you Musk and the managers of SpaceX aren't hiring people who dropped out of a physics program and later finished an undergraduate business degree to design their rockets--and for damn good reason.

If you look at the story about how Musk starting his very first company, GlobalLink, and then was savvy enough to find an investor to buy him out for $3m that gets to the heart of Musk's real talent--generating investor capital. This is not a talent to be ashamed of, in fact many businessmen make their entire careers proudly on their ability to do exactly that. But Musk clearly is not proud of it, or he wouldn't spend so much time denying he is a "CEO or business" type and saying he's really an engineer. Musk wants to be thought of as Nikola Tesla or some similar figure.

The reality is of course Nikola Tesla died in poverty. For some reason Musk doesn't want to be seen in the same vein as guys like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, or to reference older tycoons Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller etc--guys who primarily made their fortunes by ruthlessly undermining competitors and often aggressively screwing over their own business partners. But something those guys all share in common with Musk is they didn't end up like the real Tesla--i.e. poor, they died or will die very rich.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 10:43:00 AM
Meh. I have people who work for me as software engineers who don't have degrees in software engineering. They are still engineers though, because that is the work they are doing, even if their expertise in that work was aquired through some means other then getting a degree.

If Musk does engineering work, he is an engineer, regardless of whether or not he has an engineering degree (a physics degree, btw, is NOT an engineering degree anyway).

This is much ado about very, very little substance. There are reasons to admire Musk, and reasons to find him contemptible. Whether or not he got a degree or not is completely trivial in either of those reasons.

I think the fact the he lied about it (if he did lie about it) is a bit more relevant to the "Musk is an asshole" claim, but saying "I am an engineer" is not evidence that you lied about getting a degree. You can be an engineer without a degree.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 21, 2022, 11:02:23 AM
Quote from: Josquius on November 21, 2022, 03:51:18 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 18, 2022, 12:42:49 PMOn the topic of billionaires wanting to spread their genes to "win" at evolution: I remember some years ago reading an article about a Japanese billionaire who wanted to have a hundred kids. He was, apparently, pursuing it primarily via offering Thai women something like ~$1 million to have his kid. IIRC he was well on his way.

On the flipside of that, there was a story on Humans of New York about a dude who'd gotten the inside track as sperm donor to lesbian couples. He wasn't racking up numbers like this Japanese billionaire, but he was competitive with Musk - clocking in around 20 or so IIRC (and he hasn't stopped yet either).

Is this the super religious Jewish guy who said he was aiming for 18 or something as its a holy number and after that it would be 36?

I must admit in the past I've often been tempted by this. It does seem a good thing all round. I doubt my gf would approve however.

I looked into donating sperm before I had my vasectomy.  AT that point I had three healthy sons so I knew my swimmers were good.

Turns out there are no sperm banks in Canada.  It's illegal to pay for "reproductive material", privacy concerns make it complicated, so they just find it is easier to import american or european sperm.

If a woman or couple wanting donated sperm has a donor she already knows they can accommodate that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 11:26:22 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 10:43:00 AMMeh. I have people who work for me as software engineers who don't have degrees in software engineering. They are still engineers though, because that is the work they are doing, even if their expertise in that work was aquired through some means other then getting a degree.

If Musk does engineering work, he is an engineer, regardless of whether or not he has an engineering degree (a physics degree, btw, is NOT an engineering degree anyway).

This is much ado about very, very little substance. There are reasons to admire Musk, and reasons to find him contemptible. Whether or not he got a degree or not is completely trivial in either of those reasons.

I think the fact the he lied about it (if he did lie about it) is a bit more relevant to the "Musk is an asshole" claim, but saying "I am an engineer" is not evidence that you lied about getting a degree. You can be an engineer without a degree.

Yeah, but you're also obscuring reality--software engineering has long struggled in a bit of a nebulous area. The first generation of people to do this work, were largely working without formal degree programs in specifically what they were interested in. Many of the first generation were Electrical Engineers by training, but some had taken Math, and some didn't have degrees at all. As time has passed that profession has worked towards greater standardization and credentialing like the other more "traditional" engineering disciplines. But it still isn't quite there. That being said in the modern job market it is valuable if you're trying to break into those positions to have either a Computer Science degree (which tend to have a variety of names at different colleges), and at a number of colleges CS degrees or similar are actually offered as part of the engineering college. But again, you're talking about a technical field that is still in flux, I assume when electrification was first starting there was a similar dearth of "trained electrical engineers", because it didn't exist as a formal degree-granting thing, it was something you had to learn on the job.

Musk FWIW is presenting himself as the sort of engineer who designs cars and rockets, which he isn't--and those engineering fields have been rigorously credentialed for over 75 years.

You can say it doesn't matter, but I'm not the one who seems to think it is important--Musk is. If Musk didn't continually refer to himself as an engineer it would occasion no comment what his educational backgrounds are. There is virtually no evidence that has ever been presented that Musk is personally engaged in real engineering work.

I think a lot of you Muskies in this thread just lack good conman detection, which isn't surprising--most people are susceptible to conmen because they like the stories conmen sell. You think Musk is "cool" and are willing to overlook a lot because of it--that isn't accidental, that's by his design. Conmen tell con stories for specific reasons, none of them are accidental or incidental. Musk thinks his overall schemes are advanced by pretending to be an engineer when he isn't, you should probably defer to his judgment that it is an important part of his con--he's the one who makes billions off of his ability to deceive and hype.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 11:32:08 AM
Also I'll note your bullshit point about how you have software engineers working for you without degrees--I bet for sure none of them applied for the job and lied and claimed they did have a degree, there are still plenty of people working as computer programmers / developers / SWEs who were don't have degrees and plenty of companies hire them. But most would not hire someone they found out claimed to have a degree they did not actually have.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 21, 2022, 11:43:05 AM
This thread has drastically altered my impression of Musk, especially the education part.  I thought he had a physics degree and he just figured everything else out, like rocket science and coding, because they were so easy after learning physics.

And Tesla stock continues its nosedive.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 11:46:09 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 11:32:08 AMAlso I'll note your bullshit point about how you have software engineers working for you without degrees--I bet for sure none of them applied for the job and lied and claimed they did have a degree, there are still plenty of people working as computer programmers / developers / SWEs who were don't have degrees and plenty of companies hire them. But most would not hire someone they found out claimed to have a degree they did not actually have.
No bullshit - I was simply stating that someone who does engineering work is an engineer, and I have people who work for me who are software engineers who do not have software engineering degrees. 

My point is simply that someone's job is not dependent on the degree they got, and like I said, a physics degree is not an engineering degree anyway - so how he doesn't have a physics degree seems quite irrelevant. So calling that "bullshit" seems rather obviously personal and misguided. Why?



"I am an engineer" is not the same claim as "I have a degree in engineering". You can be an engineer without having an engineering degree, just like you can be an accountant without having an accounting degree. It's a job, not a credential. There are very, very few jobs were the title implies the certainty of a degree, and the insanely broad category of "engineer" is not one of them.

I rather carefully noted that him *lying* about the degree was a different thing entirely. It's odd that you kind of missed that part of my post entirely. Almost like you are just looking at things that confirm your bias, and ignoring the rest...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 21, 2022, 11:46:18 AM
Didn't Musk start his career as a developer? Or are you suggesting here hired devs for all his early projects too?

Incidently it's curious how when starting a new role they always want references from recent employers but I can't recall being asked for my degree papers in any nomral job.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 11:46:36 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 21, 2022, 11:43:05 AMThis thread has drastically altered my impression of Musk, especially the education part.  I thought he had a physics degree and he just figured everything else out, like rocket science and coding, because they were so easy after learning physics.


:D
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 11:47:47 AM
Quote from: Josquius on November 21, 2022, 11:46:18 AMDidn't Musk start his career as a developer? Or are you suggesting here hired devs for all his early projects too?

Incidently it's curious how when starting a new role they always want references from recent employers but I can't recall being asked for my degree papers in any nomral job.
I've never once asked for proof of a degree. 

Apparently Musk has never done any coding, or anything like engineering, and his entire skill set is simply that he is good at conning other incredibly smart people into giving him billions and billions of dollars.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on November 21, 2022, 11:52:39 AM
I think your degree is checked during background check, which is contracted out to background check companies.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on November 21, 2022, 11:56:01 AM
My grandfather was an engineer and never went to college. He just studied for the engineering exams through correspondence courses and passed them in an era you didn't a college degree to sit for them. He worked for the Florida road department for a time as an engineer on bridges around the state (he retired leading the safety division).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PDH on November 21, 2022, 11:58:37 AM
Background checking is more of an art than a science, it seems.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on November 21, 2022, 12:00:32 PM
Quote from: PDH on November 21, 2022, 11:58:37 AMBackground checking is more of an art than a science, it seems.
I suspect it might also be part scam.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on November 21, 2022, 12:15:31 PM
Around here, engineer and engineers is a protected title. It's always a fun conversation to have with our immigrant workforce that they can't call themselves engineers legally without being part of the order.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 12:29:16 PM
I don't know what Musk has claimed about his degrees, but it all seems like ancient history. If he has lied or not doesn't change much, he's not working as anything that requires a certain degree, and if he ever has then my impression is that it was a long time ago. Now lying about your degrees, if he has lied about them, indicates a lack of integrity. But we already know that Musk lacks integrity, based on all the crap stuff he has done openly (pedophilegate etc etc).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 21, 2022, 12:30:06 PM
Quote from: DGuller on November 21, 2022, 12:00:32 PM
Quote from: PDH on November 21, 2022, 11:58:37 AMBackground checking is more of an art than a science, it seems.
I suspect it might also be part scam.

Background checking seems kind of classist to be honest.  You run checks on low-level employees, but someone applying for a high level job can be trusted.  That's why you see so many instances of academic fraud at academic institutions - they can't imagine that a fellow professor would falsify their CV.

I too have never been asked for proof of my education - though I guess by virtue of being a member of the Law Society they already know I do have a law degree.

Quote from: Grey Fox on November 21, 2022, 12:15:31 PMAround here, engineer and engineers is a protected title. It's always a fun conversation to have with our immigrant workforce that they can't call themselves engineers legally without being part of the order.

Yeah someone calling themselves a lawyer who is not a member of the Law Society would find themselves prosecuted pretty quickly.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on November 21, 2022, 12:35:30 PM
I think in all the companies I worked at, background check is just part of the hiring process, period.  It wouldn't surprise me though that in the Wild West of startups, the process is less formal.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 01:09:12 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on November 21, 2022, 11:56:01 AMMy grandfather was an engineer and never went to college. He just studied for the engineering exams through correspondence courses and passed them in an era you didn't a college degree to sit for them. He worked for the Florida road department for a time as an engineer on bridges around the state (he retired leading the safety division).

Hey! I had a grandfather with the exact same storyline, he started work cleaning tanks at a chemical plant out of high school and was a chemical engineer by the time WWII broke out. But note that as I mentioned, times change. The more established engineering disciplines (like ChemE) that is simply not possible today. With all the complex regulations, liabilities etc involved, no one would trust a smart guy willing to learn on the job at a chemical plant to go from being one of the blue collar workers to one of the engineers.

But I think you and Berkut know that, and of course are just finding ways to defend Musk. That's fine--just admit you are Muskies, that's your thing you like and you should embrace it, no reason to be ashamed of it.

Quote from: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 12:29:16 PMI don't know what Musk has claimed about his degrees, but it all seems like ancient history. If he has lied or not doesn't change much, he's not working as anything that requires a certain degree, and if he ever has then my impression is that it was a long time ago. Now lying about your degrees, if he has lied about them, indicates a lack of integrity. But we already know that Musk lacks integrity, based on all the crap stuff he has done openly (pedophilegate etc etc).

As I already mentioned--if it was ancient history very few people would probably have anything to say about it. Mind you our current President in the United States some 30+ years ago got caught lying about his academic career. Interestingly so did his immediate predecessor--Trump claimed to have graduated "top of his class" which he did not.

I think it would be fair to ding Biden if he was still saying in the 2020s that he had the academic achievements he was caught lying about in the 1980s, because it would speak to his character.

Likewise when Musk goes onto the world's most listened to podcast and lies about his background and aptitudes, it must mean it's something Musk cares enough to lie about, and it is unlikely that he considers it unimportant.

Quote from: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 11:46:09 AMNo bullshit - I was simply stating that someone who does engineering work is an engineer, and I have people who work for me who are software engineers who do not have software engineering degrees. 

My point is simply that someone's job is not dependent on the degree they got, and like I said, a physics degree is not an engineering degree anyway - so how he doesn't have a physics degree seems quite irrelevant. So calling that "bullshit" seems rather obviously personal and misguided. Why?

Here's the thing--no matter what shitty Musk behavior people point out, with sourcing, you find reasons to say it isn't a big deal. Just admit you're a Muskie, admit you like him conning you, you think SpaceX and Tesla are really cool and you just aren't interested in hearing anything that suggests Musk is anything other than a really cool, awesome dude. That would be far more intellectually honest than the absolute bullshit you're spewing here, over literally dozens of posts, trying to say "oh I don't like Musk either, but here's yet another shitty and stupid argument about why X bad thing he's done isn't bad at all and you're just being irrational if you think it is." Please. Just put on your Team Musk hat and stand proud, we're all way too old for fake arguments.

Quote from: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 11:46:09 AM"I am an engineer" is not the same claim as "I have a degree in engineering". You can be an engineer without having an engineering degree, just like you can be an accountant without having an accounting degree. It's a job, not a credential. There are very, very few jobs were the title implies the certainty of a degree, and the insanely broad category of "engineer" is not one of them.

Except you actually can't really be an engineer in aerospace or automotive without training. The fact you brought up software engineering--a discipline with lots of self-teaching in part because it is a newer field, is dishonest. Please point me to any car company or aerospace firm that hires mechanical or aerospace engineers who are college dropouts with no engineering experience or education.

Quote from: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 11:47:47 AMApparently Musk has never done any coding, or anything like engineering, and his entire skill set is simply that he is good at conning other incredibly smart people into giving him billions and billions of dollars.

Do you really think Musk was involved in engineering Tesla or SpaceX rockets? At least with Tesla there's tons of evidence he was not directly involved, because there have been lots of articles, lawsuits etc involving the founding and development of Tesla cars. You seem to suggest you work in some kind of technical field, so I'd hope you would know that a management type (c-level management no less) making high level approvals to the strategies of the engineering team is not actually the same thing as doing engineering work. It's the difference between 1995 Bill Gates, who literally never touched a line of code, and 1975 Bill Gates who was a person who spent much of his time computer programming.

As far as we know the only direct technical work Musk has ever done was when he started his first company--GlobalLink, he was doing the computer programming work for that company over the 8 months it was an independent entity, self-taught. Mind you that wasn't unusual in the mid-1990s as probably the majority of computer programmers at that time were self-taught. It also is wholly irrelevant to any kind of software development any of Musk's companies are involved in in 2022--30 years later. Especially if he has not maintained any hands on coding experience in that 30 year interim to maintain his skills and update his knowledge.

Note that Musk has literally been fact checked in the past on technical claims, specific computer programming and engineering claims about how things work as talking out of his ass. It's like just the other day he made a claim that Twitter was doing x thousands of Remote Procedure Calls and an actual Twitter software engineer chimed in that Twitter actually doesn't make RPCs at all (and was fired for it.) The dude is a businessman who thinks he's something else, and because you're in love with him and a giant Muskie mark you love him too. That's fine, just quite being a lying shill bitch about it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 21, 2022, 01:21:22 PM
My great great grandfather studied electrical engineering as part of the girst graduating class at hist University. I don't actually know what he went on to do as a job.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 01:27:16 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 01:09:12 PMAs I already mentioned--if it was ancient history very few people would probably have anything to say about it. Mind you our current President in the United States some 30+ years ago got caught lying about his academic career. Interestingly so did his immediate predecessor--Trump claimed to have graduated "top of his class" which he did not.

I think it would be fair to ding Biden if he was still saying in the 2020s that he had the academic achievements he was caught lying about in the 1980s, because it would speak to his character.

Likewise when Musk goes onto the world's most listened to podcast and lies about his background and aptitudes, it must mean it's something Musk cares enough to lie about, and it is unlikely that he considers it unimportant.

I don't think Biden is a known no-integrity liar like Trump or Musk.

Musk thinks all kinds of stuff is important that I don't give two shits about.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on November 21, 2022, 01:42:48 PM
My great-grandfather was an engineer.  He drove a train.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 21, 2022, 02:06:43 PM
Old Trump tweet vs. Musk yesterday.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FiDSkbuWAAA5LY7?format=jpg&name=medium)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FiDU6WbX0AE_U8Z?format=jpg&name=900x900)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 21, 2022, 02:09:02 PM
WTH is the second one?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on November 21, 2022, 02:19:12 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 01:09:12 PMHey! I had a grandfather with the exact same storyline, he started work cleaning tanks at a chemical plant out of high school and was a chemical engineer by the time WWII broke out. But note that as I mentioned, times change. The more established engineering disciplines (like ChemE) that is simply not possible today. With all the complex regulations, liabilities etc involved, no one would trust a smart guy willing to learn on the job at a chemical plant to go from being one of the blue collar workers to one of the engineers.

But I think you and Berkut know that, and of course are just finding ways to defend Musk. That's fine--just admit you are Muskies, that's your thing you like and you should embrace it, no reason to be ashamed of it.


I'm not a muskie.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 21, 2022, 02:23:06 PM
How dare you disparage a noble fish. Call them elonites. On the plus side has a more cultish ring to it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 21, 2022, 02:36:39 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 21, 2022, 02:23:06 PMHow dare you disparage a noble fish. Call them elonites. On the plus side has a more cultish ring to it.

Am I the only one who associates "Muskie" with one-time Democratic frontrunner in the 1972 Primaries, Ed Muskie?

Anyone?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 21, 2022, 02:37:31 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 21, 2022, 02:23:06 PMHow dare you disparage a noble fish. Call them elonites. On the plus side has a more cultish ring to it.

I was going to say that Elonites sounds like a weird biblical tribe or somesuch.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 21, 2022, 02:37:33 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 21, 2022, 02:36:39 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 21, 2022, 02:23:06 PMHow dare you disparage a noble fish. Call them elonites. On the plus side has a more cultish ring to it.

Am I the only one who associates "Muskie" with one-time Democratic frontrunner in the 1972 Primaries, Ed Muskie?

Anyone?

Nope. Giant fish here. At a stretch a chair.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 21, 2022, 03:14:58 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 21, 2022, 02:09:02 PMWTH is the second one?

Twitter tempting Trump back, I suppose.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Legbiter on November 21, 2022, 03:40:20 PM
Quote from: Syt on November 21, 2022, 03:14:58 PMTwitter tempting Trump back, I suppose.

:lol:

Yeah.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FiHSiG9VsAAW6dX?format=jpg&name=medium)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 03:40:23 PM
QuoteHere's the thing--no matter what shitty Musk behavior people point out, with sourcing, you find reasons to say it isn't a big deal.


Ahhh, we've gotten to the lying part of the argument. So much less interesting.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 03:45:10 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on November 21, 2022, 02:19:12 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 01:09:12 PMHey! I had a grandfather with the exact same storyline, he started work cleaning tanks at a chemical plant out of high school and was a chemical engineer by the time WWII broke out. But note that as I mentioned, times change. The more established engineering disciplines (like ChemE) that is simply not possible today. With all the complex regulations, liabilities etc involved, no one would trust a smart guy willing to learn on the job at a chemical plant to go from being one of the blue collar workers to one of the engineers.

But I think you and Berkut know that, and of course are just finding ways to defend Musk. That's fine--just admit you are Muskies, that's your thing you like and you should embrace it, no reason to be ashamed of it.


I'm not a muskie.
The world is apparently divided into people who don't care if they make shitty arguments about Musk, as long as they are disparaging, and "Muskies".

This is religion at this point for the OvB's of the world, not objective thinking.

Which has been my point all along. Musk himself is not nearly as interesting as the hysteria he drives in the tribes who identify themselves as being against him. It really is fascinating, and rather distressing.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 03:55:38 PM
"Not objective thinking" from a guy who in the last few hours in another thread on this forum has called out a public figure lying, and defends it as not a big deal here. Almost like someone is willing to warp how they talk about something endlessly in defending their patron Saint. I.e. the typical behavior of a Muskie.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 04:07:57 PM
You are lying again - to the extent that I mentioned him lying about a degree I in fact stated the exact opposite - that lying is much more serious then whether or not he actually has an engineering degree but calls himself an engineer (which isn't a lie at all, since you can in fact be an engineer without an engineering degree, and he has never, so far as I know, claimed to have an engineering degree at all, since a physics degree isn't an engineering degree in the first place).

Why are you lying about what I said? Why are you so emotionally invested and upset that someone doesn't agree with every little bit of gossip you so breathlessly report to us about Musk?

OMG he doesn't have a physics degree! He might have been in the US illegally! OMG OMG OMG!

Relax man. He's just some asshole on the internet who we are watching crash and burn in real time. You don't have to virtue signal quite so desperately.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 04:15:40 PM
"Any scrutiny applied to Musk" = obsession and gossip. Spoken like a true Muskie. Or maybe you prefer Muskrat, your pick.

Just curious--what does a billionaire's cock taste like?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 21, 2022, 04:16:20 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 04:15:40 PM"Any scrutiny applied to Musk" = obsession and gossip. Spoken like a true Muskie. Or maybe you prefer Muskrat, your pick.

Just curious--what does a billionaire's cock taste like?

Elonite :contract:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 04:21:28 PM
I find the idea that Musk isn't already known as a liar and an asshole a bit weird.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 04:24:49 PM
Quote from: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 04:21:28 PMI find the idea that Musk isn't already known as a liar and an asshole a bit weird.

Cool. I hope we don't talk about anything on Languish that is already known anymore. Some topics I hope we can all agree to never talk about again:

1. Trump being a liar / fraud / crook
2. Putin being a liar / criminal / evil autocrat
3. PRC being a human rights abuser
4. Saudia Arabia being a human rights abuser
5. Iran being a human rights abuser
6. The British Tories being politically incompetent
7. The Republican party being toxic and anti-democratic
8. The Democratic party being hopelessly bad at politics

I am sure we can think of a lot more topics to never discuss or elaborate on ever since they are already well known.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 04:29:21 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 04:24:49 PM
Quote from: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 04:21:28 PMI find the idea that Musk isn't already known as a liar and an asshole a bit weird.

Cool. I hope we don't talk about anything on Languish that is already known anymore. Some topics I hope we can all agree to never talk about again:

1. Trump being a liar / fraud / crook
2. Putin being a liar / criminal / evil autocrat
3. PRC being a human rights abuser
4. Saudia Arabia being a human rights abuser
5. Iran being a human rights abuser
6. The British Tories being politically incompetent
7. The Republican party being toxic and anti-democratic
8. The Democratic party being hopelessly bad at politics

I am sure we can think of a lot more topics to never discuss or elaborate on ever since they are already well known.

I don't follow. Why wouldn't we talk about these things?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 21, 2022, 04:31:43 PM
Quote from: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 04:21:28 PMI find the idea that Musk isn't already known as a liar and an asshole a bit weird.

It's not that it isn't known fact that hes a liar and an asshole*, it's the fact that some try to hand wave it away because of their hero worship. It's annoying.

* although some people don't know. And some of us learn something new once in a while.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 04:33:34 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 21, 2022, 04:31:43 PM
Quote from: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 04:21:28 PMI find the idea that Musk isn't already known as a liar and an asshole a bit weird.

It's not that it isn't known fact that hes a liar and an asshole*, it's the fact that some try to hand wave it away because of their hero worship. It's annoying.

* although some people don't know. And some of us learn something new once in a while.

Who does that?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 21, 2022, 04:35:16 PM
Quote from: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 04:33:34 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 21, 2022, 04:31:43 PM
Quote from: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 04:21:28 PMI find the idea that Musk isn't already known as a liar and an asshole a bit weird.

It's not that it isn't known fact that hes a liar and an asshole*, it's the fact that some try to hand wave it away because of their hero worship. It's annoying.

* although some people don't know. And some of us learn something new once in a while.

Who does that?

I could give you a list. it's rather short on this forum, but have I very strong feeling you know who they are already.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 04:36:35 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 21, 2022, 04:35:16 PM
Quote from: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 04:33:34 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 21, 2022, 04:31:43 PM
Quote from: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 04:21:28 PMI find the idea that Musk isn't already known as a liar and an asshole a bit weird.

It's not that it isn't known fact that hes a liar and an asshole*, it's the fact that some try to hand wave it away because of their hero worship. It's annoying.

* although some people don't know. And some of us learn something new once in a while.

Who does that?

I could give you a list. it's rather short on this forum, but have the very strong feeling you know who they are already.

FWIW I don't.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 21, 2022, 04:37:43 PM
Quote from: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 04:36:35 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 21, 2022, 04:35:16 PM
Quote from: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 04:33:34 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 21, 2022, 04:31:43 PM
Quote from: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 04:21:28 PMI find the idea that Musk isn't already known as a liar and an asshole a bit weird.

It's not that it isn't known fact that hes a liar and an asshole*, it's the fact that some try to hand wave it away because of their hero worship. It's annoying.

* although some people don't know. And some of us learn something new once in a while.

Who does that?

I could give you a list. it's rather short on this forum, but have the very strong feeling you know who they are already.

FWIW I don't.

Well then I guess I misjudged you. A shame for the both of us.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 04:38:50 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 21, 2022, 04:37:43 PM
Quote from: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 04:36:35 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 21, 2022, 04:35:16 PM
Quote from: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 04:33:34 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 21, 2022, 04:31:43 PM
Quote from: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 04:21:28 PMI find the idea that Musk isn't already known as a liar and an asshole a bit weird.

It's not that it isn't known fact that hes a liar and an asshole*, it's the fact that some try to hand wave it away because of their hero worship. It's annoying.

* although some people don't know. And some of us learn something new once in a while.

Who does that?

I could give you a list. it's rather short on this forum, but have the very strong feeling you know who they are already.

FWIW I don't.

Well then I guess I misjudged you. A shame for the both of us.

:unsure: OK?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 21, 2022, 04:39:48 PM
I looked on twitter. Musk making a meme of Donald trump fucking twitter?..... Man this whole thing is bizzare.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 04:44:42 PM
Quote from: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 04:36:35 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 21, 2022, 04:35:16 PM
Quote from: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 04:33:34 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 21, 2022, 04:31:43 PM
Quote from: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 04:21:28 PMI find the idea that Musk isn't already known as a liar and an asshole a bit weird.

It's not that it isn't known fact that hes a liar and an asshole*, it's the fact that some try to hand wave it away because of their hero worship. It's annoying.

* although some people don't know. And some of us learn something new once in a while.

Who does that?

I could give you a list. it's rather short on this forum, but have the very strong feeling you know who they are already.

FWIW I don't.
It is apparently some kind of strange mystery.

I am trying to find an example of someone on Languish who has said he isn't a liar and an asshole, but I cannot find anyone at all.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Iormlund on November 21, 2022, 05:02:44 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 10:24:00 AMNow, not every engineer has to be a PE, although in many fields it is seen as an important step in one's career. But I don't know any "real" field of engineering where it is considered appropriate to call yourself an engineer when you don't even have an engineering degree.

I don't know a single PE, and I've worked with hundreds of engineers. Perhaps someone had the accreditation, mind you, but it's never come up.

A great deal of engineers don't have a degree either. I never finished mine, for example. And I've been working as an engineer for my entire professional career. I make the same (or more) than my licensed colleagues. I have the same job title and role.

The one and only advantage of the degree in most fields is that it makes getting past HR A LOT easier. After that you're typically judged on your experience and recommendations.

There are, of course, exceptions. Roles where legal liability is a key issue: civil engineering, health and safety, etc.
But in my experience most engineers don't do that sort of thing.
Again IME most engineers don't even work as actual engineers. For example, I'm actually the only one of my class mates who developed a career at technical roles (sort of, I eventually "ascended" to half-tech half-management). The rest work in sales, marketing, logistics, quality, or health and safety.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 05:47:01 PM
You're not in the United States, right? I have literally no idea how things are in Europe. In the US PE certification is certainly not universal, but in certain fields of engineering it is considered essential for career progression and is certainly not uncommon, and outside of software engineering virtually no one with a "real" engineering job is hired without some form of engineering degree.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 05:55:04 PM
Looking it up--in the U.S. around 50% of engineers end up becoming PEs (this excludes software engineers, which did not even have a PE exam until relatively recently, and again--in many ways software engineers are a little outside of the traditional discipline.)

While there doesn't appear to be great comprehensive data, looking at things like the BLS OOH (a government publication on various job fields), it appears that basically no one works as a chemical, civil, mechanical or aerospace engineer without a college degree--and almost always some sort of engineering degree. The specific subspecialty degree appears to be a little less important--for example it isn't unheard for someone with a degree in Mechanical Engineering to get hired as an Aerospace Engineer. It also appears to be possible to get into ChemE with a non-engineering degree if it is in a closely related field like Chemistry.

While what you describe seemed to be normal in the United States back before the 1970s, I think by and large the field of engineering in the United States is almost exclusively viewed as a college graduate field--with again, SWEs being an exception--it should be noted the very term software engineer is pretty squishy. "Computer programmers" often have the title software engineer, software developer, computer programmer, programmer analyst etc, which are all jobs that essentially describe the same thing--writing computer code for a living. There is something of a movement, and there are schools/colleges developing programs to embrace it, to try and formalize codesmithing into something more than just a job title but "real" engineering, and you can now get Master's in Software Engineering and things like that, but things like the standards body, the uniform curriculum across accredited schools and other certifications are not nearly as present in software as in the other engineering fields.

FWIW "professionalization" is not uncommon in the United States. You used to be able to become a lawyer in the United States by simply reading law (no degrees required), and in fact while it's incredibly niche, a few states still allow it. Becoming a doctor used to be done via apprenticeship as well, and you also have fields like Accounting where lots of people work as "accountants" without a degree. But the accounting industry has worked to professionalize the degree, and that's why you often see them label non-degreed people who just keep the books "bookkeepers" and things of that nature, and that's why the CPA exam (which requires 150 hours of undergraduate study to sit for), to create the imprimatur of professionalization around the field.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 05:57:00 PM
The first result when googling if you can be an engineer in America without an engineering degree:
https://www.mooc.org/blog/can-i-be-an-engineer-without-a-degree

QuoteDoes being an engineer require a degree?

Most engineers tend to have traditional degrees. However, degrees are not always strict requirements to work in the field. For instance, the field of computer engineering sees many self-taught computer programmers.

Self-taught engineers can begin with junior or entry level positions and work their way up to more advanced positions. For example:

Electrical technicians can gain experience wiring systems and installing hardware as part of their pathway to becoming electrical engineers.
CAD technicians help draft designs for buildings and machinery and have opportunities to transition into architectural or structural engineering roles.
Junior level computer programmers can learn the basics of a specialization such as web development or mobile development on their way to becoming full-fledged software engineers.
Some engineers get started with an associate's degree. Others get their foot in the door by taking online courses or enrolling in intense coding bootcamp. Learning the basic skills is an important first step before trying to apply for an engineering job. Although it can be challenging, it is certainly possible to work your way up and get an engineering job without a degree.

And again, Musk describing himself as an engineer is rather general and vernacular. There is nothing particularly noteworthy about him calling himself an "engineer". 

If he claimed he had a degree and did not, then his is a liar. But claiming he is an engineer, or describing his work or how he sees himself as being an "engineer" is not a lie, just because he didn't get a degree in engineering.

And excluding software engineers (which hilariously is what he actually started as) from engineering is classic No True Scotsman fallacy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 05:59:33 PM
Note that none of this also debunks the reality that Musk does not do engineering work, there is no evidence he does--and plenty of evidence based on commentary he has engaged in very recently that he does not have any deep technical knowledge of many of the things on which he speaks or that his companies do. Which BTW...would be, perfectly normal/appropriate for a CEO? The CEO of Kellogg's almost certainly doesn't know the nitty gritty of food science, growing wheat, or how to operate machines that make sugary cereal. Nor should he.

But if he went around calling himself a farmer because Kellogg is one of the bigger consumers of industrial wheat production, people would call that out for how stupid it is.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 05:59:52 PM
https://www.zippia.com/engineer-jobs/demographics/

QuoteTYPES OF ENGINEER DEGREE LEVELS
The most common degree for engineers is bachelor's degree 65% of engineers earn that degree. A close second is master's degree with 13% and rounding it off is associate degree with 11%.
Job Title


  • Bachelors, 65%

  • Masters, 13%

  • Associate, 11%

  • High School Diploma, 5%

  • Other Degrees, 6%
Engineers By Education
[th]Engineer Degree
(https://static.zippia.com/ui-router/images/top_sort_unselected.png)(https://static.zippia.com/ui-router/images/bottom_sort_unselected.png)
[/th]
[th]Percentages
(https://static.zippia.com/ui-router/images/top_sort_unselected.png)(https://static.zippia.com/ui-router/images/bottom_sort_unselected.png)
[/th]
Bachelors65%
Masters13%
Associate11%
High School Diploma5%
Other Degrees6%
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 06:01:36 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 05:59:33 PMNote that none of this also debunks the reality that Musk does not do engineering work, there is no evidence he does--and plenty of evidence based on commentary he has engaged in very recently that he does not have any deep technical knowledge of many of the things on which he speaks or that his companies do. Which BTW...would be, perfectly normal/appropriate for a CEO? The CEO of Kellogg's almost certainly doesn't know the nitty gritty of food science, growing wheat, or how to operate machines that make sugary cereal. Nor should he.

But if he went around calling himself a farmer because Kellogg is one of the bigger consumers of industrial wheat production, people would call that out for how stupid it is.
But that isn't what your breathless hit piece was about - it was about how he lied about being an engineer. 

If the CEO of Kellogg used to be a farmer, and called himself a farmer, I don't think anyone would care whether or not he had a degree in agriculture. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 06:03:52 PM
You know, even if I am 100% right about this, he is still just as big an asshole....right?

It's not like his being a douchebag was somehow mitigated by whether or not he went and got himself a physics degree at some point or not.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 06:09:15 PM
So your post confirms at least 95% of people in those fields have college degrees lol, that's basically confirming my point. BTW when I was looking up hard data on how many engineers were in the field and with what degrees, I saw that same site and chose not to cite it, because its sourcing appeared to be weak--but I was tempted to cite it anyway since it confirmed my claims, hilarious that you would post it thinking it supports yours.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 06:16:50 PM
It absolutely supports the claim that not everyone who is an engineer has an engineering degree.

It shows that 1 in 10 or so would be in Musks position - someone with a HS or "other" degree. 

You cannot claim Musk is lying about being an engineer because he doesn't have a degree unless not having a degree is somehow highly unusual such that simply saying "I am an engineer" implies a degree, like the way saying "I am a doctor" implies you have a doctors license, or "I am a lawyer" implies having passed the bar.

What is hilarious is how desperate you are to be right. It's ok - you can hate Musk even if he didn't lie about being an engineer!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 06:31:36 PM
Quote from: Berkut on May 14, 2020, 08:02:42 AMMusk is most certainly a genius if you define it was some kind of incredibly intelligent person with unique drive, talent, and vision. He is also a douchebag, and you can make a good argument about his stability or lack thereof.

Angry at an article comparing Musk to Trump--who both have primarily the same sort of genius, i.e. making money off of bravado.

Quote from: Berkut on May 27, 2021, 12:44:40 PMIf Musk was just all about making himself a lot of cash, why do you think he is doing shit like SpaceX?

Berkut creduluously believing Musk runs SpaceX out of altruistic reasons--note this is a company that just opened up a new funding round valuing the company at $150bn.

Quote from: Berkut on May 27, 2021, 02:10:39 PMMusk is kind of a d-bag, but I don't get why people have this cynical attitude that he is somehow secretly just lying about his motivations.

I think it is more about what people feel they have to believe about rich people then anything the actual evidence shows.

Berkut "just asking questions" about why people are cynical about his motivations, i.e. why would anyone question this smart, genius altruistic person. He does add in a cursory "he's a d-bag", which you obviously can tell he really means and it makes him definitely not a Muskie.

Quote from: Berkut on April 25, 2022, 01:00:06 PMYep, I think he is pretty much a complete asshole, and we could use a couple more like him.

But taking over Twitter? At best a distraction from what he ought to be focused on, and at worst a complete and utter disaster.

Another cursory claim he is a "bad guy", but clearly the crush remains--we need a few more like him. Sounds like every Trump supporter ever in their defense of the Orange Guy.

Quote from: Berkut on April 25, 2022, 01:58:35 PMI don't agree that he wants to see the world burn, even sometimes. I've never seen anything like that from him.

No sir, Mr. Elon never want bad things.

Quote from: Berkut on April 26, 2022, 10:33:03 AMAbsolutely.

A privately held company owned and controlled by Musk could enact some criticial changes that could improve the platform immensely.

More robust authentication of users to eliminate bots for example.

Requiring users to "prove" they are human.

One of things he mentioned was making the algorithms open source and transparent.

All of this could be very good, in fact.

Berkut talking about how Musk can save Twitter.

Quote from: Berkut on April 27, 2022, 03:18:37 PMThere is a perfectly reasonable argument to be made that its bad enough that Musk can't make it that much worse....


Nope, Musk certainly can't make anything worse.


Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 29, 2022, 01:12:32 PMHere is the thing, I have functionally no respect for Berkut's position because Berkut isn't a pod person.


This was one of my earlier posts--I take it back by the way, I do in fact, think Berkut is a pod person now. I previously thought he was a fairly interesting / intelligent poster that you could count on to look at things critically, I know better now.

Quote from: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 09:30:36 AMYes, he is clearly making error after error.

I mean, what was he thinking with that crypto investment? Nobody else fell for such a thing!

And obviously he knows nothing about how to actually make money, which is totally clear because one of his investments isn't doing well at this particular moment in time.

If you objectively look at the man and how he has managed his finances, he is clearly terribly incompetent at this "making money" thing.

Defending dumb crypto investments.

Quote from: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 09:58:29 AMYou guys are a bunch of housewives reading tabloids about the private lives of some star you love to hate.

This is when he first started to reduce all criticism of Musk to "gossip." Nope, not a Muskie at all.

Quote from: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 11:31:17 AMIt's bizarre the level of hatred people have for him. You would think they are his kids moms.

Why would anyone hate Dear Father Muskie?

Quote from: Berkut on July 11, 2022, 11:32:48 AMYou cannot create Microsoft, Apple, and Tesla/Space X and manage them into the spectacular successes they are (the "incredibly valuable" part), without some savvy business dealings.

Also, I find it rather amusing that the knock on them is now going to be that their companies just became incredbily successful via the technology their founders had a key role in inventing, rather then "savvy business dealing".

Isn't that normally the knock on the right - that they don't really actually invent or do anything, they just make savvy business deals to create wealth?

Now, the knock on them is that they are not savvy, they just invent amazing shit that is incredibly successful?


Here he claims not only Musk but Jobs and Gates made billions off of "inventing things" which is untrue for all three men, almost hilariously so.

Quote from: Berkut on July 13, 2022, 10:43:40 AMYeah, but he is a dick. Let's stay focused on what is important.

Can we have another 50 assholes like Musk please?

WE NEED MORE MUSK. (Not a Muskie!)

BTW that's only half of this thread, I don't think I need to keep going.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 06:38:57 PM
Let's make it clear too before Berkut obfuscates the point more--the actual Twitter thread I linked to contains tons of direct quotes from Elon touting his training in "Computational Physics" (did not exist at UPenn), and a number of other specific quotes about how his education has made him able to work as an expert in advanced technical matters at his companies. These interviews go back as far as 2005 and appear as recently as 2018. Musk himself is saying his education was important and it is part of how he is such a brilliant engineer--when he actually didn't graduate with a Physics degree and the only direct evidence from his time in school show he was a year behind in his studies and struggling when he dropped out.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 07:19:21 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 06:38:57 PMLet's make it clear too before Berkut obfuscates the point more--the actual Twitter thread I linked to contains tons of direct quotes from Elon touting his training in "Computational Physics" (did not exist at UPenn), and a number of other specific quotes about how his education has made him able to work as an expert in advanced technical matters at his companies. These interviews go back as far as 2005 and appear as recently as 2018. Musk himself is saying his education was important and it is part of how he is such a brilliant engineer--when he actually didn't graduate with a Physics degree and the only direct evidence from his time in school show he was a year behind in his studies and struggling when he dropped out.
Did not argue with any of that.

Just pointed out that saying he is an engineer does not claim that he has a degree in engineering. Or any degree at all, for that matter.

You are very selective in your quoting.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 07:23:09 PM
You are quite the master of the dishonest quoting and selectively just ignoring what people say.

I say a lot of stuff. A lot of it is straight out disparaging of Musk, and agreeing that he is in fact an asshole, and some of it is pointing out that despite that, not everything anyone says about him that is negative MUST be true.

You actually quote me saying disparaging things, but claim that I am lying when I say them, but of course, I am not lying when I say something YOU say is terrible is bullshit - those are my "true" Muskie views. Along with everyone else who has pointed out that you are talking out of your ass as well, of course - they are all Muskies.

The mob mentality of your posting is telling. You MUST agree with every single details of my hatred, or you are in alliance with that which I hate. There can be no acceptable ground anywhere but where YOU stand. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 07:25:04 PM
QuoteDefending dumb crypto investments.[


This is an easy case in point. This is a straight out lie on your part. 

You quote me, where I do not at all defend his crypto investment, and then immediately say I defended his crypto investment. 

I mean...you know I did not say that. You know I know I did not say that. 

But you don't care - it advances your narrative, and that is all that matters.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 21, 2022, 08:03:04 PM
Going back to Musk's shenanigans at Twitter, today Marjorie Taylor Greene has been reinstated.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on November 21, 2022, 08:41:33 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 21, 2022, 08:03:04 PMGoing back to Musk's shenanigans at Twitter, today Marjorie Taylor Greene has been reinstated.

Damn, Larch, and now you've gone and spoiled such a 'promising' thread. :grr:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 09:11:14 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 21, 2022, 08:03:04 PMGoing back to Musk's shenanigans at Twitter, today Marjorie Taylor Greene has been reinstated.
Do you think that is an obviously bad move?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 21, 2022, 09:13:52 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 09:11:14 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 21, 2022, 08:03:04 PMGoing back to Musk's shenanigans at Twitter, today Marjorie Taylor Greene has been reinstated.
Do you think that is an obviously bad move?

TBH, I didn't even know she had been banned from there.

Edit: Just read a bit, apparently it's her personal account the one being reinstated. It was suspended earlier this year for disseminating misinformation regarding Covid vaccines, after a long history of violations of Twitter policies. Her official account as congresswoman was not affected.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on November 21, 2022, 09:33:23 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 04:07:57 PMthat lying is much more serious then whether or not he actually has an engineering degree but calls himself an engineer (which isn't a lie at all, since you can in fact be an engineer without an engineering degree, and he has never, so far as I know, claimed to have an engineering degree at all, since a physics degree isn't an engineering degree in the first place).
I always thought that in US & Canada, one could called itself and "engineer" without having an engineering degree. :hmm:   Like, "softwar engineers"?  It's not something that would be allowed in Quebec, the name "engineer" is attached to the civil code and regulated by their professional order: you need the proper degree, you need to have joined the order and be in good standing. 

I've known a couple of structural engineers who suffered partial radiations because they exceeded the limits of their profession, and some who got in deep trouble because they called themselves "engineers" while they were no longer members of their professionnal order.

I always thought the rules were looser in the US and English Canada?  I've read so many software articles talking about "computer engineers" and people describing themselves as "engineers" or "architects" that I thought the name wasn't as regulated as it is over here.

Not too sure about the use "Doctor" for a PhD.  Oex would know better than me.  I know "Professor" is the preferred term.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on November 21, 2022, 09:43:35 PM
I used to be a "Muskie" I guess, starting when the Falcons started landing their booster back on Earth. I didn't do a deep dive into Musk, I just accepted the general narrative at that time, which was "this dude is a genius inventor that's going to bring us to Mars". Musk certainly portrayed himself as such through his many media appearances and interviews.

I think the disenchantment for a lot of folks came in the last couple of years. The taking Tesla private saga, the stuck kids in the cave, the Kanye West stuff, the numerous articles coming out with detailed research about how he made his fortune, the many lies, the Tesla union busting, the "touch my dick and I'll give you a horse", the general 4chan/edgelordiness of his online presence.

Tesla would have happened without him. Spacex would have happened without him. The man is not some genius inventor. He's just another late stage capitalism billionaire with an inflated sense of self.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on November 21, 2022, 10:09:06 PM
Reminder that CEOs are mostly useless. Especially Musk. Dude is the CEO of 4 companies, FFS.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 10:31:16 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 21, 2022, 09:43:35 PMI just accepted the general narrative at that time, which was "this dude is a genius inventor that's going to bring us to Mars".

That is certainly as far as Berkut's brain has ever processed it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sophie Scholl on November 21, 2022, 11:07:34 PM
Musk's reinstating of some of the most dreadful accounts and relaxing or removal of a lot of the community standards has made Twitter absolutely dreadful. I keep blocking troll accounts and keep refusing trending topics, but they just pop back up. It's annoying as heck and a game of whack-a-mole I'm running out of interest in playing.  :glare:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 11:13:58 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 10:31:16 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 21, 2022, 09:43:35 PMI just accepted the general narrative at that time, which was "this dude is a genius inventor that's going to bring us to Mars".

That is certainly as far as Berkut's brain has ever processed it.
You are lying. Again.

You know perfectly well that is not my position at all, since I've stated my position several times that does not amount to anything like that.

What is your purpose in just lying about what I believe? You don't even believe I believe that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 21, 2022, 11:22:23 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 04:24:49 PM
Quote from: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 04:21:28 PMI find the idea that Musk isn't already known as a liar and an asshole a bit weird.

Cool. I hope we don't talk about anything on Languish that is already known anymore. Some topics I hope we can all agree to never talk about again:

1. Trump being a liar / fraud / crook
2. Putin being a liar / criminal / evil autocrat
3. PRC being a human rights abuser
4. Saudia Arabia being a human rights abuser
5. Iran being a human rights abuser
6. The British Tories being politically incompetent
7. The Republican party being toxic and anti-democratic
8. The Democratic party being hopelessly bad at politics

I am sure we can think of a lot more topics to never discuss or elaborate on ever since they are already well known.

First Rule of Holes.

When you find yourself telling others what they think despite what they say they think, the hole is plenty deep enough.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 21, 2022, 11:25:01 PM
Quote from: viper37 on November 21, 2022, 09:33:23 PMNot too sure about the use "Doctor" for a PhD.  Oex would know better than me.  I know "Professor" is the preferred term.

In the US, "Professor" is a job title, not an honorific. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 21, 2022, 11:48:54 PM
When I first started tracking Musk, around the time he had his (first) run in with the SEC and the Thailand cave pedo thing, I said he is not a bad guy, just kind of flaky and eccentric, and with a big blind spot for short sellers.  And whether he was personally drafting plans for Tesla batteries and SpaceX retro rockets or not, it was still very, very impressive to start up, or help start up the companies he did.

The aura started to dim when he said fuck you to the Covid restrictions governing his California plant, and when he jumped on the Gamestop pile.

Then when the Twitter takeover announcement came, and with it the rumors of unbanning Donald, warning bells started flashing.

Then this trainwreck of a takeover came and I have to agree with DGuller that he has gone mad.  And perhaps more importantly he no longer seems that bright.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 22, 2022, 12:55:30 AM
Quote from: grumbler on November 21, 2022, 11:22:23 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 04:24:49 PM
Quote from: The Brain on November 21, 2022, 04:21:28 PMI find the idea that Musk isn't already known as a liar and an asshole a bit weird.

Cool. I hope we don't talk about anything on Languish that is already known anymore. Some topics I hope we can all agree to never talk about again:

1. Trump being a liar / fraud / crook
2. Putin being a liar / criminal / evil autocrat
3. PRC being a human rights abuser
4. Saudia Arabia being a human rights abuser
5. Iran being a human rights abuser
6. The British Tories being politically incompetent
7. The Republican party being toxic and anti-democratic
8. The Democratic party being hopelessly bad at politics

I am sure we can think of a lot more topics to never discuss or elaborate on ever since they are already well known.

First Rule of Holes.

When you find yourself telling others what they think despite what they say they think, the hole is plenty deep enough.

Hey boomer, maybe you can focus more on joining the 21st century instead of posting weak ass insults. I know it was a shock to you earlier to find out undergrad business schools didn't operate the way they did back in the 1960s when you were in school, so maybe you should read up a bit on modern society before wasting your time with childish senile old man insults that seem to take up most of your time on these forums.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on November 22, 2022, 12:58:21 AM
Eventually Twitter will have to fulfill the content moderation policies of the Google and Apple app store, legal requirements like the EU GDPR or California's CCPA etc.

Will be interesting how the free speech absolutist reacts to these external constraints.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 22, 2022, 12:58:35 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 11:13:58 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2022, 10:31:16 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 21, 2022, 09:43:35 PMI just accepted the general narrative at that time, which was "this dude is a genius inventor that's going to bring us to Mars".

That is certainly as far as Berkut's brain has ever processed it.
You are lying. Again.

You know perfectly well that is not my position at all, since I've stated my position several times that does not amount to anything like that.

What is your purpose in just lying about what I believe? You don't even believe I believe that.

Berkut is sad he has been exposed as a mindless Muskie, so it is time for him to enter that phase of discussion where he cries about how unfair the discourse is because people are actually pointing out the things he has said.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 22, 2022, 01:52:18 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 09:11:14 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 21, 2022, 08:03:04 PMGoing back to Musk's shenanigans at Twitter, today Marjorie Taylor Greene has been reinstated.
Do you think that is an obviously bad move?

Yes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sophie Scholl on November 22, 2022, 02:47:16 AM
Reinstating such horrible accounts is bad enough, but Musk posting on horrible account's posts and making posts begging for Trump to return is another level of awful. He wants so, so, so badly to be popular, cool, edgy, and liked it's honestly pathetic. He's become the posterchild for so many cautionary concepts about wealth and power.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sophie Scholl on November 22, 2022, 03:05:32 AM
https://twitter.com/lawfulspice/status/1594817776992010240

Summary of Elon's posting from the video:
FiHyrmQXoAw4mvP.jpg
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 22, 2022, 08:43:01 AM
Quote from: garbon on November 22, 2022, 01:52:18 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 21, 2022, 09:11:14 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 21, 2022, 08:03:04 PMGoing back to Musk's shenanigans at Twitter, today Marjorie Taylor Greene has been reinstated.
Do you think that is an obviously bad move?

Yes.
I tend to agree, but am not entirely sure.

Questions around speech, for me, are never that obvious.

It isn't obvious to me that the best response to the Marjorie Greens and Trumps of the world is to try to shut them up. I used to be where Musk claims to be now though - a "free speech" absolutist. I don't know that I am anymore though - social media and modern communication technology seems to have given stupidity and ignorance an inate advantage, and I am no longer so sure that good ideas win in the market place of ideas. Hell, this thread alone shows that the ranting, angry screamer yelling and insulting and telling people what they want to hear gets more traction then any nuance or rational thought.

And I supported Twitter's right, as a private company, to react to their user violating their rules by refusing to give people who do so a platform. So for that part, I think I have to also say they have the same right to change their mind.

I don't think it is obvious at all. But I think that if it were up to me, I would likely come down on the side of pre-Musk twitter, but I would not feel good about it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 22, 2022, 08:43:41 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 22, 2022, 12:55:30 AMHey boomer, maybe you can focus more on joining the 21st century instead of posting weak ass insults.
:lmfao: :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 22, 2022, 08:50:54 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 22, 2022, 08:43:41 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 22, 2022, 12:55:30 AMHey boomer, maybe you can focus more on joining the 21st century instead of posting weak ass insults.
:lmfao: :hmm:

He's just looking for attention.  Pay him no heed.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 22, 2022, 09:20:56 AM
Quote from: grumbler on November 22, 2022, 08:50:54 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 22, 2022, 08:43:41 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 22, 2022, 12:55:30 AMHey boomer, maybe you can focus more on joining the 21st century instead of posting weak ass insults.
:lmfao: :hmm:

He's just looking for attention.  Pay him no heed.
Oh, but his behavior is interesting. The way he is just lashing out and going utterly ballistic because he cannot respond objectively to someone who challenges his cherished beliefs with actual rational argument. It is such a excellent example of active cognitive dissonance and the power of group thinking and how it drives emotive attachment to an idea.

I mean, overall, this thread has like....20 examples of Musk being a complete and utter douchebag. Nobody even disputes that. But if you even point out that 2 of those examples are not really good examples, why, suddenly you are cannot be on Team MuskIsADouche, and the only possible other team that can be is WeLoveMusk so you MUST be on THAT team!

If you are not purple Drasi, you must be green Drasi! And we hate them Green Drasi so so much!

It is a little microcosm of shit like the Bernie Bros, who would rather sink the entire ship then compromise with their own side.

I don't even feel like my views on Musk are remotely controversial. He is a total asshole who has accomplished some rather amazing things. How is that even interesting?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 22, 2022, 10:06:54 AM
Berkut, I've quoted your numerous posts in this thread--and let's note that I also provided a well sourced Google drive full of documents about Musk lying about his academic record (which is only a very small part of the criticisms that have been leveled against Musk in this thread.) Your posting history shows a clear sequence:

1. Dissemble. "Oh he sucks, but we need more like him."

2. Excuse. "Oh, he is doing bad things but it isn't really that bad, hell I have software engineers who work for me who don't have degree." (Ignoring the fact that almost certainly none of them lied to you about it when they were hired.)

3. Exaggerate his accomplishments--hilariously lumping him in with "creators" like Bill Gates / Jobs who both rather famously invented nothing of note.

You've a 1600 post thread of reasonable critiques of Musk or a few of his defenders (you chief among them) finding reasons to claim the critiques aren't valid.

Me pointing out that you appear to be a Muskie is fair play based on the body of your posts in this thread. There is no difference between your stance on Musk and the (rightly condemned) stance of people who support Trump while acknowledging his personal failures--often using some of the exact same language you use "he's an asshole, but we need more of them."

It's also been pointed out you appear to be buying into an unintelligent version of the "Great Man of History" ethos, which is a simplistic and juvenile way of looking at the world.

Your rhetoric is not surprising--the great men themselves have promoted these ideas for many years. The reality is in a capitalist society the very wealthy will be those who best deploy capital, and their heirs, for fully aware capitalists like myself that isn't a "problem." But part of being fully aware is understanding that is exactly what the great industrialists and businessmen are doing--they are reaping rewards through the market-efficient distribution of capital. Almost to a one, no great fortune in capitalism is made by someone who "creates" anything. It is made by men who recognize the value of something better than others and properly allocate capital resources toward them. These very men seem to intrinsically recognize that "efficient allocation of capital" doesn't generate the sort of cultural cachet they would like. It probably in part comes from that Christian ethic that looks down a bit on finance and the association of Jews with early financial houses.

This has led to enduring myths, some of which you have repeated in this thread. Many casual people think Henry Ford invented the assembly line (or even more inaccurately, the car itself), that Bill Gates or Steve Jobs invented the personal computer, or in the case of Steve Jobs the personal computer and the smartphone. These myths are being created in real time around Musk and the products of Tesla and SpaceX.

The History channel did a series of documentaries some years ago that almost perfectly encapsulates this common lie about history: "The Men Who Built America", which documents the lives of figures like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt et al.

The actual truth is these are the men who bought America, they and their kind are never and were never the men who built it. The men who built America were the ones who killed themselves working in the coal mines and iron mines that fed Carnegie's blast furnaces, who built the rail lines that moved their product, who dug the oil wells that fed Rockefeller's Empire, and who worked the high steel that built the cities. This is deemphasized I think in part because America fears touting too much the common man--as a country founded by wealthy white landowners and whose interests largely still accrue to the descendants of that class, it is often seen as dangerous to recognize that the sweat on the brow of many millions is what has made this country and everything important it has ever done. Recognizing the importance of the communal and societal over the "genius" individual. The men who organized it and got rich off of it by making shrewd investments serve an important purpose in a capitalist economy, but they are not paragons, they are not geniuses, they are not particularly innovative as a rule outside of their capital allocation strategies.

I refuse to be part of their hagiography; you revel in it. Perhaps because you aren't smart enough to know better, I don't know.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 22, 2022, 10:39:03 AM
You've a 1600 post thread of reasonable critiques of Musk or a few of his defenders (you chief among them) finding reasons to claim the critiques aren't valid.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 22, 2022, 10:06:54 AMYou've a 1600 post thread of reasonable critiques of Musk or a few of his defenders (you chief among them) finding reasons to claim the critiques aren't valid.
But again, this is just a straight out lie.

There is a long thread with a lot of critiques, and I have not at all found reasons to claim "they" are not valid, I've pointed out that SOME of them are not valid - like your claim that he called himself an engineer, hence he is lying because he doesn't have an engineering degree. That is simply wrong, as the data has been shown. Lots of people who are engineers don't have engineering degrees. That is not a matter of opinion, you are simply wrong.

And so you cannot stand being wrong, and turn it all personal and nasty.

I am not interested in a debate about Great Man Theory. Your characterization of my views is grossly juvenile strawmanning, and it simply isn't interesting to me. Suffice to say there is plenty of debate about the role of individuals in human society and the impact they have, and there isn't any clear (nor can there be) determinant of their actual impact, whether that be as actual doers, or money managers and capital collectors.

What I do find interesting is how people are so prone to just accepting what is obviously a bad argument, and argument they almost certainly internally know is shitty logic and reasoning, because it supports their cherished conclusions. You keep doing that, and I find it fascinating.

You continually mis-characterize my arguments in ways that we both know you know is total bullshit. You don't believe I believe the things you keep insisting I say anymore then I do, but it advances your cherished conclusion, so you don't care.

This is precisely why people support Trump. They don't care about the facts, or the reality, or making good arguments - they just want someone to tell them what they desperately want to believe is true. I think you are taking it to that next level, where you repeat things you know perfectly well are not true - it becomes this sort of signal to others that your dedication is so complete that you are willing to just repeat the lie even when everyone knows it is a lie. 

You say that your characterization of my views is accurate, even after I explicitly just state outright it is NOT my views. I find that level of dishonestly really interesting. I mean, I am telling you I don't think what you claim I think, you post a bunch of examples, and lie about what I say (quote me saying X, and then say "Berkut says Y"), and insist that I do think what you claim I think, even after I just state outright that I do not think that.

What is your point there? Are you hoping to convince me that I don't actually believe the things I actually believe? Is it just performative for the others, you are virtue signaling your commitment to the cause?

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 22, 2022, 10:41:07 AM
QuoteThis has led to enduring myths, some of which you have repeated in this thread. Many casual people think Henry Ford invented the assembly line (or even more inaccurately, the car itself), that Bill Gates or Steve Jobs invented the personal computer, or in the case of Steve Jobs the personal computer and the smartphone.

Fascinating - I have not repeated a single one of those myths. Not one.

Straight out lie, again.

Please, do show where I have claimed any of the following:

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on November 22, 2022, 10:56:28 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 22, 2022, 10:41:07 AM
QuoteThis has led to enduring myths, some of which you have repeated in this thread. Many casual people think Henry Ford invented the assembly line (or even more inaccurately, the car itself), that Bill Gates or Steve Jobs invented the personal computer, or in the case of Steve Jobs the personal computer and the smartphone.

Fascinating - I have not repeated a single one of those myths. Not one.

Straight out lie, again.

Please, do show where I have claimed any of the following:

  • Henry Ford invented the assembly line (or even more inaccurately, the car itself)
  • Bill Gates or Steve Jobs invented the personal computer
  • Steve Jobs the personal computer and the smartphone.


You think that OvB is lying about positions you took to brand you a muskie? Pot, meet kettle. You have no honesty in the way you argue and deserve the treatment returned to you.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 22, 2022, 11:11:15 AM
OvB didn't say Berkut holds those positions. He's saying that those positions (about Ford, Gates, Jobs) are as ridiculous as the position he says Berkut has displayed about Musk.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 22, 2022, 11:15:34 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 22, 2022, 11:11:15 AMOvB didn't say Berkut holds those positions. He's saying that those positions (about Ford, Gates, Jobs) are as ridiculous as the position he says Berkut has displayed about Musk.

Yep, I never once said Berkut was repeating myths about Ford--this isn't advanced English, since I literally said "some of which" in my post. And that was clear from my text. Berkut is literally just obsessed with being able to cry that he is being attacked unfairly so he is making spurious claims about what I've actually claimed so he can brand them "lies." In my long post directly quoting many of Berkut's posts in this thread, I already quoted the post in which he mentions Gates / Jobs as being inventors, so it isn't necessary for me to repost it. Also--let's not ignore the big picture, the minutiae of what he said or didn't say about various industrialists isn't the thrust of my point, but rather his well documented hagiography (in the long list of quotes) of wealthy men as being genius innovators which is contrary to how things actually work.

I'll note this is famously a strategy Donald Trump also uses extensively--someone says something he doesn't like? Just call it a lie, especially useful when the person is pointing out his own behavior.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 22, 2022, 11:36:45 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 22, 2022, 11:11:15 AMOvB didn't say Berkut holds those positions. He's saying that those positions (about Ford, Gates, Jobs) are as ridiculous as the position he says Berkut has displayed about Musk.

That is correct.  OvB couldn't actually name any of the instances of Berkut repeating enduring myths, so he threw out a red herring about what "many casual people think."  Berkut should have pointed out what a bullshit piece of evidence that was, rather than falling into the trap of thinking OvB was actually making an argument.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 22, 2022, 11:41:05 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 22, 2022, 11:11:15 AMOvB didn't say Berkut holds those positions. He's saying that those positions (about Ford, Gates, Jobs) are as ridiculous as the position he says Berkut has displayed about Musk.
" This has led to enduring myths, some of which you have repeated in this thread."

Which ones of those have I repeated in this thread?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 22, 2022, 11:49:52 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 22, 2022, 11:15:34 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 22, 2022, 11:11:15 AMOvB didn't say Berkut holds those positions. He's saying that those positions (about Ford, Gates, Jobs) are as ridiculous as the position he says Berkut has displayed about Musk.

Yep, I never once said Berkut was repeating myths about Ford--this isn't advanced English, since I literally said "some of which" in my post. 
I am glad you are admitting you lied about what I said, since in this exact sentence, you do in fact claim that you said "some of which". This isn't advanced English - some of which (which is a mealy mouthed, contemptible way of arguing anyway - you are substituting the things I say with things you claim other people say, and then claim they are equivalent - classic red herring) includes at least one. 

So which one - which of the three enduring myths did I "repeat in this thread"?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 22, 2022, 01:33:39 PM
I've already answered that. For fuck's sake man, take the time to read my posts or don't bother responding.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 22, 2022, 01:35:56 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 22, 2022, 01:33:39 PMI've already answered that. For fuck's sake man, take the time to read my posts or don't bother responding.
You did not answer that, you evaded it because you know you were lying, and I never said any of those things.

I think I will continue to bother responding to your rather amusing lies about what I think. I am learning so much about what I believe!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on November 22, 2022, 01:41:07 PM
Guys, any guesstimates on the ETA of when you will arrive at an agreement?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 22, 2022, 01:41:40 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 22, 2022, 01:35:56 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 22, 2022, 01:33:39 PMI've already answered that. For fuck's sake man, take the time to read my posts or don't bother responding.
You did not answer that, you evaded it because you know you were lying, and I never said any of those things.

I think I will continue to bother responding to your rather amusing lies about what I think. I am learning so much about what I believe!

It seems like AR has you pegged, you're a massively dishonest person. You are making claims that I said things I never said, I have actually quoted previously you call Jobs / Gates inventors (in this very thread), and you are muddying the waters by trying to claim that this passage was linking you to specific claims:

QuoteThis has led to enduring myths, some of which you have repeated in this thread. Many casual people think Henry Ford invented the assembly line (or even more inaccurately, the car itself), that Bill Gates or Steve Jobs invented the personal computer, or in the case of Steve Jobs the personal computer and the smartphone. These myths are being created in real time around Musk and the products of Tesla and SpaceX.

If you even remotely bothered to read my post, you would note that I am saying your attitude about "great man" genius is the sort of attitude that has led to enduring myths about all the feats of great men--I then went on to note specific things that great men are often casually said to have done which they haven't, actually done. I didn't say "Berkut says Henry Ford invented the assembly line", I said "Many people", if I was saying you specifically made that specific claim, I would have written it that way, I did not. You choose to represent it that way because, as AR has adeptly pointed out you are a hilariously dishonest and frankly hateful person who I strongly question ever interacting with again given the extreme intellectual dishonesty being displayed here.

I then in response noted that I have quoted you directly buying into the "great man" mythos around Gates and Jobs (whom you had previously mentioned in this very thread.) You are attempting to deliberately confuse and misstates other people's words, and in the context of a message board I can think of few things more tedious and more openly hostile and dishonest to discussion. You are an absolute scumbag of a human being.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 22, 2022, 02:30:03 PM
Quote from: DGuller on November 22, 2022, 01:41:07 PMGuys, any guesstimates on the ETA of when you will arrive at an agreement?

Not before Musk has a coherent, actionable, broadly-communicated plan for Twitter's future.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 22, 2022, 02:35:58 PM
Yes, I am sure the one who is throwing around the constant ad homs is the victim here.

Quotetrying to claim that this passage was linking you to specific claims:

It did link me to specific claims. That is the point. The claims I did make you cannot refute except with vague ad homs, so you claimed I said other things, and didn't figure I would notice that I had not made those claims. This is very dishonest, and you know it - hence your anger now at being called out on it.

You got called out on one of many, many lies you repeated, and now you are trying to weasel out of what you rather clearly said. It's ironic that you are touting having AR on your side, since A) He is hilariously known for being somewhat less then honest, and B) He is actually agreeing with me that you are lying about what I said! Otherwise, his angst about me "doing the same thing" would not make any sense. Of course, I didn't do what you are doing, so he is wrong about that part of it, obviously.

I absolutely read your post. You said

QuoteThis has led to enduring myths, some of which you have repeated in this thread. Many casual people think Henry Ford invented the assembly line (or even more inaccurately, the car itself), that Bill Gates or Steve Jobs invented the personal computer, or in the case of Steve Jobs the personal computer and the smartphone.

Now, you can latch onto the idea that sentence one had nothing to do with sentences two, and that "some of which you have repeated" is not actually in reference to the very words that you then list. That is...well, a special kind of weaseling. It doesn't actually get you out of being dishonest about what I said, it just makes you even more of a weasel for trying to pretend like words don't mean what they rather obviously mean.

The irony of you claiming I am trying to confuse and misstate is hilarious, since what I am doing is pointing out that you are doing exactly that, and providing very specific examples. I never repeated any of the enduring myths you claimed I repeated.

It is as simple as that, your temper tantrum notwithstanding. I am not the one quoting you, and then turning around and telling everyone else what you think that is not at all what you say. I simply quote your actual words.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 22, 2022, 02:43:32 PM
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 22, 2022, 02:30:03 PM
Quote from: DGuller on November 22, 2022, 01:41:07 PMGuys, any guesstimates on the ETA of when you will arrive at an agreement?

Not before Musk has a coherent, actionable, broadly-communicated plan for Twitter's future.

Next week already?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: frunk on November 22, 2022, 02:53:16 PM
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 22, 2022, 02:30:03 PM
Quote from: DGuller on November 22, 2022, 01:41:07 PMGuys, any guesstimates on the ETA of when you will arrive at an agreement?

Not before Musk has a coherent, actionable, broadly-communicated plan for Twitter's future.

I was going to say the heat death of the universe, but we might be talking about the same timeline.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on November 22, 2022, 02:54:56 PM
Quote from: frunk on November 22, 2022, 02:53:16 PMI was going to say the heat death of the universe, but we might be talking about the same timeline.
:hmm:  I have to say, I just realized that the heat death of the universe has positive aspects to it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Legbiter on November 22, 2022, 03:01:55 PM
Quote from: DGuller on November 22, 2022, 01:41:07 PMGuys, any guesstimates on the ETA of when you will arrive at an agreement?

No idea. I guess they're going to continue using their supernatural clairvoyance to mind-read each other's evil, dark thoughts.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 22, 2022, 03:23:33 PM
Quote from: DGuller on November 22, 2022, 01:41:07 PMGuys, any guesstimates on the ETA of when you will arrive at an agreement?

I hope not soon.  Watching OvB dancing the Weasel Dance is delicious.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on November 22, 2022, 05:29:25 PM
Berkut, after reading this thread and with Musk's recent behaviour, do you still wish we had 50 of him?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 22, 2022, 05:40:26 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 22, 2022, 02:35:58 PMI simply quote your actual words.

Repeatedly lying and saying I am saying things I have never said are not "quoting my words."

You were not quoting my words here:

Quote from: Berkut on November 22, 2022, 11:49:52 AMI am glad you are admitting you lied about what I said,

The truth is you have defended Musk with bad takes and stupid comments. This shows that you are either a low intelligence person--which I had not previously thought, or you have serious intellectual blinders on due to being "in gaga" over Musk. Being a Muskie is the less terrible of the two, because with competent cognitive abilities you always have the possibility to improve.

I note that no one here has gone "ballistic" about your Musk arguments, I've only attacked you personally when you strayed into attacking my integrity by calling me a liar. What I have said is you find excuses or find ways to dissemble for Musk, which shows a pathetic little obsession with him. It seemed to upset your Musk-love when I posted the Twitter thread with well-sourced evidence of Musk's personal duplicity.

I certainly never expected linking to it would result in a multiple page digression. It was hard, fully verified evidence of Musk being a liar and a fraud--but relatively small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. It was just one of many critiques of him posted in the months this thread has been active. Inexplicably you chose this time to start arguing that it isn't a big deal for people to lie about their credentials or their technical competence over more than 15 years in multiple public interviews. Only you know why you chose to start a multiple page tangent on that badly thought out subject.

When called on it you threw a fit and started calling me a liar. Like I said, I now view you as a scumbag. I don't view you as wholly worthless like I do grumbler (who you may note I don't waste the time of response on), but I will remember in any future interactions you are a liar with no integrity, and are among some of the least reputable people on these forums and deserving of nothing but hostility and scorn.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on November 22, 2022, 07:09:20 PM
I'm going to post this thread on Twitter for Elon to read
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 22, 2022, 07:11:48 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 22, 2022, 12:55:30 AM
Quote from: grumbler on November 21, 2022, 11:22:23 PMFirst Rule of Holes.

When you find yourself telling others what they think despite what they say they think, the hole is plenty deep enough.

Hey boomer, maybe you can focus more on joining the 21st century instead of posting weak ass insults. I know it was a shock to you earlier to find out undergrad business schools didn't operate the way they did back in the 1960s when you were in school, so maybe you should read up a bit on modern society before wasting your time with childish senile old man insults that seem to take up most of your time on these forums.

Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 22, 2022, 05:40:26 PMI don't view you as wholly worthless like I do grumbler (who you may note I don't waste the time of response on),

My bold.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 22, 2022, 07:13:46 PM
Quote from: FunkMonk on November 22, 2022, 07:09:20 PMI'm going to post this thread on Twitter for Elon to read

He'll go "Woah!  Glad there's a place on the internet even more fucked up than Twitter!"
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 22, 2022, 09:22:19 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 22, 2022, 05:40:26 PMInexplicably you chose this time to start arguing that it isn't a big deal for people to lie about their credentials or their technical competence
You are lying again. I never made any such argument.

In fact, to the extent I said anything about his lying, I explicitly stated that that was indeed evidence of him being an asshole.

Just said that calling himself an engineer is not lying just because he doesn't have an engineering degree.

Why you decided that was just beyond the pale, I don't....oh wait, actually I do know. Or at least I have a pretty good idea.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 22, 2022, 09:28:22 PM
Quote from: FunkMonk on November 22, 2022, 07:09:20 PMI'm going to post this thread on Twitter for Elon to read

Careful. He might buy languish and downsize us all.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on November 22, 2022, 09:38:22 PM
That be quite the negotiation between Musk and a former twitter employee.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 22, 2022, 09:38:34 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 22, 2022, 05:29:25 PMBerkut, after reading this thread and with Musk's recent behaviour, do you still wish we had 50 of him?
Well, maybe not 50 of him.

But I do wish we had more people who somehow manage to make profound, meaningful improvements in things like the cost of getting stuff into orbit. And if those people turn out to be contemptible assholes, I can live with that. It's not that I wish we had a bunch more assholes, it is that I wish we had a lot more innovative people who can drive change, and am willing to live with them being assholes if they are, rather then just passing on the innovation.

What I find interesting about your take is two things.

1. It seems like you liked Musk because of what you thought of the things he accomplished. OK. But then he started going all asshole like (he was actually always an asshole, BTW, it's just that nobody noticed), and now you don't just not like him, but you've decided his accomplishments are no longer accomplishments either. But there can be only two reasons for that conclusion:

A) You evaluated what he has done, and determined that he didn't actually do it. It was others, and he just took the credit. OK - if that is the case, then you should come to that conclusion regardless of whether or not he was an asshole. That is true regardless, right? Or

B) You are dismissing his accomplishments BECAUSE you've realized what an asshole he is - but that doesn't make sense either, unless you believe that assholes cannot accomplish things (which I guess is the OVB view? Not sure exactly). That goes back to my original point, that people are evaluating his accomplishments based on their emotional distaste for him as a person.

2. You said you think that Tesla would have happened without him, and that SpaceX would have happened without him. Again...ok. Not a ridiculous argument at all. But.....if he is not responsible for the success of Tesla and SpaceX, then is he responsible for the meltdown of Twitter? Again, it seems like there is some special pleading happening here. You can make an argument that people like Musk are just the face of things that are happening anyway, and hence do not deserve and particular credit for them. And if that is true, then we sure as hell don't need another 49 prominent douchebags.

But if that is the case, then it seems to me that we must apply that principle consistently. If Musk gets no credit for Tesla, does Martin Luther King Jr. get credit for his leadership of the civil rights movement? Should we stop talking about the genous of Leonardi da Vinci or Galileo or the Wright Brothers? Does Mussolini get to be spit upon for leading Italy into fascism, or was that all just inevitable, and the people involved don't really matter? De Gaulle not worthy of respect, because everything he did was going to happen regardless? 

And if that is true....then why get worked up over them? Again, they are just assholes in a world with lots of assholes, or good people in a world of other good people.

I am honestly not trying to "gotcha" you - I really am curious about whether you've thought this through. I suspect, and I apologize if this comes across as being dismissive, that you have not, and your views on Musk as a person (he is a piece of shit) are largely informing your views on Musk's accomplishments, and in fact you do recognize that individuals, for better or worse, do in fact accomplish things worthy of praise or anger.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 22, 2022, 10:57:00 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 22, 2022, 09:28:22 PMCareful. He might buy languish and downsize us all.

Fuck that.  He already dicked me over once.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tonitrus on November 22, 2022, 11:08:31 PM
I dunno...if he offers $40B for Languish, I say we take it and split the proceeds.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 22, 2022, 11:13:57 PM
OK, if he wants to offer that deal I'm totally taking it and splitting it with y'all.  Unfortunately, we don't have  ~300MM daily active users. :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tonitrus on November 22, 2022, 11:15:45 PM
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 22, 2022, 11:13:57 PMOK, if he wants to offer that deal I'm totally taking it and splitting it with y'all.  Unfortunately, we don't have  ~300MM daily active users. :P

Languish is dying.  :(
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 22, 2022, 11:29:08 PM
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 22, 2022, 11:13:57 PMOK, if he wants to offer that deal I'm totally taking it and splitting it with y'all.  Unfortunately, we don't have  ~300MM daily active users. :P

We could let the bots post again.  :)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on November 23, 2022, 03:13:10 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 22, 2022, 09:38:34 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 22, 2022, 05:29:25 PMBerkut, after reading this thread and with Musk's recent behaviour, do you still wish we had 50 of him?
Well, maybe not 50 of him.

But I do wish we had more people who somehow manage to make profound, meaningful improvements in things like the cost of getting stuff into orbit. And if those people turn out to be contemptible assholes, I can live with that. It's not that I wish we had a bunch more assholes, it is that I wish we had a lot more innovative people who can drive change, and am willing to live with them being assholes if they are, rather then just passing on the innovation.

What I find interesting about your take is two things.

1. It seems like you liked Musk because of what you thought of the things he accomplished. OK. But then he started going all asshole like (he was actually always an asshole, BTW, it's just that nobody noticed), and now you don't just not like him, but you've decided his accomplishments are no longer accomplishments either. But there can be only two reasons for that conclusion:

A) You evaluated what he has done, and determined that he didn't actually do it. It was others, and he just took the credit. OK - if that is the case, then you should come to that conclusion regardless of whether or not he was an asshole. That is true regardless, right? Or

B) You are dismissing his accomplishments BECAUSE you've realized what an asshole he is - but that doesn't make sense either, unless you believe that assholes cannot accomplish things (which I guess is the OVB view? Not sure exactly). That goes back to my original point, that people are evaluating his accomplishments based on their emotional distaste for him as a person.

2. You said you think that Tesla would have happened without him, and that SpaceX would have happened without him. Again...ok. Not a ridiculous argument at all. But.....if he is not responsible for the success of Tesla and SpaceX, then is he responsible for the meltdown of Twitter? Again, it seems like there is some special pleading happening here. You can make an argument that people like Musk are just the face of things that are happening anyway, and hence do not deserve and particular credit for them. And if that is true, then we sure as hell don't need another 49 prominent douchebags.

But if that is the case, then it seems to me that we must apply that principle consistently. If Musk gets no credit for Tesla, does Martin Luther King Jr. get credit for his leadership of the civil rights movement? Should we stop talking about the genous of Leonardi da Vinci or Galileo or the Wright Brothers? Does Mussolini get to be spit upon for leading Italy into fascism, or was that all just inevitable, and the people involved don't really matter? De Gaulle not worthy of respect, because everything he did was going to happen regardless?

And if that is true....then why get worked up over them? Again, they are just assholes in a world with lots of assholes, or good people in a world of other good people.

I am honestly not trying to "gotcha" you - I really am curious about whether you've thought this through. I suspect, and I apologize if this comes across as being dismissive, that you have not, and your views on Musk as a person (he is a piece of shit) are largely informing your views on Musk's accomplishments, and in fact you do recognize that individuals, for better or worse, do in fact accomplish things worthy of praise or anger.

Musk's accomplishments are: being really good at making money, then investing in stuff most nerds like us find cool like rockets and electric cars. That's it.

I don't think he's the most giant asshole on Earth or something. He's just an immature edgelord.

He's not an inventor, he didn't work out the kinks of the battery on the model 3 or anything like that. Spacex would have happened without him, by that I mean look at Branson or Bezos. Tesla would have happened without him, that;s where the culture and climate change is taking us anyway.

I don't think me thinking he's an asshole made me dismiss his accomplishments. I didn't really pay that much attention to him beforehand, like before maybe 2 years ago. He made lots of headlines, prompting investigative journalists to take a deeper look. I read investigative journalism, and came to the realization this dude portrays himself as something he's not, and his companies are not gonna save humanity or anything.

That's pretty much the extent of my 2 cents on Musk. I believe in great men shaping history and propelling humanity forward, but this guy is not it. I guess it can always change, but I'd be very surprised.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 23, 2022, 08:49:57 AM
Fair enough. 

I think we diverge on the assessment that all he did was invest money in nerdy stuff. Or rather, we diverge on how much that matters, and I think looking at what he did and summarizing it as "....really good at making money and investing in nerdy stuff...." is a bit reductive. You can reduce anyone's accomplishments in a similar way, right? It's not an incorrect assessment, but it seems like an assessment being driven by the desire to diminish, rather then actually assess. Edison didn't invent the light bulb, and Ford didn't invent the car, and someone else was right behind the Wright brothers, and MLK just tapped into an existing movement, etc., etc. Surely someone else would have figure out that you can kill microbes in milk by heating it up!

I cannot argue the claim that what Tesla did or SpaceX did would have happened anyway, except to note that that before Musk, those things did not happen. He didn't design a better battery, or invent the rocket. But then....nobody does those things, no individual anyway. No "invention" happens without a group. To the extent that I think Musk is worthy of noted accomplishment, I don't think anyone thinks it is because he sat down and designed the first electric, self driving car or knows much of anything about how to actually design a re-usable rocket. 

I look at SpaceX, and I think that nothing they have done could not have happened 10 years earlier. Or 20 years earlier. Or probably even 30 years earlier. The tech they are using is not cutting edge in its components. The ideas are not new. It is a travesty that NASA didn't go after this kind of hyper aggressive push to drive down launch costs themselves. But nobody did - the risks were too great, the costs enormous, and the pay off rather unknown. What visionaries do, and what (I think) Musk did, was demand the unreasonable, inspire others to buy into his vision (whether that be a bunch of egghead engineers who can design the next better battery or rocket or even just people willing to invest in it) and take on risk that others would not or could not. That is worthy of our admiration, when it works. 

I think without Musk we are not where we are today in electric, self driving vehicles nor have we advanced as far in the nuts and bolts of getting a kilo into space. That doesn't mean we would never get to those places, but without the Wright brothers, we would still be flying airplanes, just not quite as soon as we did.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on November 23, 2022, 11:00:19 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 23, 2022, 08:49:57 AMIt's not an incorrect assessment, but it seems like an assessment being driven by the desire to diminish, rather then actually assess.

What visionaries do, and what (I think) Musk did, was demand the unreasonable, inspire others to buy into his vision (whether that be a bunch of egghead engineers who can design the next better battery or rocket or even just people willing to invest in it) and take on risk that others would not or could not. That is worthy of our admiration, when it works.

Dude I also don't particularly admire Edison, Ford, Gates or Jobs. Am I also driven to that conclusion by a desire to diminish?

Lots and lots of people admire Musk. I'm free to admire who I wish and so are you, and it's ok to differ on that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 23, 2022, 11:18:58 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 23, 2022, 11:00:19 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 23, 2022, 08:49:57 AMIt's not an incorrect assessment, but it seems like an assessment being driven by the desire to diminish, rather then actually assess.

What visionaries do, and what (I think) Musk did, was demand the unreasonable, inspire others to buy into his vision (whether that be a bunch of egghead engineers who can design the next better battery or rocket or even just people willing to invest in it) and take on risk that others would not or could not. That is worthy of our admiration, when it works.

Dude I also don't particularly admire Edison, Ford, Gates or Jobs. Am I also driven to that conclusion by a desire to diminish?

Lots and lots of people admire Musk. I'm free to admire who I wish and so are you, and it's ok to differ on that.
Of course. I don't think there is any kind of problem with people getting upset at anyone not admiring Musk though - there is no lack of that for sure.

Rather the opposite. Anyone not buying into every single possible argument for how Musk is just the worst, or having any views other then that his accomplishments are largely uninteresting is labeled a "Muskie" as if that cannot possibly be supported except by some emotional cult love for the guy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 23, 2022, 11:37:37 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 22, 2022, 11:29:08 PM
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 22, 2022, 11:13:57 PMOK, if he wants to offer that deal I'm totally taking it and splitting it with y'all.  Unfortunately, we don't have  ~300MM daily active users. :P

We could let the bots post again.  :)

We still let Berkut post, so we never stopped.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 23, 2022, 11:41:12 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 23, 2022, 03:13:10 AMI don't think he's the most giant asshole on Earth or something. He's just an immature edgelord.

I don't think anyone thinks that. We live in the same world as people like Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un and MBS. Musk is a very rich liar and asshat, but he is by no means in the upper echelons of bad actors in the world, and he's probably fairly close to a neutral actor if you look at the totality of his actions.

Some of us just don't choose to admire someone for getting really rich by being a good capitalist. I am an ardent capitalist, but I am not a Max Weber worship money style person like so many Americans are, virtue and capital accumulation are not the same thing. Some people struggle to understand the idea that capital accumulation doesn't necessarily make you a genius or virtuous, it can actually just be luck. Usually, it is luck and investing savvy and business savvy. Most more grounded plutocrats of the 20th century have been fairly ready to admit luck played an immense role in their success because many people were trying to do the same thing they were and missed out sometimes by very minor chance here or there.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 23, 2022, 01:35:08 PM
Always fun to see Legal Eagles take on stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxCRRcWSt4I
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 23, 2022, 01:50:30 PM
In Twitter news both their notification and search systems appear to be nearly completely broken, I was just messing around with them and saw a bunch of problems and a number of prominent Twitter users are posting about it.

Elon recently hired George Hotz as an intern to fix it, apparently.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on November 23, 2022, 01:59:26 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 23, 2022, 11:18:58 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 23, 2022, 11:00:19 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 23, 2022, 08:49:57 AMIt's not an incorrect assessment, but it seems like an assessment being driven by the desire to diminish, rather then actually assess.

What visionaries do, and what (I think) Musk did, was demand the unreasonable, inspire others to buy into his vision (whether that be a bunch of egghead engineers who can design the next better battery or rocket or even just people willing to invest in it) and take on risk that others would not or could not. That is worthy of our admiration, when it works.

Dude I also don't particularly admire Edison, Ford, Gates or Jobs. Am I also driven to that conclusion by a desire to diminish?

Lots and lots of people admire Musk. I'm free to admire who I wish and so are you, and it's ok to differ on that.
Of course. I don't think there is any kind of problem with people getting upset at anyone not admiring Musk though - there is no lack of that for sure.

Rather the opposite. Anyone not buying into every single possible argument for how Musk is just the worst, or having any views other then that his accomplishments are largely uninteresting is labeled a "Muskie" as if that cannot possibly be supported except by some emotional cult love for the guy.

You state others disparage him or diminish his accomplishments because of tribal politics or "he's a douchebag, so actually he didn't do anything important".

I think a fairly accurate statement after reading your posts in this thread is that you admire Musk. Does that not make you a member of his admiring tribe? Is it possible that being a member of that tribe, or just the fact that you do admire him, create a bias where you inflate his accomplishments instead of assessing them accurately?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 23, 2022, 03:31:03 PM
It is possible, but I don't think that is what is happening. Of course, the problem with bias it is that it is very hard to see in yourself, so I could be wrong.

But I think you have it the wrong way around for myself - I don't actually admire him at all except insofar as I admire what he has accomplished. So there is no reason for me to inflate his accomplishments. They are the entirety of what I care about.

If Otto proved that in fact Musk is a complete sham, and everything I care about as it relates to him was done by someone else, my admiration for him would go straight to zero, and I would not care one bit about that (because we would still have autonomous cars and cheaper rockets, which is what I actually care about). I admire the accomplishment, and wish we had more people who could accomplish what he has accomplished in other fields.

I have zero emotional investment in Elon Musk. If he got hit by a bus tomorrow, my only concern (other then concern over any human being I supppose) is whether or not SpaceX continues to push the boundaries with him gone.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 23, 2022, 04:08:06 PM
https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-tweets-cop-killed-unarmed-black-man-ferguson-1849815713

QuoteElon Musk Tweets Defense of Cop Who Killed Unarmed Black Man in Ferguson, Missouri
The billionaire deleted his original tweet early Wednesday but replaced it with a DOJ report.

By Matt Novak

Elon Musk tweeted a defense of the police officer who shot 18-year-old Michael Brown—an unarmed Black man in Ferguson, Missouri back in 2014—early Wednesday before deleting the incendiary post. Musk said the police officer was "exonerated" and that the narrative around the shooting was a "fiction."

Musk's tweet was apparently prompted by the discovery of some Twitter t-shirts at the company's San Francisco headquarters that read "Stay Woke," printed in the aftermath of the Ferguson uprising. Musk clearly tweeted the shirts to ridicule them, though his friend, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, once wore the shirt to the Code Conference in 2016 during a panel discussing the Black Lives Matter movement.

"#StayWoke shirts stem from the Ferguson protests. Obama's own DOJ proved this & exonerated the cop. 'Hands up don't shoot' was made up. The whole thing was a fiction," Musk tweeted early Wednesday.

The tweet included a link to the Department of Justice report issued in 2015 on the killing of Michael Brown. Musk deleted his tweet with commentary early Wednesday, but reposted the DOJ report, this time without his editorializing.

The killing of Brown and refusal of local authorities to charge the police officer who shot him, Darren Wilson, set off heated protests in the summer of 2014 and helped shine a national spotlight on the epidemic of police killing unarmed Black people. The militarized crackdown on protest that summer was ruthless, to say the least. And none of those facts were fiction.

But one of the rallying cries from the movement, "hands up don't shoot," was picked apart incessantly by right-wing pundits who sought to exonerate the police officer, much like Musk is still doing today. Witnesses to the shooting claimed Brown had his hands up, though the U.S. Department of Justice investigators didn't find this credible. Wilson, who shot Brown at least six times, claimed that Brown had charged at him and the shooting was in self-defense.

Gizmodo isn't going to relitigate what happened in 2014. But we do find it notable that Musk wants to reopen the wounds of that summer, either to stoke more controversy on his social media platform with the hopes that it generates attention for a site that's hemorrhaging advertisers, or simply because Musk wants to signal to his right-wing fans that he's well and truly one of them. Whatever his goal, Musk succeeded at proving he desperately wants approval from the absolute worst people on the planet.

For the record, the Department of Justice issued two reports in 2015 about the police in Ferguson, Missouri. Musk tweeted the one about the killing of Michael Brown but didn't bother tweeting the report from the DOJ's Civil Rights Division which found the Ferguson Police Department had a systemic problem with regularly targeting Black people for the most minor of "crimes." While Ferguson's population was 67% Black in the early 2010s, police data showed that Black people accounted for 85% of vehicle stops, 90% of citations, and 93% of arrests in the city from 2010 to 2012.

Musk is making it excruciating clear who's welcome on the new Twitter. And it's people who look and talk like Musk.

Another Musk misstep. And just shows he doesn't understand (or doesn't care) that he spent $44bn on an advertiser supported business. I am not interested in the content of his argument--I studied the Ferguson case extensively back when it happened and it doesn't need to be rehashed. What is relevant is this is not something the CEO of an advertiser supported business needs to even bring up, literally many years after the fact. Musk because of his persona and personality is now intimately linked to Twitter. Twitter is not an essential advertising platform--advertisers just have zero desire to be associated with racial controversies like this at all, and almost anyone who is in that part of the business world that interacts with advertisers know this. But Musk knows better, because he's rich, and in some Muskie's minds, that is intrinsic evidence you know everything, because you have to be a genius to own a lot of money and have a big company.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 23, 2022, 04:12:36 PM
You really cannot help yourself, can you?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 23, 2022, 04:17:50 PM
Sorry, do you think it was a good business decision for Elon to randomly shit out a controversial tweet about an inflammatory racial incident that happened almost 9 years ago?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 23, 2022, 04:25:50 PM
No, and nobody has said it was a good idea. Who are you arguing to passionately with?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 23, 2022, 04:41:30 PM
I wasn't arguing with anyone, I posted yet another negative news article about Elon running Twitter because:

1. This is a thread for exactly that purpose
2. Because it was just published today so was both topical and not previously shared

You seemed to take some umbrage with me posting it, but due to a vague post of yours I was left having to guess what that umbrage was, hence my using a question mark in my response.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 23, 2022, 04:44:21 PM
My umbrage is with the fact that you could not just post the article, you had to add in the ranting about fictional Muskies defending it on grounds that nobody defended it on except in your mind.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 23, 2022, 04:45:04 PM
My umbrage (or rather my bemusement) is with the fact that you could not just post the article, you had to add in the ranting about fictional Muskies defending it on grounds that nobody defended it on except in your mind.

QuoteBut Musk knows better, because he's rich, and in some Muskie's minds, that is intrinsic evidence you know everything, because you have to be a genius to own a lot of money and have a big company.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 23, 2022, 04:48:53 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 23, 2022, 04:17:50 PMSorry, do you think it was a good business decision for Elon to randomly shit out a controversial tweet about an inflammatory racial incident that happened almost 9 years ago?
For the record, it is yet another in a rather long list of examples of Musk being a fucking moron and apparently incapable of knowing when to keep his rather dumb views to himself.

But this isn't new. It's like posting another example of Trump being Trump. 

This is the guy who thought it would be a good idea to bicker with some dude trying to save kids in a cave by calling him a pedophile. 

The only difference between him and Trump is that I actually think Trump is stupid enough not to recognize how stupid he is, while Musk seems to have some kind of compulsive disorder or something.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 23, 2022, 04:51:34 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 23, 2022, 04:41:30 PMI wasn't arguing with anyone, I posted yet another negative news article about Elon running Twitter because:

Thank you for that. I'm enjoying watching the drama of Twitter's current trajectory and Musk's flailing about. I really do wonder how it'll all pan out.

Actually, that's a question for the thread - what's the next steady state for Twitter, do you think?

1) Twitter eventually returns to more or less normal, with a few minor changes overall - all this sturm und drang in the end matters little.

2) Twitter remains a viable and important social media actor, but with Musk's political imprint (incl. controversial "free speech" and bullying etc) - yet becomes profitable again.

3) Twitter dwindles to fringe status, being important for Musk's fellow travelers but irrelevant for larger audiences.

4) Twitter deflates or implodes and goes the way of MySpace and the like.

What do you folks think this saga will go?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 23, 2022, 04:54:50 PM
It'll muddle along until the FTC fines start coming in*. Then declares bankruptcy and tries to sell off any IP he can. Blame woke people and declares moral victory for free speech since he tried but everyone ganged up on him.

*can FTC fine Musk directly?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 23, 2022, 05:02:57 PM
I think Twitter is going to cease to exist as we know it. That is my bet.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 23, 2022, 05:08:21 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 23, 2022, 04:51:34 PM1) Twitter eventually returns to more or less normal, with a few minor changes overall - all this sturm und drang in the end matters little?

2) Twitter remains a viable and important social media actor, but with Musk's political imprint (incl. controversial "free speech" and bullying etc) - yet becomes profitable again.

3) Twitter dwindles to fringe status, being important for Musk's fellow travelers but irrelevant for larger audiences.

4) Twitter deflates or implodes and goes the way of MySpace and the like.

What do you folks think this saga will go?

It's so hard to say, isn't it.

One big factor is if Twitter starts having more and more technical issues - that could seriously drive users away.

So far though I heard the analogy that threatening to go to Mastodon (or whatever) was like threatening to move to Canada if Trump won - nobody really means it.  So far Twitter is still quite usable and you don't have to pay the slightest attention to Musk's ramblings.

The big gamble though is that right not Twitter is an advertising company, and Musk's antic seem almost guaranteed to drive advertisers away.  That imperils Musk being able to pay his $1 billion in interest payments.

My marker then is this: in 2-3 years Musk can't afford to make his interest payments, has long grown bored with being the Chief Executive Troll at Twitter, and sells out to his creditors at pennies on the dollar, leaving Twitter slightly diminished but still chugging along.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 23, 2022, 05:30:08 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 23, 2022, 04:51:34 PM1) Twitter eventually returns to more or less normal, with a few minor changes overall - all this sturm und drang in the end matters little?

2) Twitter remains a viable and important social media actor, but with Musk's political imprint (incl. controversial "free speech" and bullying etc) - yet becomes profitable again.

3) Twitter dwindles to fringe status, being important for Musk's fellow travelers but irrelevant for larger audiences.

4) Twitter deflates or implodes and goes the way of MySpace and the like.

What do you folks think this saga will go?
No idea.

I think that if there's technical issues from all of this turmoil it could end very rapidly.

The slightly bigger issue from what I can see is that as others have said it's an advertising business and I think Musk's focus on things like subscription models or monetisation of creators fundamentally misunderstands Twitter. I think they missed the boat for lots of the things that are advertised on Twitter where there is a subscription/monetisation model (longer form newsletters and podcasts). At the minute I can't really see why anyone would subscribe to Twitter or what content they'd pay for. Which means, I think, you end up back at advertising.

But on the other hand I don't think there'll be a significant shift away from Twitter. It is still the best social media platform for quick news reporting and sharing journalism - Musk is right when he pointed out how useful Twitter is when there's a story like, his example, FTX (I created a Twitter account during the Arab Spring because of how useful it was at that). Some of the more specific communities might migrate to Tumblr or Mastodon - but those either seem a bit too community or a bit too insular or complex for general use. So I think unless something bad happens technically Twitter will just keep chugging along.

I'm not sure how those two things reconcile into a steady state.

On a personal level the trollling stuff wasn't - and isn't - something I really see. I don't really Tweet. I don't have thousands of followers. So I follow accounts I like and if I see anything I don't like far-right stuff (normally being Quote Tweeted - which is not helpful - or someone retweets a pretty building, I click on the account and, surprise, fascism!). I block and report whoever sent that stuff because I don't want to see it and I don't think there's some duty to see whatever exists on Twiitter or not to moderate your experience. I think the benefit I get from it is exactly that it's curated based on what I'm interested in.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 23, 2022, 05:31:18 PM
Elon's motivation appears to not be making money but feeling free to post whatever the fuck he wants.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 23, 2022, 05:33:09 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 23, 2022, 05:31:18 PMElon's motivation appears to not be making money but feeling free to post whatever the fuck he wants.

Yeah. Which is why it's interesting to see how it plays out.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 23, 2022, 07:06:35 PM
Twitter the business can basically continue as long as Elon feels like it.

Quick financial picture from 2021, the last year of full results:

Revenue $5bn, $4.5bn of which is advertising.

Expenses $5.5bn

Those expenses will have been slashed considerably. By some estimates we are down to something like 20% of Twitter's original headcount (I've seen some estimates go as low as 12.5%, but let's say 20%.)

Twitter's Cost of Revenue was listed at around $1.8bn, which they explain basically covers almost all the things that you "can't" get rid of--i.e. the servers hosting and running Twitter, and many of the costs associated with that. It doesn't break it down into more detail, let's say he can shave that $1.8bn down to say, $1.4bn, assuming at least some large chunk of salary reductions hit infrastructure teams, and with various satellite offices closing that also reduces some of these infrastructure costs. Again, unless he reduces Twitter to where it can't even function, I'm assuming he will still have a bit of money he has to spend here.

Much of the rest of their $5.5bn in expenses appears to be related to things he appears to not be doing anymore: development of various new products, administrative expenses, advertising, marketing, communications, compliance.

All in it's probably possible with how aggressively he's gutted the company he could have annual expenses down in the $2-2.5bn range. Let's assume $2.5bn as a "bad" scenario.

Revenue wise let's assume he loses 90% of his advertising revenue, which leaves him $500m a year in data licensing revenue and $450m/yr in advertising, or a little under a $1bn/yr. With the interest he has to service, this means broadly Twitter could probably be kept "alive" at a burn rate of $2.5-3bn a year, and some of the advertising revenue would likely recover over time, I assume he will get at least some revenue from whatever subscription service he eventually launches. Unless something big and fundamental changes I see little prospect of profitability, but he could get it down to maybe $1.5bn/burn a year.

The thing is Elon is actually so rich he could just let that burn the rest of his life.

Now, will he want to? I doubt it. I suspect if he eventually realizes that is "as good as it gets" with Twitter, he'll tire of holding it, eat the loss of his investment and sell it for pennies on the dollar to a creditor--possibly the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia who will find value in being able to look through all of Twitter's data to help arrest/assassinate dissidents.

So really Twitter the business can continue forever, but probably until Musk gets tired of losing money each year on it, which if he isn't enthusiastic about owning it and doesn't see a magical turnaround in the future may be a few years, who knows.

As a platform it's a little harder to predict.

People have in their mind that big social media networks are too big to fail, but that doesn't seem that true, right? Facebook is struggling now and Twitter was struggling before this. Facebook's struggle is it has achieved all of the growth it could reasonably expect to (which is a good position), but now seems to have lost cultural cachet with people under the age of 25, and many simply don't use it. Once something becomes associated with "uncool, old person" tech, it's going to be very hard to ever get those users onto your platform. Over the years, the older population on the platform will die off, and without new replacements the platform will get weaker.

Twitter is probably in a worse place because it isn't as "personal" as Facebook. A lot of people will retain Facebook for the cursory family interactions and old High School friends, even if their engagement with it is really low. On Twitter it is still fairly easy to just use it to follow a few accounts you care about, if that continues it will be relatively easy for many people to stick with it. But if it becomes a real right wing, racist place, a lot of mainstream media for example will pull out. There is a network effect there, if it starts to be perceived that "good" newsrooms and media platforms need to disengage from Twitter, the exodus could be fast.

That is going to have cascade effects--it means the type of engagement on Twitter will move increasingly to the right. Right wing news networks, journalists etc will be more visible as other types of people leave. That will then cause it to be perceived the way Parler or Fox News are perceived now, and that will start to cause disengagement from Americans who don't like that, and that will cause even more cascade effect.

It actually isn't that hard to imagine a scenario where Twitter just becomes a low engagement platform with declining users that loses relevance every single year. It won't have a day where it crashes and burns up like the Hindenburg, but as best we can tell the previous generation of social media which did have some platforms die--they usually don't go out with a bang.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 23, 2022, 07:35:12 PM
That's a pretty reasonable analysis OvB :cheers:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 23, 2022, 09:34:57 PM
Also as for Mastodon--for the purposes of Twitter it should be considered "not a thing."

Mastodon is a fundamentally different technology and product than Twitter. Mastodon is a federation of independently owned and operated servers. No company owns it, and the codebase is entirely open source and cannot be owned. Each server operator is entirely "King of the Castle" with no one who has the ability to regulate them--with one sole exception, if other server operators deem another server operator is running a server they don't want to be federated with, they can block it. This ends up being very common.

That means Mastodon is actually a patchwork of small, only partially connected servers.

Worse, user registration is per server--and you have no recourse if a server operator shuts down the server your account is on--your account is just gone. You also have no recourse if they randomly decide they do not like you and ban you--you cannot migrate to another server, you have to create a whole new account.

Let's imagine a scenario where you are on mastodon.social, the Mastodon server operated by the guy who runs the Mastodon open source project. It is one of the larger servers--with around 250,000 users. But it is also closed to new registrations. Why? Because it costs money to operate a server with lots of users, and Mastodon has no business model, each server is supported by the generosity of the server operator and whatever means they can find to raise money--which is usually soliciting donations through Patreon or a similar service. The server operator of mastodon.social is working to expand the capacity now.

But think about that--the very biggest Mastodon server is 250,000 and is scraping pennies together to afford upping its capacity. Twitter has a userbase of 400m or so. On top of all that, the biggest Mastodon server is also seen as "problematic" by a lot of servers in the "Fediverse" (the term for the universe of all Mastodon servers.) It is mostly because as the biggest Mastodon server, it also has the greatest raw number of trolls and "problem users." And because it is entirely volunteer ran, and until recently I think only had like 3 people helping run it, it was not "well moderated." So lots of other servers in the Fediverse have long blocked mastodon.social. I have noticed several blue checkmark types who have publicly said they are leaving Twitter migrated to mastodon.social accounts, I presume because they understood it was the largest Mastodon server and ran by the guy who maintains the project. They are probably unaware that many other users of Mastodon will never be able to see their Mastodon posts because they are on a server that is blocked by a large chunk of the Fediverse.

The only way Mastodon could really replicate Twitter would be for a single Mastodon server to grow big enough to host a Twitter sized audience--which would cost many tens of millions of dollars a year, bare minimum, to operate. You would need a big company to afford and operate that...which now we're back with all the "negatives" of Twitter--that it's controlled by a big company, possibly owned by a single rich person, who may have harmful inclinations.

Mastodon seems like a decently maintained open source project--and it probably has some application; I can imagine using it for operating small private networks (or intranet social networks inside a company), and maybe it being a home for niche communities--like Languish could probably operate as a Mastodon server, and would certainly be blocked by much of the Fediverse I'm sure. But it is almost antithetical by design to being able to be what Twitter is, which is a fully single and connected network that has really large scale. Mastodon is almost designed to inhibit such a large network.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 24, 2022, 04:24:55 AM
One thing I've heard on twitter is amidst the firings in America they're hiring a lot in Japan and seem to be pivoting towards being more of a Japanese company: for various reasons twitter being far bigger over there.
Heard ought of this?
I do like the thought of this happening. I miss the days where different countries had unique social media. And as you say twitter isn't going to just vanish :MySpace still exists afterall.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 24, 2022, 07:44:50 PM
And now it seems that Musk has moved into "blanket amnesty" for all historical Twitter malcontents.

QuoteElon Musk offers general amnesty to suspended Twitter accounts
Poll organised by new owner backed reopening accounts, leading to fears 'superspreaders of hate' will return to social media platform

Elon Musk has announced a general amnesty for suspended Twitter accounts in a move that brought a warning that "superspreaders of hate" will return to the social media platform.

Twitter's new owner said an amnesty for blocked users would begin next week after a majority of votes in a poll on his account backed the move. Accounts suspended on Twitter include Donald Trump's former adviser Steve Bannon, rightwing UK commentator Katie Hopkins and David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard.

Musk had launched a poll on Wednesday asking if a general amnesty should be offered to accounts provided they have not "broken the law or engaged in egregious spam". Musk did not specify which laws he meant. More than 3.1m votes were recorded by the poll, with 72% in favour of an amnesty.

Announcing the result, Musk tweeted: "The people have spoken. Amnesty begins next week." He added "Vox Populi, Vox Dei", a Latin phrase meaning "the voice of the people [is] the voice of God."

Musk's announcement came days after he reinstated Trump's account as well as the accounts for Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, former professional kickboxer Andrew Tate – whose extreme misogynistic views led to a Twitter ban in 2017 – and the unlocking of the account for US rapper Ye, formerly Kanye West, who was sanctioned last month for posting antisemitic comments.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate, a campaign group, said "superspreaders" of hateful content would benefit from the move and urged advertisers, many of whom have already paused spending on the platform, to stop funding Twitter.

"Superspreaders of hate, abuse and harassment will be the only people to benefit from this latest decision by Twitter," said Imran Ahmed, chief executive of CCDH. "The choice for advertisers has never been starker: stick around and back Elon Musk, or protect their brands and ensure their marketing dollars aren't used to enable the spread of hate, abuse and disinformation."

Angelo Carusone, president of US campaign group Media Matters, which monitors "conservative misinformation", said reversing the suspensions would turn Twitter into an "engine of radicalization".

This week Musk ruled out the return of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has promoted the false claim that the Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax, saying he had "no mercy" for people who capitalise on the deaths of children for personal fame. Other banned Twitter accounts include the rightwing writer Milo Yiannopoulos and former BBC presenter David Icke.

Musk had previously said there would be no account reinstatements until a newly announced content moderation council had met. However, the Tesla CEO then said human rights groups "broke the deal" by urging advertisers to halt spending on the platform.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 24, 2022, 09:36:51 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 24, 2022, 07:44:50 PMAnd now it seems that Musk has moved into "blanket amnesty" for all historical Twitter malcontents.

QuoteMusk had previously said there would be no account reinstatements until a newly announced content moderation council had met. However, the Tesla CEO then said human rights groups "broke the deal" by urging advertisers to halt spending on the platform.

Yes, this will surely attract more advertisers. Surely a very stable genius.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 25, 2022, 02:35:13 AM
Quote from: HVC on November 24, 2022, 09:36:51 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 24, 2022, 07:44:50 PMAnd now it seems that Musk has moved into "blanket amnesty" for all historical Twitter malcontents.

QuoteMusk had previously said there would be no account reinstatements until a newly announced content moderation council had met. However, the Tesla CEO then said human rights groups "broke the deal" by urging advertisers to halt spending on the platform.

Yes, this will surely attract more advertisers. Surely a very stable genius.

Or maybe the advertisers need to stop pandering to the woke fascists.
Because the normal people already know it is bs anyway: playing woke in west and pandering to local cultures in the rest of the world because 'money'.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 25, 2022, 02:44:17 AM
Advertisers play the odds. Why risk offending customers when they don't have to.

As for money, companies that don't care about money aren't companies for long.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on November 25, 2022, 02:50:30 AM
:wacko:

He's reinstating any and everybody. I feel bad for every woman on twitter that will have to face an avalanche of their stalkers and rape-threats makers because fReE SPeeCH!!!1111!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on November 25, 2022, 02:55:19 AM
What is the point of the report function if the guys get a blanket amnesty?

Like I got a bunch of accounts of russian tankies banned for denying the Holodomor for example. Now they'll be back. I don't think this very stable genius thought this through. Twitter will turn into 4chan/8chan territory reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaal quick, and then you get zero ad dollars.

Does he not have any advisors/lawyers or something?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 25, 2022, 02:57:08 AM
He is an attention whore. This way he gets attention.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 25, 2022, 03:04:48 AM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 25, 2022, 02:35:13 AMOr maybe the advertisers need to stop pandering to the woke fascists.
Because the normal people already know it is bs anyway: playing woke in west and pandering to local cultures in the rest of the world because 'money'.

Donald and Marjorie got banned for spreading lies, not for being unwoke.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 25, 2022, 03:43:30 AM
Bloody commie nazis

The "anti woke" extremists have been screaming go woke go broke for years now. Advertisers still continue to refuse to go back to the 1970s.. This suggests what they're doing works.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 25, 2022, 04:03:12 AM
Quote from: Josquius on November 25, 2022, 03:43:30 AMBloody commie nazis

The "anti woke" extremists have been screaming go woke go broke for years now. Advertisers still continue to refuse to go back to the 1970s.. This suggests what they're doing works.

Get woke go broke still seems to trip up entertainment (tv and movies). Whether the shows were just bad and happened to be woke, or if the wokeness was their downfall is up for debate.

But I agree with ads. It's not worth the bad press to be associated with hate and lies. Last thing Walmart wants is an add to pop up along side a tweet proclaiming the virtues of the kkk
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 25, 2022, 04:14:28 AM


Twitter might be out of compliance with EU Laws.
 (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/24/twitter-brussels-office-elon-musk-eu-questions)

QuoteTwitter has disbanded its entire Brussels office, according to media reports, raising questions about the social media company's compliance with new EU laws to control big tech.

Julia Mozer and Dario La Nasa, who were in charge of Twitter's digital policy in Europe, left the company last week, the Financial Times reported.

The pair had survived an initial cull when Elon Musk laid off thousands of employees following his takeover last month. It is unclear whether Mozer and La Nasa were made redundant or chose to leave in response to Musk's ultimatum to commit to working long "extremely hardcore" hours or quit.

Neither was it clear whether Twitter was closing its office in the European capital, one of the world's largest centres of tech regulation.

Questions to Twitter's press office went unanswered, while Moser and La Nasa did not immediately respond to messages.

In the first round of layoffs, Twitter sacked about half its 7,500 workforce, dissolving entire teams, including human rights, machine learning and algorithmic ethics. Among the thousands who lost their jobs was the head of the Brussels office, Stephen Turner. He tweeted on 14 November: "After 6 years I am officially retired from Twitter. From starting the office in Brussels to building an awesome team it has been an amazing ride."

The collapse of the small Brussels team has raised questions about the company's ability to enforce new rules intended to rein in the power of big tech and restrict hate speech. EU officials are said to have many contacts based in Dublin, where Twitter has its European headquarters, although that office has also faced 50% cuts. "I can confirm that we have active and ongoing contacts with Twitter (and other platforms) on different topics," a European Commission spokesperson said.

Senior officials have expressed confidence that the departures at the Brussels office do not threaten Twitter's ability to comply with key EU laws affecting large tech companies.

The news came as the commission revealed that Twitter – along with most other tech companies – had become slower in responding to hate speech reports. In 2016, large social media companies agreed to a code of conduct with the EU executive, pledging to assess most notifications of hate speech in less than 24 hours. In a seven-week period this year, Twitter assessed only 54% of notifications within 24 hours, as part of a general performance decline by most signatories to the code.

The company will also have to grapple with the EU's Digital Markets Act, a landmark law intended to curb the dominance of large platforms that came into force this month.


Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 25, 2022, 04:15:53 AM
Andor has a pretty diverse cast, including many leading females, and a lesbian couple. Didn't see much backlash from the anti-woke brigade against it, but it may have been too niche.

There was a twitter thread a while ago (around the "Black Little Mermaid" "scandal", or maybe "Black Admiral April" in Star Trek SNW, because on Animated he'd been white) - can't find it anymore. But it tackled the "it's not accurate to the source" complaint that often comes up when adaptations change a character's race to non-white by pointing out a whole list of (white) characters from big franchises that were changed in appearance from their sources without major backlash.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on November 25, 2022, 04:18:19 AM
Quote from: HVC on November 25, 2022, 04:03:12 AM
Quote from: Josquius on November 25, 2022, 03:43:30 AMBloody commie nazis

The "anti woke" extremists have been screaming go woke go broke for years now. Advertisers still continue to refuse to go back to the 1970s.. This suggests what they're doing works.

Get woke go broke still seems to trip up entertainment (tv and movies). Whether the shows were just bad and happened to be woke, or if the wokeness was their downfall is up for debate.

But I agree with ads. It's not worth the bad press to be associated with hate and lies. Last thing Walmart wants is an add to pop up along side a tweet proclaiming the virtues of the kkk

Stuff like She Hulk or RoP are rather mediocre, yet they aren't particularly worse that most generic similar shows that don't attract this kind of ire from certain groups. I get RoP is from a beloved IP so it was always going to be a target, but I find a lot of the criticism rather dishonest. I watched Black Adam and is total mediocre superhero crap, but it has a manly man doing manly things so it doesn't get the criticism that She Hulk got.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 25, 2022, 04:58:32 AM
Quote from: Syt on November 25, 2022, 04:15:53 AMAndor has a pretty diverse cast, including many leading females, and a lesbian couple. Didn't see much backlash from the anti-woke brigade against it, but it may have been too niche.

There was a twitter thread a while ago (around the "Black Little Mermaid" "scandal", or maybe "Black Admiral April" in Star Trek SNW, because on Animated he'd been white) - can't find it anymore. But it tackled the "it's not accurate to the source" complaint that often comes up when adaptations change a character's race to non-white by pointing out a whole list of (white) characters from big franchises that were changed in appearance from their sources without major backlash.

I increasingly suspect where you see a big fasc backlash about diverse casting theres a very good chance this is astroturfed and encouraged by the studio-  it is suspicious that you largely just seem to see this coming around otherwise not very good big budget productions (e.g. Ghostbusters) or those where such backlash fits in well with the show itself (e.g. Shehulk)

Though honestly I've not seen andor yet but SW's recent diversity trend does sadden me a little. Oh sure when you're talking aliens then having a black nazi sort of makes sense, but pro-empire aliens?


QuoteGet woke go broke still seems to trip up entertainment (tv and movies). Whether the shows were just bad and happened to be woke, or if the wokeness was their downfall is up for debate.

But I agree with ads. It's not worth the bad press to be associated with hate and lies. Last thing Walmart wants is an add to pop up along side a tweet proclaiming the virtues of the kkk
I'm not so sure it does trip them up though. All publicity is good publicity and all that- having social media arguing about your film as soon as the trailer is out with the complaint being there's two women kissing or a black guy in charge or whatever it might be, rather than say the special FX looking like shit, is good for promotion.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 25, 2022, 06:11:34 AM
Quote from: HVC on November 24, 2022, 09:36:51 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 24, 2022, 07:44:50 PMAnd now it seems that Musk has moved into "blanket amnesty" for all historical Twitter malcontents.

QuoteMusk had previously said there would be no account reinstatements until a newly announced content moderation council had met. However, the Tesla CEO then said human rights groups "broke the deal" by urging advertisers to halt spending on the platform.

Yes, this will surely attract more advertisers. Surely a very stable genius.

That part is pretty hillarious. At first he was all "A moderation council will be established and that'll be the company body that will take all decisions", then threw a tantrum and now takes decisions via general poll from his own account.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 25, 2022, 06:13:31 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 25, 2022, 02:50:30 AM:wacko:

He's reinstating any and everybody. I feel bad for every woman on twitter that will have to face an avalanche of their stalkers and rape-threats makers because fReE SPeeCH!!!1111!

Apparently he draws the line at people who have actively broken the law. Alex Jones was singled out as somebody who wouldn't be reinstated, for instance.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 25, 2022, 06:18:25 AM
Quote from: The Larch on November 25, 2022, 06:13:31 AMApparently he draws the line at people who have actively broken the law. Alex Jones was singled out as somebody who wouldn't be reinstated, for instance.

Alex Jones lost a civil case.  He's never been convicted of a crime AFAIK.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 25, 2022, 06:19:42 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 25, 2022, 02:55:19 AMWhat is the point of the report function if the guys get a blanket amnesty?

Like I got a bunch of accounts of russian tankies banned for denying the Holodomor for example. Now they'll be back. I don't think this very stable genius thought this through. Twitter will turn into 4chan/8chan territory reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaal quick, and then you get zero ad dollars.

Does he not have any advisors/lawyers or something?

I'm curious to see if he'll now do a massive unbanning or will just go to the big names. Let's see if @adolfdidnothingwrong88 starts posting again soon.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 25, 2022, 06:20:34 AM
Quote from: The Larch on November 25, 2022, 06:13:31 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 25, 2022, 02:50:30 AM:wacko:

He's reinstating any and everybody. I feel bad for every woman on twitter that will have to face an avalanche of their stalkers and rape-threats makers because fReE SPeeCH!!!1111!

Apparently he draws the line at people who have actively broken the law. Alex Jones was singled out as somebody who wouldn't be reinstated, for instance.

As I understand it musk is keeping him off not because of the law suits, but because Elon has a dead child and took Jones actions personally. So to recap, free speach is good, unless it makes him feel bad.

But I guess a broken clock can be right in this case of keeping Jones off. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 25, 2022, 06:41:12 AM
I saw mention that accounts that broke the law or had severe transgressions would not be reactivated? He says they'd be back Monday, but who knows what squirrels draw his attention till then. :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 25, 2022, 06:56:01 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 25, 2022, 06:18:25 AM
Quote from: The Larch on November 25, 2022, 06:13:31 AMApparently he draws the line at people who have actively broken the law. Alex Jones was singled out as somebody who wouldn't be reinstated, for instance.

Alex Jones lost a civil case.  He's never been convicted of a crime AFAIK.

Sorry I don't speak legalese. I've only repeated what I've seen reported.

As HVC said, Musk is particulary sensitive to Jones' case because he lost a son himself. Don't know which other free speech luminaries could be affected by this distinction.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 25, 2022, 09:12:03 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 25, 2022, 02:55:19 AMWhat is the point of the report function if the guys get a blanket amnesty?

Like I got a bunch of accounts of russian tankies banned for denying the Holodomor for example. Now they'll be back. I don't think this very stable genius thought this through. Twitter will turn into 4chan/8chan territory reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaal quick, and then you get zero ad dollars.

Does he not have any advisors/lawyers or something?
I sw a recent report that someone was mentioning that he has succumbed to the standard error of the powerful narcissist - he has surrounded himself with yes men and sycophants.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 25, 2022, 09:13:46 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 25, 2022, 09:12:03 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 25, 2022, 02:55:19 AMWhat is the point of the report function if the guys get a blanket amnesty?

Like I got a bunch of accounts of russian tankies banned for denying the Holodomor for example. Now they'll be back. I don't think this very stable genius thought this through. Twitter will turn into 4chan/8chan territory reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaal quick, and then you get zero ad dollars.

Does he not have any advisors/lawyers or something?
I sw a recent report that someone was mentioning that he has succumbed to the standard error of the powerful narcissist - he has surrounded himself with yes men and sycophants.

That's correct. :yes:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 25, 2022, 09:15:41 AM
The big thing about the mass "general amnesty" is it is Musk saying he no longer cares at all about advertising revenue. This means if he hopes to eventually have Twitter turning a profit he is going all in on some sort of to be announced subscription scheme.

The complete noncompliance with regulators I think is par for the course. Until I actually see some of these regulatory agencies hit Musk with meaningful sanctions I have doubt they matter. He has been in violation of a lot of things due to statements, marketing practices etc with US regulators and it seems like the worst that ever happens to him are the equivalent of parking ticket level fines (relative to his wealth.)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 25, 2022, 09:20:46 AM
I also tend to think the 8chanification of Twitter will result in a lot of disengagement by the mainstream "blue checks" and a lot of more casual users (which will make Twitter not only less valuable to advertisers but shrink the potential user base for any subscription scheme.)

It's easy to say most people will just keep using Twitter as usual, but Twitter has been around since 2006 and has never been the equivalent of 8chan before, there's no way it will maintain its current system of users with such a dramatic change in platform culture.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 25, 2022, 09:23:46 AM
There isn't anything particularly magical about Twitter's tech. It could easily be replaced by another company basically just doing the same thing and calling it something different.

The only reason that doesn't happen previously is that Twitter has the market share and critical mass. If that declines, something else will come along and Twitter will be the next AOL or MySpace.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 25, 2022, 09:32:09 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/25/elon-musk-to-launch-new-blue-gold-and-grey-twitter-ticks

QuoteElon Musk to launch new blue, gold and grey Twitter ticks

New colour-coded categories next week for individuals, government and firms with accounts 'manually authenticated

Let's make things more complicated. :wacko:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on November 25, 2022, 09:50:01 AM
Quote from: The Brain on November 25, 2022, 09:13:46 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 25, 2022, 09:12:03 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 25, 2022, 02:55:19 AMWhat is the point of the report function if the guys get a blanket amnesty?

Like I got a bunch of accounts of russian tankies banned for denying the Holodomor for example. Now they'll be back. I don't think this very stable genius thought this through. Twitter will turn into 4chan/8chan territory reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaal quick, and then you get zero ad dollars.

Does he not have any advisors/lawyers or something?
I sw a recent report that someone was mentioning that he has succumbed to the standard error of the powerful narcissist - he has surrounded himself with yes men and sycophants.

That's correct. :yes:
:XD:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 25, 2022, 09:57:53 AM
(https://i.postimg.cc/QMLpMd6h/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on November 25, 2022, 10:08:37 AM
That's why he spent that much money on twitter. So he could say those things without being banned from the platform.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 25, 2022, 10:11:00 AM
1. Racism and bigotry is bad.
2. Over-reacting to it and trying to stifle speech that doesn't align with the most radical views on ending #1 is bad as well, and IMO harms the effort to combat #1.
3. Over-over-reacting to #2 is bad, and harms the effort to combat #2, which then goes back to promoting #1.

Humanity is doomed. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 25, 2022, 10:27:45 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 25, 2022, 10:11:00 AM1. Racism and bigotry is bad.
2. Over-reacting to it and trying to stifle speech that doesn't align with the most radical views on ending #1 is bad as well, and IMO harms the effort to combat #1.
3. Over-over-reacting to #2 is bad, and harms the effort to combat #2, which then goes back to promoting #1.

Humanity is doomed.

Doomed in what sense? Humanity didn't meet its end during centuries of racism and bigotry.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 25, 2022, 10:30:19 AM
I am neither right nor left = I'm very, very right wing, actually.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 25, 2022, 10:32:33 AM
Quote from: The Larch on November 25, 2022, 10:30:19 AMI am neither right nor left = I'm very, very right wing, actually.
(https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/world-news/2022/06/19/TELEMMGLPICT000300173773_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwSX5rhseiWKOo9p9OQ-ymek.jpeg?imwidth=480)
Quite :ph34r:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PJL on November 25, 2022, 11:20:33 AM
I've come to the conclusion that whenever a 'but' appears in a message it immediately invalidates anything written before the 'but'.


Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 25, 2022, 11:24:04 AM
Quote from: PJL on November 25, 2022, 11:20:33 AMI've come to the conclusion that whenever a 'but' appears in a message it immediately invalidates anything written before the 'but'.

They same the very same thing in Game of Thrones.  :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 25, 2022, 11:33:21 AM
Quote from: HVC on November 25, 2022, 06:20:34 AMAs I understand it musk is keeping him off not because of the law suits, but because Elon has a dead child and took Jones actions personally. So to recap, free speach is good, unless it makes him feel bad.

But I guess a broken clock can be right in this case of keeping Jones off. 

Yeah that's usually how it is with folks like Musk - "I'm absolutely for free speech when it comes to things that hurt other people and groups; where I draw the line is for things that bother me personally."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on November 25, 2022, 12:14:04 PM
And what's this "counter-narrative" that Musk deems so deeply necessary? That women/minorities/LGTB+ people should shut the fuck up and know their place? We might have a laugh here.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on November 25, 2022, 12:26:48 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 25, 2022, 11:24:04 AM
Quote from: PJL on November 25, 2022, 11:20:33 AMI've come to the conclusion that whenever a 'but' appears in a message it immediately invalidates anything written before the 'but'.

They same the very same thing in Game of Thrones.  :P

Yes and it sounds good, but it is not universally true.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 25, 2022, 03:39:24 PM
My biggest issue with the "anti-woke" movement is it has nothing to do with free speech. These guys like Musk / Rogan/ Tucker Carlson etc don't really care about government speech regulations because at least in the West the government rarely has a major role to play in regulating speech around many of these divisive issues (outside of the schools, I guess.)

What they typically mean is "I want free speech to say something offensive, and I don't want anyone to have free speech to say my offensive words are in bad taste."

An intrinsic part of free speech is that other people are free to criticize your speech, they want that part to not exist.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 25, 2022, 03:45:37 PM
Some of the weird things I'm starting to see on Twitter:

https://i.imgur.com/VJpnYN2.png

1. I never followed this person, nor do I really engage with LGBT / Trans dialogue on Twitter at all (my follows a mixture of sports, Ukraine war stuff, and some political pundits, and a few weather pages and major news sites)

2. Obviously this has been flagged by Twitter's algorithm as something I should / would want to see, and that certainly was never happening before.

3. It is also obviously a culture war tweet, which is the sort of tweet I've largely ignored or even blocked accounts over historically because I just have no interest in using twitter to get in culture war battles.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PJL on November 25, 2022, 04:42:53 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 25, 2022, 03:39:24 PMMy biggest issue with the "anti-woke" movement is it has nothing to do with free speech. These guys like Musk / Rogan/ Tucker Carlson etc don't really care about government speech regulations because at least in the West the government rarely has a major role to play in regulating speech around many of these divisive issues (outside of the schools, I guess.)

What they typically mean is "I want free speech to say something offensive, and I don't want anyone to have free speech to say my offensive words are in bad taste."

An intrinsic part of free speech is that other people are free to criticize your speech, they want that part to not exist.

I've come to the conclusion that the people who are most for free speech/markets/religion etc are the ones who will crack down on anything they don't like. Or to put it another way, they only want freedoms for themselves and no-one else.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: frunk on November 25, 2022, 06:01:57 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 25, 2022, 10:30:19 AMI am neither right nor left = I'm very, very right wing, actually.

In the case of Trump and Musk I don't think either one is particularly right wing or left wing.  However they've found the right wing much easier to manipulate so they naturally gravitate that way.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 25, 2022, 07:17:29 PM
Quote from: celedhring on November 25, 2022, 12:14:04 PMAnd what's this "counter-narrative" that Musk deems so deeply necessary? That women/minorities/LGTB+ people should shut the fuck up and know their place? We might have a laugh here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbXRVPE-wS0&t=4s

I can't speak for Elon but I think the counter narrative looks something like this.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on November 25, 2022, 07:54:11 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 25, 2022, 03:45:37 PMbecause I just have no interest in using twitter to get in culture war battles.
So, what are you using to get in culture war battles? :huh:  :hmm:

 ;) :D
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 25, 2022, 07:56:37 PM
QuoteTrump Hosts Holocaust Revisionist Nick Fuentes and Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago

Fuentes and West are the latest figures with known histories of extremism and explicit antisemitic remarks to meet with Trump since he announced his 2024 presidential candidacy earlier this month

Truly a meeting of the minds.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 25, 2022, 10:52:32 PM
Quote from: viper37 on November 25, 2022, 07:54:11 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 25, 2022, 03:45:37 PMbecause I just have no interest in using twitter to get in culture war battles.
So, what are you using to get in culture war battles? :huh:  :hmm:

 ;) :D

Honestly--I troll more far right conservative family members in family emails, several of whom have "canceled" me, which is funny considering I thought only the left did that, and I engage in healthy levels of trolling on various message boards. Us Gen X-ers who got into the early internet unfortunately got adept at forms of communication (email, message boards etc) that are less popular with the younger generations.

My usage of Twitter is really more like an old RSS reader than what I think Twitter is "intended" to be. I think a lot of the "wars" on Twitter take place in the Tweet-replies, and frankly for most people I follow on Twitter, I literally never read replies--I read the Tweets from the actual person I follow and then move on to the next Tweet.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on November 26, 2022, 05:40:16 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 25, 2022, 07:17:29 PM
Quote from: celedhring on November 25, 2022, 12:14:04 PMAnd what's this "counter-narrative" that Musk deems so deeply necessary? That women/minorities/LGTB+ people should shut the fuck up and know their place? We might have a laugh here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbXRVPE-wS0&t=4s

I can't speak for Elon but I think the counter narrative looks something like this.

I loved the show but this scene is indeed problematic (although part of the show's point was that these guys were heroic, but could also be a bunch of assholes).

Look, if people want to have some kind of banter culture at the workplace, that's fine, I just think it has to be consensual, is all. "Don't call people what they don't want to be called" shouldn't be such a cultural fault line.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Maladict on November 26, 2022, 06:29:55 AM
Quote from: celedhring on November 26, 2022, 05:40:16 AMLook, if people want to have some kind of banter culture at the workplace, that's fine, I just think it has to be consensual, is all.

I think that can only work if the workplace more or less mirrors the general population. But then again I don't think banter culture will develop there.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 26, 2022, 07:11:42 AM
Quote from: celedhring on November 26, 2022, 05:40:16 AMI loved the show but this scene is indeed problematic (although part of the show's point was that these guys were heroic, but could also be a bunch of assholes).

Look, if people want to have some kind of banter culture at the workplace, that's fine, I just think it has to be consensual, is all. "Don't call people what they don't want to be called" shouldn't be such a cultural fault line.

Of course it's problematic; it's counter narrative.

I actually find it problematic for a different reason.  Dennis Leary completely undercuts the discussion of insulting each other in a comradely way by saying when she starts performing well they'll stop insulting her.  It's either one or the other.

And did you notice when they talked about the racial slurs they didn't say what they call Black Sean?  Although in the scene with the sensitivity video they did run through black slurs.

I like the scene because it's a bunch of dudes trying to deal in good faith with a change to their environment.  They may be simple minded but they are making an effort.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 26, 2022, 10:20:09 AM
Here is an example of problematic woke culture:

https://www.ktvh.com/news/national/high-school-football-player-loses-scholarship-offer-after-singing-rap-song-with-racial-slur

High school QB says The Most Forbidden Word, and has his scholarship offer revoked.

Context of him saying said word? He recorded himself singing along to a rap song where The Word That Must Not Be Uttered Under Any Circumstances By White People was in the lyrics.

Now he has responded appropriately - he has apologized for such gross insensitivity and agreed that he definitely deserved to have his scholarship pulled, so I imagine he will get another scholarship offer somewhere else and will be just fine.

But this is just more grist for the "OMG TEH CANCEL CULTURE IS OUT OF CONTROL!" mill.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 26, 2022, 10:27:25 AM
I guess my question would be--football scholarships have a very strong discretionary element, and people frequently lose them for doing things the coaches or athletic administrators decide is not to the best interests of the school. They are a special perk or benefit, not an entitlement. Is it your assertion that people who pay for these special perks and ordinarily apportion them out should have formal limits on how they deploy their resources? Imposed by whom? And to what degree?

Mind what you're asserting here isn't a right to free speech, but a negative right to receive financial benefits from someone else and for that someone else to be required to endorse or support your speech even if they strongly disagree with it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 26, 2022, 10:37:42 AM
I think taking any negative action against some kid because he sang a song is idiotic.

I think the school has every right to yank his scholarship for stupid reasons*, but that doesn't make the reason less stupid.

*Of course, it isn't stupid from the schools perspective - they aren't yanking his scholarship because they actually think this is evidence of his lack of moral character, but because it simply isn't worth the inevitable blowback from the uber intolerant crowd that is going to start screaming about how the University of Florida gives scholarships to racists if they don't.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on November 26, 2022, 10:53:06 AM
I think this is time for yet another reminder that freedom of speech is not just a First Amendment, but it's a concept and a value.  Think of how shitty our life would be if the First Amendment existed and was perfectly protected, but in any other entity holding any kind of power over us fully exercised its control over our speech.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 26, 2022, 11:05:28 AM
While it sucks personally for the kid it's not not the rule changed overnight and the kid got caught out. It's been what, at least 30 years since it became a true liability for white people  to say that word in public. Then this dunce goes and records himself doing it, that's a double strike of idiocy.

And like berkut said he did the public apology song and dance and will probably get a scholarship somewhere else.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on November 26, 2022, 11:06:13 AM
I also think that when it comes to such idiotic decisions, there is a concept in play that's well-familiar to Soviet people.  I don't know it if has a name, but I call it a pyramid of fear.  It's best explained by an example.

Let's say that you're in Soviet Union among a group of friends, and you make some careless political statement.  None of your friends really think that you wish to do any harm to Comrade Stalin, they don't even think you have any wrong thoughts, and none of them wish to do any ill to you under some BS pretext.  However, they also know that what you said can you interpreted as such, and if they don't act on it by reporting what you said to the proper authorities, and someone else does, then now they're going to be facing questions as to why they did nothing when you said such things about Comrade Stalin.  Someone's going to report you, because they expect some other friends to do the same calculus and conclude that someone's going to report you anyway, and they better be the first ones to do so.

The same dynamic plays up the chain.  The friendly neighborhood NKVD officer isn't really a butcher he's portrayed to be, but he has to think about himself.  He knows you didn't mean any harm to Comrade Stalin, but he has the same dynamic going on with his colleagues and his bosses.  If he lets you off with a warning, then someone may have some questions to him as to why he's so lenient with Stalin's enemies.  No need to stick your neck out for someone, just do what is expected of the loyal Soviet citizen, and let fate work out the rest.  Eventually you go to the gulag for your careless comment, and at no point of the process did anyone in the chain who played a part in sending you there believed that you actually did anything wrong or had any wrong thoughts.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 26, 2022, 11:08:39 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 26, 2022, 10:37:42 AMI think taking any negative action against some kid because he sang a song is idiotic.

I think the school has every right to yank his scholarship for stupid reasons*, but that doesn't make the reason less stupid.

*Of course, it isn't stupid from the schools perspective - they aren't yanking his scholarship because they actually think this is evidence of his lack of moral character, but because it simply isn't worth the inevitable blowback from the uber intolerant crowd that is going to start screaming about how the University of Florida gives scholarships to racists if they don't.

Okay, and my question would be how much do you follow college sports? Football scholarships get yanked all the time over all manner of things--BYU will yank a football scholarship if you're caught with a girl sleeping over in your dorm room (and may even expel you.) Is there a reason you think the song issue is worthy of special focus, or do you want to see scholarships in general not revoked? If so, are you more concerned about a situation like a football player losing a scholarship over a song that a university doesn't want its players singing, or with say, a college expelling a female student for reporting a rape? (Because she was cavorting with a male in private.) Do you think there is a reason you're posting about one and not the other? Which one do you think is more injurious?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 26, 2022, 11:20:05 AM

The guy is one of the top QB prospects in the country.

He is going to be fine, I am sure. He has more opportunity for incredible success than 99.99% of the other 18 year olds in the world. If he doesn't succeed, it almost certainly won't be because he didn't go to throw a weirdly shaped ball around at the University of Florida in particular. He performed his public act of contrition for doing absolutely nothing wrong at all, and will be fine.

My point is not about the impact on HIM. He is only an example because it is happening to someone in this case relevant enough to make the news.

My point is that it is a pretty decent example of how the <insert another term or uber woke here> left does in fact over-react to things that sane human beings pretty clearly see as completely ridiculous. And the impact that has on our politics and social structures. In a sane world, the University of Florida would have ignored this entirely, but I understand that they cannot.

You should see the twitter threads on this kid. People calling him a racist, and how he deserves to never be allowed to go to college, etc., etc. I bet most of them don't even know the circumstances - he said the word, so he must be excised from society. 

The last time we went around with this, someone said something like "No white person should ever use that word, ever, never, under any circumstances at all". I asked them if that included actors saying while playing a role, and they went ballistic about how that is totally different. I was just listening to The Stand on audible, and the word is used in the book there, and the guy narrating said the forbidden word several times. Is that totally different as well?

Should he be cancelled as well? I am pretty sure he is white. Is that acceptable use? If it is, how is singing a word while you sing along with a written song different from saying the word that you are reading out of a book? If I was reading The Stand out loud, should I be cancelled if I actually SAY the word and someone hears me? What if nobody hears me? 

It's all just absolutely silly. And it feeds into the narrative that Musk and the right then exaggerates - that the left has gone bonkers and this is what they care about.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 26, 2022, 11:20:18 AM
Quote from: DGuller on November 26, 2022, 11:06:13 AMI also think that when it comes to such idiotic decisions, there is a concept in play that's well-familiar to Soviet people.  I don't know it if has a name, but I call it a pyramid of fear.  It's best explained by an example.

Let's say that you're in Soviet Union among a group of friends, and you make some careless political statement.  None of your friends really think that you wish to do any harm to Comrade Stalin, they don't even think you have any wrong thoughts, and none of them wish to do any ill to you under some BS pretext.  However, they also know that what you said can you interpreted as such, and if they don't act on it by reporting what you said to the proper authorities, and someone else does, then now they're going to be facing questions as to why they did nothing when you said such things about Comrade Stalin.  Someone's going to report you, because they expect some other friends to do the same calculus and conclude that someone's going to report you anyway, and they better be the first ones to do so.

The same dynamic plays up the chain.  The friendly neighborhood NKVD officer isn't really a butcher he's portrayed to be, but he has to think about himself.  He knows you didn't mean any harm to Comrade Stalin, but he has the same dynamic going on with his colleagues and his bosses.  If he lets you off with a warning, then someone may have some questions to him as to why he's so lenient with Stalin's enemies.  No need to stick your neck out for someone, just do what is expected of the loyal Soviet citizen, and let fate work out the rest.  Eventually you go to the gulag for your careless comment, and at no point of the process did anyone in the chain who played a part in sending you there believed that you actually did anything wrong or had any wrong thoughts.

What we are ultimately talking about here is the idea that you should mostly be able to say what you want without consequence. The problem is, in a huge number of circumstances that significantly constrains other people's rights.

I open a restaurant in a majority black town, and one of my young waiters is recorded singing a rap song on TikTok that includes a racial slur. The waiter is white, the local community becomes aware of it and wants me to fire the waiter.

I can take a stand for this concept of yours, and now I have to weather the social opprobrium because my inaction will seem to be an endorsement of the waiter. I go out of business and cannot pay the loans I took out to start the business, and suffer personal bankruptcy and lose my home.

Are the people who are so vehemently on the side of "you should never take any action against someone for their speech" going to set me up with a new home and a new livelihood? Some of this is a weird expectation that "societal mores and norms" don't exist, and that society has no interest in promoting them. That just isn't realistic. I don't care what the law or some ethics book says--things that go strongly against a society's norms are going to face backlash from a society, and expecting only certain entities to weather the storm against that but not others seems really selective and political to me.

For example, at least on this forum, I would say the vast majority of the time someone talks "woke" it is a situation like this--a white person (often male), saying something that is offensive to a racial minority, sometimes something so minor it probably shouldn't be a big deal, and then the usual suspects come in to decry it.

It is hard for me to take it seriously as a general paean to free expression when I, someone who has spent my whole life deeply engaged with a church, has seen far more people excoriated for violating conservative religious mores than for racial etiquette missteps. But those sorts of things seem to never become viral news stories or Languish posts. It is difficult for me to believe that is pure happenstance and has no selective political component to it.

I know of few institutions more hostile to divergent opinions or people speaking out against cultural norms than American Christian churches (and I think I say that as one of the few if maybe only practicing Christians on this board), but again that isn't considered cancel culture for some reason...it in fact is frequently (if it is even discussed) defended as "religious liberty." Goes back to the whole "rights for me but not for thee" thing. It is fine to push back on the concept of collective response to a norm violation if that norm violation is targeted against racial or sexual minorities.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 26, 2022, 11:24:55 AM
FWIW my position is not that we should push against Churches doing the same thing--it's more that I think non-governmental entities should more or less be able to address societal norm violations as they see fit, that means some people will face negative consequences with those non-governmental entities. Aside from very broad and very carefully defined protections about things like discrimination based on membership in a protected class, I broadly don't believe it is a positive good for us to tell non-governmental entities what behaviors they have to tolerate, I think that is best left up to them.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 26, 2022, 11:25:05 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 26, 2022, 11:08:39 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 26, 2022, 10:37:42 AMI think taking any negative action against some kid because he sang a song is idiotic.

I think the school has every right to yank his scholarship for stupid reasons*, but that doesn't make the reason less stupid.

*Of course, it isn't stupid from the schools perspective - they aren't yanking his scholarship because they actually think this is evidence of his lack of moral character, but because it simply isn't worth the inevitable blowback from the uber intolerant crowd that is going to start screaming about how the University of Florida gives scholarships to racists if they don't.

Okay, and my question would be how much do you follow college sports? Football scholarships get yanked all the time over all manner of things--BYU will yank a football scholarship if you're caught with a girl sleeping over in your dorm room (and may even expel you.) Is there a reason you think the song issue is worthy of special focus, or do you want to see scholarships in general not revoked? If so, are you more concerned about a situation like a football player losing a scholarship over a song that a university doesn't want its players singing, or with say, a college expelling a female student for reporting a rape? (Because she was cavorting with a male in private.) Do you think there is a reason you're posting about one and not the other? Which one do you think is more injurious?
I am posting about the one and not the other because that is the current topic of conversation.

And yes, I am aware that scholarships get yanked for all kinds of reasons. Some of them are good reason, and some of them are bad reasons. The fact that they get yanked for lots of different reasons doesn't speak at all to any particular evaluation of any particular case.

If you want to talk about BYU yanking a scholarship because some athlete is caught with some girl in his room, then lets talk about that. If I think that is a good reason to take his offer or a bad reason, doesn't actually impact my views on whether or not yanking it for singing along to a song is a good or bad reason.

If you want to talk about a school expelling a student for reporting a rape, I will certainly have a rather strong opinion about that, and it won't be hard to figure out what that might be. Is that something you feel we should discusss? Bring it up, and I will be happy to say that is fucking stupid.

If you want to talk about the "reasons I am posting about one and not the other", I am not much interested in that discussion. I don't feel like I have to follow a priority list in my posting, with the presumption that anything I post about is an implicit claim that I don't care about anything that ought to be a higher priority. And actually, I think stifling speech is a pretty fucking important topic, personally.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 26, 2022, 11:27:56 AM
My position is it isn't our job to tell non-governmental entities how to regulate their internal rules governing behavior, whether that be a private company deciding to fire someone over a Tweet or a church choosing to ban a member for the content of a letter to the editor of the local newspaper. The University of Florida actually is a governmental entity, but it is also a school--and we are also talking about a special benefit of that school not something like general admission to the college. For better or worse we have long allowed publicly funded schools to regulate student behavior in ways we would not tolerate in the "general public", for the reason we believe it is important an academic institution have certain decorum and rules. I generally think it is wise to give them broad latitude on that matter.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 26, 2022, 11:28:12 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 26, 2022, 11:24:55 AMFWIW my position is not that we should push against Churches doing the same thing--it's more that I think non-governmental entities should more or less be able to address societal norm violations as they see fit, that means some people will face negative consequences with those non-governmental entities. Aside from very broad and very carefully defined protections about things like discrimination based on membership in a protected class, I broadly don't believe it is a positive good for us to tell non-governmental entities what behaviors they have to tolerate, I think that is best left up to them.
I don't disagree with that.

If I thought the University of Florida yanked his offer because they looked at what he did and honestly said to themselves "This is not behavior that reflects the values of our school" I would have zero issue with that.

But I don't think that is what is happening in these kinds of cases. I think the University of Florida is just looking at this and saying "Yeah, this is definitely not worth the trouble of dealing with the OMG HE IS A RACIST! crowd". 

I could be wrong, of course. But I doubt it, in this case.

I generally agree that the University of Florida can, and indeed should, hold their student athletes to high standards of character, and has (and should have) very broad discretion on how they evaluate and apply those standards.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 26, 2022, 11:31:43 AM
The athletic director at the University of Florida makes over $1m/year, it is his job to make these determinations, and I do not necessarily agree you understand the issue, or the implications better than he does.

An organization like the UF football team is big money, and a huge capacity for success is the ability to recruit young black men, who make up a disproportionate percentage of all Power 5 football rosters. If something happens that at all suggests a school is less supportive of young black men than other schools, that is going to impact player retention and recruiting. I think this is not actually the culture war woke issue you think it is, I think it is quite literally a football competitiveness issue and I think both the AD and the coach realized that right away. I think it probably sticks in the craw of some people, particularly the whites who watch SEC football, that the cultural mores of young black men have so much sway, but when they are a disproportionate percentage of your top recruits that's basically the way it is. Bear Bryant when he pushed for Alabama's desegregation in the football program didn't do it because he was a Civil Rights icon, he did it because he knew he needed black kids to continue winning football games at the rate expected, that concept still applies in 2022, and probably moreso than in 1970.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tonitrus on November 26, 2022, 11:32:19 AM
I think the bigger problem is, rather than what someone says and whether or not it may be offensive...is that society's immediate reaction is "shun, ostracize, impoverish, punish" instead of "educate, persuade, enlighten". 

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 26, 2022, 11:35:24 AM
By the way, there have been a number of similar issues--Mike Gundy at Oklahoma State for example was seen wearing a One American Network t-shirt, and there was backlash, he quickly folded and apologized and bowed and scraped. Do you think that is because evangelical conservative white multimillionaire Mike Gundy is "woke?" Of course not. It's because he actually works with these Gen Z (mostly minority) kids every day. He knows what actually allows him to continue making many millions of dollars a year, and it isn't OAN pundits, it is his ability to recruit and retain players, and his personal political beliefs to him mean very little compared to that.

College football is so cut throat, that if some minor controversy would affect say, 2% of your ability to recruit minority players, most college football coaches would still opt for getting out of the controversy. I have no idea what the real percentage is, but I suspect while low it isn't 0%, and that's all the coach needs to know--this is something that may have an impact on team competitiveness and that advances no real team interest at all.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 26, 2022, 11:37:28 AM
Quote from: Tonitrus on November 26, 2022, 11:32:19 AMI think the bigger problem is, rather than what someone says and whether or not it may be offensive...is that society's immediate reaction is "shun, ostracize, impoverish, punish" instead of "educate, persuade, enlighten". 



Right, but that's the societal reaction. It goes back to my hypothetical about owning a small business and having a controversial waiter--when these controversies arise you are putting all the risk on single entities to fight against society's norms enforcement, it isn't a reasonable position.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on November 26, 2022, 11:37:52 AM
Quote from: Tonitrus on November 26, 2022, 11:32:19 AMI think the bigger problem is, rather than what someone says and whether or not it may be offensive...is that society's immediate reaction is "shun, ostracize, impoverish, punish" instead of "educate, persuade, enlighten". 


Or how about "do nothing"?  Pretty much everyone is a shitty human being in some way, it doesn't mean that one shitty part of them warrants the wholesale ostracism.  Just treat it as a mark against them, just like you treat other people who are flawed in some way.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 26, 2022, 12:02:26 PM
Quote from: DGuller on November 26, 2022, 11:37:52 AM
Quote from: Tonitrus on November 26, 2022, 11:32:19 AMI think the bigger problem is, rather than what someone says and whether or not it may be offensive...is that society's immediate reaction is "shun, ostracize, impoverish, punish" instead of "educate, persuade, enlighten". 


Or how about "do nothing"?  Pretty much everyone is a shitty human being in some way, it doesn't mean that one shitty part of them warrants the wholesale ostracism.  Just treat it as a mark against them, just like you treat other people who are flawed in some way.

Except doing nothing in regard to someone you are associated with does suggest a tacit level of endorsement. Imagine that you're going to a sporting event with a friend, when you go to pick them up they come out of their house wearing full SS Nazi regalia. Do you just go to the ballgame as planned? Everyone has some point where they are going to choose to disassociate with a person for their personal behaviors or actions.

Or better yet, here are three scenarios where people faced sanction for comments they made, what is your opinion on each and how would you have handled them?

Situation 1: John Rocker and the MLB

QuoteIn a story published in the December 27, 1999, issue of Sports Illustrated, Rocker made a number of allegations stemming from his experiences in New York City and answering a question about whether he would ever play for the New York Yankees or the New York Mets.

I'd retire first. It's the most hectic, nerve-wracking city. Imagine having to take the 7 Train to the ballpark looking like you're riding through Beirut next to some kid with purple hair, next to some queer with AIDS, right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time, right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It's depressing... The biggest thing I don't like about New York are the foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?[11]

During the interview, he also spoke of his opinion of the New York Mets and their fans:

Nowhere else in the country do people spit at you, throw bottles at you, throw quarters at you, throw batteries at you and say, "Hey, I did your mother last night—she's a whore." I talked about what degenerates they were and they proved me right.

The interview was conducted while driving to a speaking engagement in Atlanta. The reporter, Jeff Pearlman, wrote that during the interview session, Rocker spat on a Georgia State Route 400 toll machine and mocked Asian women. Also, Rocker referred to Curaçaoan teammate Randall Simon as a "fat monkey".[11]

Although Rocker later apologized after speaking with Braves legend and Hall of Famer Hank Aaron and former Atlanta mayor and congressman Andrew Young, he continued to make controversial remarks.[12] For his comments, Commissioner Bud Selig suspended Rocker without pay for the remainder of spring training and the first 28 games of the 2000 season,[13] which on appeal was reduced to 14 games (without a spring-training suspension).

Situation 2: Adam Orth pushed out of Microsoft for criticizing people who live in areas without consistent internet coverage:
https://www.n
bcnews.com/tech/tech-news/adam-orth-leaves-microsoft-after-telling-xbox-always-online-critics-flna1C9309284

Situation 3: Cincinnati Reds broadcaster Thom Brennaman fired for on air use of slur:

QuoteUnaware he was back on the air, he was caught on hot mic saying, "one of the f*g capitals of the world" during the seventh inning in the first game against Kansas City.

Brennaman later apologised for his comments while still on the air and said he was "deeply ashamed."

The Reds took Brennaman off the broadcast in the fifth inning of the second game as news of the incident filtered through social media.

While he was still on air Brennaman apologised and said: "I made a comment earlier tonight that I guess went over the air that I am deeply ashamed of."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 26, 2022, 12:39:26 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on November 26, 2022, 11:32:19 AMI think the bigger problem is, rather than what someone says and whether or not it may be offensive...is that society's immediate reaction is "shun, ostracize, impoverish, punish" instead of "educate, persuade, enlighten". 

:huh:

What would educate look like in this situation?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Darth Wagtaros on November 26, 2022, 02:16:15 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 26, 2022, 10:20:09 AMHere is an example of problematic woke culture:

https://www.ktvh.com/news/national/high-school-football-player-loses-scholarship-offer-after-singing-rap-song-with-racial-slur

High school QB says The Most Forbidden Word, and has his scholarship offer revoked.

Context of him saying said word? He recorded himself singing along to a rap song where The Word That Must Not Be Uttered Under Any Circumstances By White People was in the lyrics.

Now he has responded appropriately - he has apologized for such gross insensitivity and agreed that he definitely deserved to have his scholarship pulled, so I imagine he will get another scholarship offer somewhere else and will be just fine.

But this is just more grist for the "OMG TEH CANCEL CULTURE IS OUT OF CONTROL!" mill.
Ridiculous.

As to your grist point, I have long felt all of this was orchestrated as part of the outrage porn industry.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 26, 2022, 02:28:52 PM
Moral outrage isn't new. What's changed is the focus and power dynamics.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 26, 2022, 02:41:55 PM
There isn't a huge problem with the concept of society collectively deciding what it is okay with, that can mean things happen where someone maybe gets fired for saying stuff that is considered inappropriate. It can also mean that society shifts to where someone doesn't get fired for saying those same things. The line does move and it should, and the discussion is part of how it moves.

What I don't get is the presentation that it is exclusively a left problem, and a "fundamental rights problem", that feels like a very manufactured narrative by forces trying to create a specific political result, not any kind of principled or high-minded thing.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 26, 2022, 04:38:03 PM
Yeah if someone claims this is exclusively a left problem we should definitely note that...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 26, 2022, 04:41:51 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 26, 2022, 04:38:03 PMYeah if someone claims this is exclusively a left problem we should definitely note that...

Maybe you could post a few stories of right wing "cancellations", it might be interesting for you to research since you only seem to consume information that talks about left wing ones? It shouldn't take more than 5 minutes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 26, 2022, 04:46:07 PM
Are you asking me if I think there is or is not a similar and even worse problem with intolerance for divergent views on the right?

I am happy to simply state outright that it is MUCH worse on the right. It is one of the many reasons I am not part of the modern right, and despair of ever changing their viewpoint. 

They are the people we need to beat. Taking about everything they do wrong isn't really that interesting or useful. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 26, 2022, 04:48:42 PM
Your reponse here is basically just an ad hom. My personal viewpoint is irrelevant to the argument. 

Frankly I don't think that's a very interesting discussion. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 26, 2022, 04:50:38 PM
I was just asking you to contribute a few examples of conservative cancel culture because I think it could a) help you understand the issue better and b) make for a more balanced discussion, and because I think it would be a lot more productive for actually having a discussion for you to do the leg work than for me to post it, because it pushes you to actually look at something with some nuance. Are you saying you aren't interested in having a nuanced discussion about the topic?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 26, 2022, 10:02:38 PM
I don't think conservative cancel culture adds any nuance to the discussion (as I have already said that it is much worse), I think you are just trying to turn this into something personal. I could not care less about finding examples of conservative cancel culture we both know exists. If you think trotting them out is "balanced", knock yourself out.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 26, 2022, 11:53:16 PM
Here are my controversial positions on woke culture.  If you would like, please feel free to reason with me and show me how I am wrong.

1.  Transgender M-F might not belong in women's sports.

2.  Transgender might be trendy, and not heartfelt.

3.  It might start too young.

4.  I want to reserve the right to criticize members of protected classes (such as blacks, women, and gays) based on their characters.

5.  I want the right to talk race tinged smack with people that are cool with it.

6.  I don't want to be dictated to.  I don't want the reason that is used in an effort to persuade me be "because I said so."  That's mostly directed at Grab On.  I'm an independent moral actor who gets to choose my own moral principles.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on November 27, 2022, 12:27:47 AM
There are similarities between Yi's list of proscribed opinions and my own.  Except I'm not an independent moral actor.  I am a p-zombie. :(
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on November 27, 2022, 08:39:10 AM
I am an independent immoral actor.  :menace:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 27, 2022, 12:41:28 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 26, 2022, 11:53:16 PMHere are my controversial positions on woke culture.  If you would like, please feel free to reason with me and show me how I am wrong.

1.  Transgender M-F might not belong in women's sports.

2.  Transgender might be trendy, and not heartfelt.

3.  It might start too young.

4.  I want to reserve the right to criticize members of protected classes (such as blacks, women, and gays) based on their characters.

5.  I want the right to talk race tinged smack with people that are cool with it.

6.  I don't want to be dictated to.  I don't want the reason that is used in an effort to persuade me be "because I said so."  That's mostly directed at Grab On.  I'm an independent moral actor who gets to choose my own moral principles.

Most of this feels like a different topic, right? These are largely trans issues not "woke" culture issues. You appear to only have a narrow range of topics you care about being "not canceled" for, which like Berkut seems to ignore the many areas of culture where you get canceled for violating right wing ideals. Is the issue that people have the ability to retaliate at you for what you say, or is it just a narrow range of LGBT and racial commentary that primarily the left objects to, that you really want to be able to talk about, and there is no larger free speech principle involved?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 27, 2022, 12:42:03 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 26, 2022, 10:02:38 PMI don't think conservative cancel culture adds any nuance to the discussion (as I have already said that it is much worse), I think you are just trying to turn this into something personal. I could not care less about finding examples of conservative cancel culture we both know exists. If you think trotting them out is "balanced", knock yourself out.

So would you say it is fair that you are only interested in talking about "cancel culture" stuff that you post about? And which as far as I can tell is basically the same set of cancel culture topics promoted by Fox News and right wing social media?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 27, 2022, 12:50:36 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 27, 2022, 12:42:03 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 26, 2022, 10:02:38 PMI don't think conservative cancel culture adds any nuance to the discussion (as I have already said that it is much worse), I think you are just trying to turn this into something personal. I could not care less about finding examples of conservative cancel culture we both know exists. If you think trotting them out is "balanced", knock yourself out.

So would you say it is fair that you are only interested in talking about "cancel culture" stuff that you post about? And which as far as I can tell is basically the same set of cancel culture topics promoted by Fox News and right wing social media?
You just demanded that *I* post about right wing cancel culture, then ask if I only want to talk about things I post about?

You seem to be the one who wants to talk about right wing cancel culture - knock yourself out.

I think it is fair to say you want to engage in personal attacks and argumentative bullshit.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on November 27, 2022, 12:52:36 PM
Yeah the thing with that cancel culture thing is that it seems like small isolated cases. Perhaps there's an unpleasant trend but nothing that is a systemic risk to the political system.


What seems far more prominent is the putting of these cases on their flags by reactionaries to justify their fight against discrimination and democracy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on November 27, 2022, 01:05:07 PM
(https://i.imgur.com/OgleYHj.png)

Not sure what the context is, but a quite obvious dogwhistle.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 27, 2022, 01:16:01 PM
Quote from: Zanza on November 27, 2022, 01:05:07 PM(https://i.imgur.com/OgleYHj.png)

Not sure what the context is, but a quite obvious dogwhistle.

:bleeding:

More interesting "engagement" from Musk.

(https://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/styles/scale_w1024/s3/static/D8Image/2022/11/22/screen-shot-2022-11-22-at-1.22.22-pm.png?VersionId=nEIaFiTpGAbxrcGmT53tYmk3rqS_G_s5&itok=f6o0rUW9)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 27, 2022, 01:23:27 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 27, 2022, 12:50:36 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 27, 2022, 12:42:03 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 26, 2022, 10:02:38 PMI don't think conservative cancel culture adds any nuance to the discussion (as I have already said that it is much worse), I think you are just trying to turn this into something personal. I could not care less about finding examples of conservative cancel culture we both know exists. If you think trotting them out is "balanced", knock yourself out.

So would you say it is fair that you are only interested in talking about "cancel culture" stuff that you post about? And which as far as I can tell is basically the same set of cancel culture topics promoted by Fox News and right wing social media?
You just demanded that *I* post about right wing cancel culture, then ask if I only want to talk about things I post about?

You seem to be the one who wants to talk about right wing cancel culture - knock yourself out.

I think it is fair to say you want to engage in personal attacks and argumentative bullshit.

Yes--you are correct I am engaging in argument, which is the primary purpose of this discussion. If you consider it "bullshit" that I think the same exact things you seem to identify as a cancel culture "problem" exist in both right and left, then I have a strong difference of opinion. But it seems like you are not saying that--you seem to acknowledge the Right does the same thing, so I then speculated on why you only seem to talk about cancel culture as a left wing phenomenon. I then invited you to try and explore maybe some different sources of information that might expose you to other types of cancel culture.

I also think what often gets left out of this discussion--and that I have tried to bring up multiple times, is in virtually every instance I've seen people complain about "woke" or "cancel culture", they are mad about a consequence someone has faced for something they said, so I am trying to sus out if people have a genuine principled beliefe in consequence-free speech, or if it is a narrower thing that really just comes down to "I want to be able to say whatever I want, but I'm fine with other people getting in trouble for saying things I don't care about." The former, while I think still wrongheaded if you spend enough time thinking about it, is at least a consistent position. The latter is literally just hypocrisy where you want one subset of people to be regulated as to what they say and others not to be.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 27, 2022, 02:57:29 PM
I think my position is pretty clear, pretty obvious, and rather defensible.

I don't think your characterization of my position has any resemblance to my actual position, as usual.

I think society should endeavor to avoid stifling speech for everyone. I am not "mad", I am concerned that we are creating a society where the answer to speech we don't like is not argument about why the speech is wrong, obtuse, or even racist, but simply that we demand that the speech be shut up.

You are doing a fine job of that here - just implying that my motivations are secret racist right wing, instead of what I clearly stated was my views. You want to avoid arguing the merits of punishing 17 year olds for singing the Word in a song, and instead just attack my motives.

I think the consequence to people saying something stupid is that people argue and point out what is stupid about what they say, with the hope that they (or enough people) agree that what they said was stupid, and minds are changed.

But that isn't what is happening - what is happening is that if someone says something, the response is to get them fired or punish them for saying the wrong thing. That is stifling to actual free speech, and I think it is important.

You are jumping from finding a particular consequence to particular speech being objectionable to the claim that all speech ought to be consequence free. This is an obvious strawman argument, which of course you know perfectly well.

If they had dragged the kid of out his car and shot him on the side of the road, and *I* found that objectionable as a consequence for singing along to a song, your argument would carry the exact same weight, because it is totally devoid of the context.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 27, 2022, 03:32:03 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 27, 2022, 02:57:29 PMI think the consequence to people saying something stupid is that people argue and point out what is stupid about what they say, with the hope that they (or enough people) agree that what they said was stupid, and minds are changed.

Let us try to distill this to first principles:

Is there anything a person can say that in your mind, justifies them being fired?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 27, 2022, 03:43:49 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 27, 2022, 03:24:08 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 27, 2022, 02:57:29 PMI think society should endeavor to avoid stifling speech for everyone.

So where do we draw the line and who gets to draw it? I'm a Federal employee, is it justifiable for me to be fired if I open a website called "KillAllJews.com", publicly under my real life name and note my association w/the government, and inside I espouse generalized hatred for minorities, racial slurs etc? (in this example imagine that in spite of the evocative name, I make no specific threats to violence or calls to harm in the website i.e., it is offensive but protected speech.)


We draw the line of course. I am not arguing that lines ought not to be drawn, I am arguing that at times we draw them poorly, and when we do so, we should, as a society, say so and endeavor to do better. And not accuse those who want to discuss it of being closet racists or secret right wing bigots.

We used to draw them poorly and allowed things we should not have allowed, and social pressure has changed that. People used to use the n-word in hateful and demeaning ways, and it is good that we have gotten to a place where that is not tolerated. The means of doing so are the exact same means I am engaging in right now - discussion and debate and convincing.

I don't think the lines should, generally, be drawn by the mob. I don't think it should be drawn by any mob, right wing, left wing, or no wing. Mobs are shitty arbiters of social conscience much of the time. I think there have been many examples where the left, who I think should be the champions of MORE free speech, not less, have instead chosen to stifle speech in ways that are both wrong, and empower our enemies narrative that the left is a bunch of kooks who are against people being able to say what they want. I think that is broadly untrue, but narrowly true at times - and when those times come up, it is reasonable to point that out.

As a federal employee it is perfectly justifiable to fire you for having such a website, IMO. More importantly, I would be happy to accept that there is some employment agreement between you and the government that handles just such a situation, and that there is some authority to judge when those lines are crossed.

As I said before, and you pointedly ignored, I actually think the University of Florida has and should have broad discretion when it comes to who they give scholarships to, and think they are perfectly within their powers as an institution to yank his scholarship. That doesn't mean that because they have the power to do so, them doing so is justifiable under any and all circumstances. 

They are open to criticism as well, for the choices they make, and more to my own point, *WE* are open to criticism for having a social norm that demands that the University of Florida take such action to begin with - I don't think we should care at all that some 17 year old kid said the bad word while reciting the words of a song, because it is logically and clearly not defensible to argue that singing along to a song is indicative of, well, anything at all when it comes to his views on race.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 27, 2022, 03:45:49 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 27, 2022, 03:32:03 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 27, 2022, 02:57:29 PMI think the consequence to people saying something stupid is that people argue and point out what is stupid about what they say, with the hope that they (or enough people) agree that what they said was stupid, and minds are changed.

Let us try to distill this to first principles:

Is there anything a person can say that in your mind, justifies them being fired?
Of course.

Singing along to a song, in my mind, is clearly not even close to that line, unless the song itself is intended to be offensive, I suppose. 

Just like saying the n-word while reading a book is not reason to be fired. If Random House books fired the guy who narrated the Stand to me for using the n-word while reading the book, would you find that justified?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 27, 2022, 04:13:23 PM
If the current Chinese protests gather further momentum it may be an interesting test for Musk given how Twitter may be useful to protestors, and given Musk's exposure to China in other endeavours.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on November 27, 2022, 08:01:00 PM
Quote from: Tamas on November 27, 2022, 12:52:36 PMYeah the thing with that cancel culture thing is that it seems like small isolated cases. Perhaps there's an unpleasant trend but nothing that is a systemic risk to the political system.
We go through this routine every single time.  Someone says it's small isolated cases, and then I remind people that the main damage is through the chilling effect on speech. For every person publicly being canceled there are a million people who become a little more fearful.

Many people most definitely feel like they are not free to speak frankly about woke issues.  They either have to say some politically correct inanity that in no way reflects the complexity of the issue, or just avoid saying anything altogether outside of safe environments.  Unfortunately such a chilling effect extends to politics and policymaking on the left, which leads to endless own goals due to groupthink.  Ultimately this leads to things such as New York City electing Adams as its mayor, or New York state tipping the Congress to GOP.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 27, 2022, 09:45:03 PM
Quote from: DGuller on November 27, 2022, 08:01:00 PM
Quote from: Tamas on November 27, 2022, 12:52:36 PMYeah the thing with that cancel culture thing is that it seems like small isolated cases. Perhaps there's an unpleasant trend but nothing that is a systemic risk to the political system.
We go through this routine every single time.  Someone says it's small isolated cases, and then I remind people that the main damage is through the chilling effect on speech. For every person publicly being canceled there are a million people who become a little more fearful.

Many people most definitely feel like they are not free to speak frankly about woke issues.  They either have to say some politically correct inanity that in no way reflects the complexity of the issue, or just avoid saying anything altogether outside of safe environments.  Unfortunately such a chilling effect extends to politics and policymaking on the left, which leads to endless own goals due to groupthink.  Ultimately this leads to things such as New York City electing Adams as its mayor, or New York state tipping the Congress to GOP.

My father spent much of his life using the terms "Gook" and "Jap", in the last 15 or so years of his life he quit using them. The reality is sometimes the things you can say without consequence are reduced, and that isn't always a bad thing.

If you accept the premise at all that people should face consequences for some types of inappropriate speech, you are already on board with the broad idea. After that the question is really just where do you draw the lines? That isn't something with an objectively correct answer, but it isn't the end of the republic or the end of society that some speech suffers "chilling effects." That's really something that can only be determined by society at large. Angry people mad about it probably aren't going to be the ones shaping the discourse.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on November 28, 2022, 12:29:31 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 25, 2022, 10:52:32 PM
Quote from: viper37 on November 25, 2022, 07:54:11 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 25, 2022, 03:45:37 PMbecause I just have no interest in using twitter to get in culture war battles.
So, what are you using to get in culture war battles? :huh:  :hmm:

 ;) :D

Honestly--I troll more far right conservative family members in family emails, several of whom have "canceled" me, which is funny considering I thought only the left did that, and I engage in healthy levels of trolling on various message boards. Us Gen X-ers who got into the early internet unfortunately got adept at forms of communication (email, message boards etc) that are less popular with the younger generations.

My usage of Twitter is really more like an old RSS reader than what I think Twitter is "intended" to be. I think a lot of the "wars" on Twitter take place in the Tweet-replies, and frankly for most people I follow on Twitter, I literally never read replies--I read the Tweets from the actual person I follow and then move on to the next Tweet.

I find Twitter to be very difficult to follow as a form of communication.  I much prefer a board like this one.

I have an account because it was required for something that I can not remember now.  I do not think I have ever posted anything on Twitter, ever replied to anyone.  I mostly read it when it's link as part of a news article.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on November 28, 2022, 12:34:10 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 26, 2022, 10:20:09 AMHere is an example of problematic woke culture:

https://www.ktvh.com/news/national/high-school-football-player-loses-scholarship-offer-after-singing-rap-song-with-racial-slur

High school QB says The Most Forbidden Word, and has his scholarship offer revoked.

Context of him saying said word? He recorded himself singing along to a rap song where The Word That Must Not Be Uttered Under Any Circumstances By White People was in the lyrics.

Now he has responded appropriately - he has apologized for such gross insensitivity and agreed that he definitely deserved to have his scholarship pulled, so I imagine he will get another scholarship offer somewhere else and will be just fine.

But this is just more grist for the "OMG TEH CANCEL CULTURE IS OUT OF CONTROL!" mill.

The University of Florida has withdrawn its scholarship offer for high school football player Marcus Stokes after he posted a video of him rapping a song that featured a racial slur.

Wait, wait, wait... Florida... Wasn't wokeness vainquished by the Forces of Good under the most supremely good Governor and future President of the US of A Ron DeSantis?  I thought these things could not happen anymore in such an enlighten state, now that they don't teach kids about gayness and transsexualism and racism and such horrors like that?



Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on November 28, 2022, 12:48:07 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 26, 2022, 10:27:25 AMI guess my question would be--football scholarships have a very strong discretionary element, and people frequently lose them for doing things the coaches or athletic administrators decide is not to the best interests of the school. They are a special perk or benefit, not an entitlement. Is it your assertion that people who pay for these special perks and ordinarily apportion them out should have formal limits on how they deploy their resources? Imposed by whom? And to what degree?

Mind what you're asserting here isn't a right to free speech, but a negative right to receive financial benefits from someone else and for that someone else to be required to endorse or support your speech even if they strongly disagree with it.

I am with Berkut on this one.  The kid had his scholarship, it was granted to him.  He did nothing wrong, he sang a song that contained the word.

There was a recent case of a Boston hockey player drafted by the Bruins who, it was revealed, used that word.  But it wasn't in a song, and it was in a bullying case that lasted for years.  Among other things, he gave a black retarded kid a candy that was soaked in a urinal before hand and regularly hit him with his friends while they were in the bus.

See both cases are the same to some people: a white man used the n* word.  It stops right there.  There's zero difference between that (hopefully future) college football player and that scumbag who almost made it to the American Hockey League and possibly the NHL.

And I not so respectfully disagree with that line of thinking.  The context in which words are spoken are always very, very important.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on November 28, 2022, 12:57:00 AM
Quote from: HVC on November 26, 2022, 11:05:28 AMWhile it sucks personally for the kid it's not not the rule changed overnight and the kid got caught out. It's been what, at least 30 years since it became a true liability for white people  to say that word in public. Then this dunce goes and records himself doing it, that's a double strike of idiocy.
The problem is a white kid who sings rap songs then.  It's not like there's one rap song with the word and he picked that one.  And it's not like it's the only offensive word in this kind of music either.  Derogatory terms about female abound too.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 28, 2022, 03:41:52 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 27, 2022, 09:45:03 PMMy father spent much of his life using the terms [racial slurs], in the last 15 or so years of his life he quit using them. The reality is sometimes the things you can say without consequence are reduced, and that isn't always a bad thing.


Why are you still using them?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on November 28, 2022, 05:35:22 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 27, 2022, 04:13:23 PMIf the current Chinese protests gather further momentum it may be an interesting test for Musk given how Twitter may be useful to protestors, and given Musk's exposure to China in other endeavours.

True, but to be fair Twitter won't be the first tech company to lay down for China. Plus if it comes to it China can just block Twitter on the Great Firewall.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 28, 2022, 09:33:32 AM
Quote from: The Brain on November 28, 2022, 03:41:52 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 27, 2022, 09:45:03 PMMy father spent much of his life using the terms [racial slurs], in the last 15 or so years of his life he quit using them. The reality is sometimes the things you can say without consequence are reduced, and that isn't always a bad thing.


Why are you still using them?
:lmfao:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 28, 2022, 10:33:56 AM
Quote from: The Brain on November 28, 2022, 03:41:52 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 27, 2022, 09:45:03 PMMy father spent much of his life using the terms [racial slurs], in the last 15 or so years of his life he quit using them. The reality is sometimes the things you can say without consequence are reduced, and that isn't always a bad thing.


Why are you still using them?

I mean I don't in polite conversation, a message board full of primarily middle-aged white strategy game players is a place where I don't exercise the same social restraints I would in real life--I have never used those words even casually in real life because they are just so far outside my lived experience. When I was in High School, we frequently used the N-word as a "joke", and all the typical stereotypes were there--none of us considered ourselves racist, we had black friends etc. I eventually realized in my 20s that it's not really edgy and it's not really a joke--it's something a white guy just has no business saying as a joke.

Quote from: viper37 on November 28, 2022, 12:48:07 AMI am with Berkut on this one.  The kid had his scholarship, it was granted to him.  He did nothing wrong, he sang a song that contained the word.

He created drama for the athletic department and football team. I have already explained the cultural/social forces at play in football recruiting. This specific decision seems harsh but entirely rational to me because I follow college football--coaches don't care about anything other than competitiveness, and something that brings negative racial attention to the program is a no go in a sport where your ability to recruit and retain minority teenagers is crucial to winning games.

Quote from: viper37 on November 28, 2022, 12:48:07 AMThere was a recent case of a Boston hockey player drafted by the Bruins who, it was revealed, used that word.  But it wasn't in a song, and it was in a bullying case that lasted for years.  Among other things, he gave a black retarded kid a candy that was soaked in a urinal before hand and regularly hit him with his friends while they were in the bus.

The Boston Bruins guy is a case I have read up on--and your description is a little off. The negative attention on him isn't (at least primarily) due to words he used, but the fact he bullied a minority special needs kid so badly he ended up eating a criminal charge for it.

Interestingly because of the specifics of that case I think the Bruins situation is actually more complex. The Bruins essentially decided to rescind his job offer because of a sealed juvenile conviction from when he was 14, which the laws of both Massachusetts (where Boston is) and New York (where the NHL are headquartered) actually prohibit employers from using juvenile records to make hiring decisions. I am assuming the NHL/Bruins are covered somehow for their actions, but they actually seem against the spirit of the law and the concept of sealed juvenile records. Legally (and I think morally/ethically) there is actually a difference when it involves a perk like a scholarship versus an actual employment offer, because of all the reasons we have regulations and treat employment differently.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 28, 2022, 04:00:16 PM
Elmo is sounding extra deranged on Twitter: posting Pepe the Frog memes, going after Alexander Vindman...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 28, 2022, 04:19:16 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 28, 2022, 04:00:16 PMElmo is sounding extra deranged on Twitter: posting Pepe the Frog memes, going after Alexander Vindman...

Definitely need another 50 like this guy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 28, 2022, 04:29:42 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 28, 2022, 04:00:16 PMElmo is sounding extra deranged on Twitter: posting Pepe the Frog memes, going after Alexander Vindman...

Why Vindman? What gripe does he have with him?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 28, 2022, 04:45:34 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 28, 2022, 04:29:42 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 28, 2022, 04:00:16 PMElmo is sounding extra deranged on Twitter: posting Pepe the Frog memes, going after Alexander Vindman...

Why Vindman? What gripe does he have with him?

I'm not exactly sure.  VIndman posted something about Musk having too much power, then Musk posted:

QuoteVindman is both puppet & puppeteer. Question is who pulls his strings ... ?

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1596925202184564736
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 28, 2022, 04:48:52 PM
Musk was apparently set off into his most recent derangement by rumors Apple is going to pull Twitter from its app store (which I don't think is verified at all--and even if Apple took action against Twitter it would likely be similar to what it did with Truth Social and Parler--it would hit it with some "fix" requirements to get its next version app store approved, which they would likely comply with, and it would be fine), Musk also is complaining that Apple has stopped advertising on Twitter and has started a troll campaign against Tim Cook.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on November 28, 2022, 04:51:11 PM
Either Musk is going Bobby Fischer on us, or he's gone down the QAnon rabbit hole and all the pushback he's getting combined with his stubbornness is driving him deeper into it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PJL on November 28, 2022, 05:02:17 PM
Quote from: DGuller on November 28, 2022, 04:51:11 PMEither Musk is going Bobby Fischer on us, or he's gone down the QAnon rabbit hole and all the pushback he's getting combined with his stubbornness is driving him deeper into it.

From what I've read about Bobby Fischer I don't think there's any difference. He'd be down the QAnon rabbit hole too...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 28, 2022, 05:04:05 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 28, 2022, 04:48:52 PMMusk was apparently set off into his most recent derangement by rumors Apple is going to pull Twitter from its app store (which I don't think is verified at all--and even if Apple took action against Twitter it would likely be similar to what it did with Truth Social and Parler--it would hit it with some "fix" requirements to get its next version app store approved, which they would likely comply with, and it would be fine), Musk also is complaining that Apple has stopped advertising on Twitter and has started a troll campaign against Tim Cook.

But the "fix" requirement would be something about better content moderation.  Musk might be pig-headed enough to try and fight Apple if they went that route (since users could still access Twitter via a web browser).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on November 28, 2022, 05:05:11 PM
Feels like Elon has taken the torch from Trump as the "fighter" of the right/alt-right. Except Elon is the richest man in the world and now owns the same platform that exiled Trump :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 28, 2022, 06:57:18 PM
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kZRLNW71ouQ

Here's some nice cancel culture at work.  Tourist climbs Mayan ruin they're not allowed to, gets pushed around and sprayed with water.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 28, 2022, 06:59:25 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 28, 2022, 04:19:16 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 28, 2022, 04:00:16 PMElmo is sounding extra deranged on Twitter: posting Pepe the Frog memes, going after Alexander Vindman...

Definitely need another 50 like this guy.
https://spacenews.com/spacex-launches-new-cargo-dragon-spacecraft-to-space-station/
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on November 28, 2022, 07:09:58 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 28, 2022, 06:57:18 PMhttps://www.youtube.com/shorts/kZRLNW71ouQ

Here's some nice cancel culture at work.  Tourist climbs Mayan ruin they're not allowed to, gets pushed around and sprayed with water.
Why is that cancel culture?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 28, 2022, 07:13:46 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on November 28, 2022, 07:09:58 PMWhy is that cancel culture?

People expressing displeasure at a person's actions or words.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on November 28, 2022, 07:15:11 PM
Oh.  I saw it more as beating someone up who broke the rules.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on November 28, 2022, 07:17:58 PM
That's not what I would call cancel culture. I'm pretty sure she just broke the law and got roasted. Not everything is cancel culture.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 28, 2022, 07:33:56 PM
It's been illegal to climb them since 2008 or so. I don't think "breaking a trespassing law and getting yelled at for it" constitutes cancel culture.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 28, 2022, 07:34:45 PM
Also that happened in Mexico, there is no cancel culture in third world Latino countries, regressive machismo culture still reigns supreme as the usual suspects here want in the U.S.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 28, 2022, 08:24:49 PM
If people are willing to fight about the meaning, that means they want to keep it, which is a refreshing change from PC and woke.

So I guess you guys are thinking:

1. Related to identity politics and

2. Punishment in the form of economic sanction?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 28, 2022, 11:24:30 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 28, 2022, 08:24:49 PMIf people are willing to fight about the meaning, that means they want to keep it, which is a refreshing change from PC and woke.

So I guess you guys are thinking:

1. Related to identity politics and

2. Punishment in the form of economic sanction?

I'm sorry what?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 28, 2022, 11:30:50 PM
Let us just say this--if free speech is valuable, then it can never be considered a violation of free speech for a person or organization to exercise its own rights to free speech or the corollary right to free association. To even begin to call something stifling of free speech, you must first show that the identified stifling is not in itself simply an exercise of free speech or free association rights.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 28, 2022, 11:41:39 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 28, 2022, 11:24:30 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 28, 2022, 08:24:49 PMIf people are willing to fight about the meaning, that means they want to keep it, which is a refreshing change from PC and woke.

So I guess you guys are thinking:

1. Related to identity politics and

2. Punishment in the form of economic sanction?

I'm sorry what?

Cancel culture.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 29, 2022, 12:01:48 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 28, 2022, 11:30:50 PMLet us just say this--if free speech is valuable, then it can never be considered a violation of free speech for a person or organization to exercise its own rights to free speech or the corollary right to free association. To even begin to call something stifling of free speech, you must first show that the identified stifling is not in itself simply an exercise of free speech or free association rights.
This is just reductive.

You are couching things in absolutes that are nuanced. 

Society is engaged in a balance between the desire for speech to be unfettered, and the desire to control the harm that speech can cause. We are supposed to, as western liberal countries, believe in the power of speech over the fear of it. We should be, overall, balancing on the side of encouraging a free, frank, and open society where discussion and free expression is encouraged, and trying to shut down speech we do not like is discouraged, unless there is a clear and tangible harm being done by that speech.

When these are in conflict, those who wish to stifle speech should have the burden of proof to show that there is real harm being done by that speech.

Nobody is arguing that anyone does NOT have the right to freely associate, or not associate. That is a red herring, and isn't under discussion. The argument is about whether organizations ought to stifle free expression with the threat of punishment for not saying the right thing, even when such speech is difficult to show as harmful.

The argument is about whether society should engage in this kind of stifling of expression, where the actual content of the expression is not important, only the form of it. 

The argument is not about whether there ought to be consequences, it is about whether the consequences are warranted in many cases where it appears that the concern isn't about genuine harm, but simply the form of the expression, or even the disagreeableness of the opinion.

Cancelling a speaker at a university because they have political views we do not like should not be done. Cancelling a speaker whose speech can be shown to be harmful is a different thing, but even then we should tread carefully. Do human beings and their organizations have the "right" to refuse to listen to differing opinions? Of course they do, that is not under debate.

Ought they to do it? No, generally not.

This is all western liberal ideals 101.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 29, 2022, 12:33:53 AM
There is no such thing as free speech if I am required to associate with you when you say things I dislike, nor is there any such thing as free speech if I am required to hold my tongue and not criticize you for things you say that I disagree with. Anything else would be carving out a "one way street" ideal of free speech in which certain forms of speech, I guess picked by the people who "know", are protected in such a way that you can trample on my rights of critique and disassociation in order to exercise them.

Musk is highlighting this "negative right" to free speech right now with his Tweets--he is saying by Apple deciding to cease giving him money to advertise on his private corporate website (Twitter.com), it "hates free speech." That is the form of free speech that ignores that other entities have rights too, and to me if you go down that path you don't believe in free speech at all.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 29, 2022, 01:15:10 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 29, 2022, 12:33:53 AMThere is no such thing as free speech if I am required to associate with you when you say things I dislike, nor is there any such thing as free speech if I am required to hold my tongue and not criticize you for things you say that I disagree with. Anything else would be carving out a "one way street" ideal of free speech in which certain forms of speech, I guess picked by the people who "know", are protected in such a way that you can trample on my rights of critique and disassociation in order to exercise them.
I just posted about how nobody is arguing that anyone is required to associate with anyone. I said this very explicitly.

Like I literally just said the exactly that:

Quote from: BerkutNobody is arguing that anyone does NOT have the right to freely associate, or not associate.

Who are you arguing with?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 29, 2022, 02:44:51 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 28, 2022, 06:59:25 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 28, 2022, 04:19:16 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 28, 2022, 04:00:16 PMElmo is sounding extra deranged on Twitter: posting Pepe the Frog memes, going after Alexander Vindman...

Definitely need another 50 like this guy.
https://spacenews.com/spacex-launches-new-cargo-dragon-spacecraft-to-space-station/


And what does that link prove?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on November 29, 2022, 08:38:43 AM
Quote from: garbon on November 29, 2022, 02:44:51 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 28, 2022, 06:59:25 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 28, 2022, 04:19:16 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 28, 2022, 04:00:16 PMElmo is sounding extra deranged on Twitter: posting Pepe the Frog memes, going after Alexander Vindman...

Definitely need another 50 like this guy.
https://spacenews.com/spacex-launches-new-cargo-dragon-spacecraft-to-space-station/


And what does that link prove?

Our end justifies his means?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 29, 2022, 09:27:11 AM
Quote from: mongers on November 29, 2022, 08:38:43 AM
Quote from: garbon on November 29, 2022, 02:44:51 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 28, 2022, 06:59:25 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 28, 2022, 04:19:16 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 28, 2022, 04:00:16 PMElmo is sounding extra deranged on Twitter: posting Pepe the Frog memes, going after Alexander Vindman...

Definitely need another 50 like this guy.
https://spacenews.com/spacex-launches-new-cargo-dragon-spacecraft-to-space-station/


And what does that link prove?

Our end justifies his means?
You think Musk being unhinged is a means to the end of putting rockets into space?

That's...well, that's a different take I suppose.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 29, 2022, 09:33:15 AM
Quote from: garbon on November 29, 2022, 02:44:51 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 28, 2022, 06:59:25 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 28, 2022, 04:19:16 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 28, 2022, 04:00:16 PMElmo is sounding extra deranged on Twitter: posting Pepe the Frog memes, going after Alexander Vindman...

Definitely need another 50 like this guy.
https://spacenews.com/spacex-launches-new-cargo-dragon-spacecraft-to-space-station/


And what does that link prove?
I don't think it proves anything.

Are you honestly unsure what point I am trying to make?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 29, 2022, 09:37:07 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 29, 2022, 01:15:10 AMI just posted about how nobody is arguing that anyone is required to associate with anyone. I said this very explicitly.

Elon Musk, the topic of this thread--is. You can read his Tweets.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 29, 2022, 10:09:27 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 28, 2022, 08:24:49 PMIf people are willing to fight about the meaning, that means they want to keep it, which is a refreshing change from PC and woke.

So I guess you guys are thinking:

1. Related to identity politics and

2. Punishment in the form of economic sanction?
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 28, 2022, 11:41:39 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 28, 2022, 11:24:30 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 28, 2022, 08:24:49 PMIf people are willing to fight about the meaning, that means they want to keep it, which is a refreshing change from PC and woke.

So I guess you guys are thinking:

1. Related to identity politics and

2. Punishment in the form of economic sanction?

I'm sorry what?

Cancel culture.

I'm not an arbiter of the term of anything, but at least as I commonly see it used cancel culture refers to a social response to someone's violation of a "norm", with the norm being something that is disputed as to whether it is a true societal norm or only a norm outside of the political right. The social response can be someone losing an invitation to a speaking engagement, or even losing their job.

Things that are actual crimes usually aren't really part of the cancel culture dialogue. Like no one considers the January 6th rioters to have been "canceled" when they were expelled from the U.S. Capitol. In your linked video a woman is committing an actual crime in Mexico, which gives it a very different tenor to the typical subject of cancel culture claims that I see in my personal experience.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 29, 2022, 11:39:00 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 29, 2022, 09:33:15 AM
Quote from: garbon on November 29, 2022, 02:44:51 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 28, 2022, 06:59:25 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 28, 2022, 04:19:16 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 28, 2022, 04:00:16 PMElmo is sounding extra deranged on Twitter: posting Pepe the Frog memes, going after Alexander Vindman...

Definitely need another 50 like this guy.
https://spacenews.com/spacex-launches-new-cargo-dragon-spacecraft-to-space-station/


And what does that link prove?
I don't think it proves anything.

Are you honestly unsure what point I am trying to make?

I'm not sure the delivery of power supply arrays, dwarf tomatoes and handheld microscopes is compelling enough to stand as evidence as to why we should want 50 Musks.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 29, 2022, 12:05:45 PM
To be honest I thought "cancel culture" was broader than that. I was thinking of its relatively limited life shelf recently because I saw two journalists who were "cancelled" a couple of years ago after lots of allegations of sexual harassment/misconduct re-appear. I suppose in my head it was as linked to Me Too as any free speech issues - even just weird ones like that New Yorker writer wanking on a Zoom call.

One was on the UK wing of the "dirtbag left" and now pops up in US "post-liberal" magazines like Compact, the other was really very much a centrist dad type who has apparently re-branded as a hardline remainer/FBPE type.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 29, 2022, 12:12:13 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 29, 2022, 12:05:45 PMTo be honest I thought "cancel culture" was broader than that. I was thinking of its relatively limited life shelf recently because I saw two journalists who were "cancelled" a couple of years ago after lots of allegations of sexual harassment/misconduct re-appear. I suppose in my head it was as linked to Me Too as any free speech issues - even just weird ones like that New Yorker writer wanking on a Zoom call.

One was on the UK wing of the "dirtbag left" and now pops up in US "post-liberal" magazines like Compact, the other was really very much a centrist dad type who has apparently re-branded as a hardline remainer/FBPE type.

Cancel Culture is often used for those types of transgressions, not just speech. It is just a way to punish people for breaking social norms (though...you know...sexual harassment is a crime). It is not the reason for cancelling that bothers me so much as the arbitrary mob justice aspects of it and the fact that it usually only works on the little guys while the big stars and more charismatic types can brush it off. So it has a bullying thing going on as well.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 29, 2022, 12:20:57 PM
At least in my perception guys like Harvey Weinstein or Matt Lauer weren't part of "cancel culture", but more facing consequences for broadly recognized bad behaviors. To me a hallmark of cancel culture is there is broad disagreement (most often but not exclusively between liberals and conservatives) as to whether the underlying behavior is risible or not. In the case of Weinstein he has been proven to have committed serious sexual crimes in court and is now in prison, and thus there is an imprimatur of believability around the many other claims towards him that were not covered in a court case. Lauer I believe never faced criminal charges, but I don't think anyone on the left or right would defend Lauer's alleged behaviors--rape / sexual assault are not considered acceptable even by conservatives.

Probably the most "classic" examples of cancel culture (and I think the origin of much of the dialogue) came from the movement to "disinvite" controversial speakers at universities. Often times these speakers were only seen as controversial by very small minorities of people, often on the extreme fringes of the left. A seminal example might be Bassem Eid--a Palestinian human rights activist who was invited to speak at the University of Chicago. Despite being an activist for Palestinian human rights his entire career, he had made some nuanced comments that were more balanced between Israel/Palestine than the typical "Israel bad, Palestine good", and for this reason he was canceled from his speaking engagement by leftists at UofC who wanted to show solidarity for Palestinians. Most ludicrous--this was primarily a bunch of upper class wealthy white kids canceling a man who lives in Jordan, who is a Palestinian, and who has fought for Palestinian rights his entire life--and they did so because they claim they supported Palestine.

Not all such incidents of cancel culture are so clear cut and so stupid by the canceling party, but this is a good starting point I think for a classic example of it.

To me, an offensive tweet and now you're fired is also an example of cancel culture.

I don't think that every instance that can be called an instance of cancel culture is intrinsically wrong. If I work for a menswear brand that primarily markets to black people and I tweet out something in my publicly-associated Twitter account condemning BLM, while I don't think it is necessarily morally wrong to have an anti-BLM view, and you could say I was canceled, I think it is appropriate/fine for my employer to dismiss me--his role is to sell clothing and I did something that made that more difficult.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on November 29, 2022, 12:36:49 PM
Someone has a slightly unrealistic view of their own importance:

(https://i.redd.it/nunv7jujus2a1.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on November 29, 2022, 12:36:55 PM
"Cancel culture" is fast approaching the fate of "woke" in the sense that it is becoming / already has become a blanket term by the far-right to label any consequence they might suffer for expressing their views. And while some of those consequences might be unfair, most of them just come with the territory of freedom of speech they pretend to care about.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 29, 2022, 12:38:37 PM
Quote from: Tamas on November 29, 2022, 12:36:55 PM"Cancel culture" is fast approaching the fate of "woke" in the sense that it is becoming / already has become a blanket term by the far-right to label any consequence they might suffer for expressing their views. And while some of those consequences might be unfair, most of them just come with the territory of freedom of speech they pretend to care about.

Pretty much this. Being overly woke and some examples of cancel culture are real problems of behavior by the left, but when they get magnified and expanded in scope multiple orders of magnitude by the right they become absurdities, and mention of them becomes a shield to defend the worst behaviors while denying other people basic freedom of speech and free association.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 29, 2022, 12:54:00 PM
Sort of like how SJW went from being a term for a form of uncompromising paranoid nuttery by a minority of far left social activists online to basically anybody who who didn't hate minorities before being dropped for "woke" in 2017.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 29, 2022, 01:01:39 PM
Whew, that's a relief.

We figured out that anyone criticizing the left is just an attempt to deny other peoples basic freedoms!

Now we can all pat each other on the back and not have to worry about left wingers anymore!

We won't even notice the irony of shutting down criticism from within our own ranks by ad hominem in the service of "free speech"!

A bunch of upper class wealthy white progressives canceling dissent by others, who are progressives as well, and who have expressed their desire for progressive ideals their entire life--and they did so because they claim they support progressivism! It's just delicious!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 29, 2022, 01:11:36 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 29, 2022, 01:01:39 PMWhew, that's a relief.

We figured out that anyone criticizing the left is just an attempt to deny other peoples basic freedoms!

Um...no. I was saying how that term started as a legitimate criticism, one I agreed with and used the term SJW myself for awhile, before becoming a scare term for basically anybody on the social left.

The left has tons of assholes in it since your political choices have nothing at all to do with what a piece of shit you are. Policing those people is very difficult with the rhetorical tools at their disposal.

QuoteNow we can all pat each other on the back and not have to worry about left wingers anymore!

Criticizing the right for manipulating terms meant to discuss the problem of asshole paranoid deranged people on the left to basically mean that EVERYBODY who disagrees with them is like that does not mean the problem does not exist.

QuoteWe won't even notice the irony of shutting down criticism from within our own ranks by ad hominem in the service of "free speech"!

Well that's just being on the internet.

QuoteA bunch of upper class wealthy white progressives canceling dissent by others, who are progressives as well, and who have expressed their desire for progressive ideals their entire life--and they did so because they claim they support progressivism! It's just delicious!

How do you know they are upper class and white? I usually only see this online and to the best that I have noticed these kinds of assholes tend to be rather diverse.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 29, 2022, 01:15:04 PM
Quote from: Zanza on November 29, 2022, 12:36:49 PMSomeone has a slightly unrealistic view of their own importance:

(https://i.redd.it/nunv7jujus2a1.png)

I don't think Musk has the mental stability to successfully install himself as tyrant.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 29, 2022, 01:50:10 PM
Quote from: Valmy on November 29, 2022, 01:11:36 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 29, 2022, 01:01:39 PMWhew, that's a relief.

We figured out that anyone criticizing the left is just an attempt to deny other peoples basic freedoms!

Um...no. I was saying how that term started as a legitimate criticism, one I agreed with and used the term SJW myself for awhile, before becoming a scare term for basically anybody on the social left.
It goes without saying, or it should, that the right is going to attack the left for anything they can.

That includes attacking them for things that are bullshit and entirely made up, and they are going to attack them for things where they just disagree, and they are going to attack them for things where there is actually a legitimate issue.

That last category, of course, is what we are talking about. The right is going to exaggerate it as much as they can, of course.

Again, this is not new. Standard SOP for every political party ever.

What is ridiculous is that in this particular case, people on the left are actually using the fact that the right does this as a way of simply dismissing actual criticism of "woke" politics. This is happening right here in this very thread, right now.

There aren't any right wingers on Languish to speak of - nobody involved in this discussion is exaggerating the problem because they love sticking it to progressives. 

The fact that the right exaggerates every sin of the left sucks. But it is a known quantity.

Using that as an excuse to dismiss criticism is dirty pool. It is, in fact, an attempt to shut down conversation rather then engage and admit there is a problem and something should be done about it. And it is a problem. Forget the ethics or principles involved, it is just bad politics.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 29, 2022, 01:51:33 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 29, 2022, 12:05:45 PMTo be honest I thought "cancel culture" was broader than that. I was thinking of its relatively limited life shelf recently because I saw two journalists who were "cancelled" a couple of years ago after lots of allegations of sexual harassment/misconduct re-appear. I suppose in my head it was as linked to Me Too as any free speech issues - even just weird ones like that New Yorker writer wanking on a Zoom call.

One was on the UK wing of the "dirtbag left" and now pops up in US "post-liberal" magazines like Compact, the other was really very much a centrist dad type who has apparently re-branded as a hardline remainer/FBPE type.

"Cancel culture" is certainly a phrase that gets thrown around so much it doesn't have a defined meaning.  But let's try and impose some order on it.

The most obvious examples of "cancel culture" are when an absolute nobody - somebody with no public profile - says something inappropriate, it goes viral, and the person is then promptly fired.  This is an older example, but an infamous one: a woman named Justine Sacco tweeted "Going to Africa.  Hope I don't get AIDS.  Just kidding.  I'm white!" just before getting on a plane to Africa.  Her tweet promptly went viral, and by the time she was fired she had lost her job.  I think everyone would agree these kind of examples are outrageous and clearly "cancel culture".  People with no public profile should be lose their jobs over saying something stupid.

Moving up the list, you have examples of people with public profiles (often journalists) who say or do something offensive in private, who wind up being fired.  Several examples of journalists using the n-word in private (not in a derogatory way) who get fired.  Jeffrey Toobin is sort of an example of this (though I would think his sin of masturbating during a zoom call when he thought the camera was off was slightly worse).  I think many people would agree these examples are also "cancel culture" (Toobin is a little more complex as he wasn't fired per se).

Moving further up the list: still people with public profiles who now say or do something offensive in public.  Lots of examples here.  You have Roseanne Barr saying racist stuff and getting kicked off her show.  You have Kanye West saying anti-semitic stuff and losing his shoe contract.  Colin Kaepernick kneeling for the anthem and not getting another NFL contract.  JK Rowling being not supportive of trans rights and being denounced by almost everyone involved in Harry Potter.  This is where it gets more complex - as a public person you certainly can and should be criticized for what you say in public.  This is I think where any consensus falls apart.  It depends on what was said, and to what extent the person is "cancelled".  Of my above examples Roseanne and Kanye got what was coming to them, Kaepernick was taking a perfectly valid position but I can understand why conservative NFL owners were leery of him, and Rowling is also taking valid positions, but I don't think she's actually been "cancelled".

Moving to the end of the list though is public figures who commit out-and-out crimes.  Harvey Weinstein.  Kevin Spacey.  Donald Trump.  To call what happened to these people "cancel culture" is deliberate obfuscation.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 29, 2022, 02:05:12 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 29, 2022, 01:51:33 PM"Cancel culture" is certainly a phrase that gets thrown around so much it doesn't have a defined meaning.  But let's try and impose some order on it.
[...]
Moving to the end of the list though is public figures who commit out-and-out crimes.  Harvey Weinstein.  Kevin Spacey.  Donald Trump.  To call what happened to these people "cancel culture" is deliberate obfuscation.
Sure. I was going to post separately (probably in the UK thread because they're UK journalists and it reminds me of Andrew Wakefield) about these examples as an example of how short-lived being cancelled seems to be. I'd been thinking about it for a while because I saw both of them pop up in relatively quick succession.

I'm not fully sure where they would sit on your spectrum. It was during me too and basically in both cases there was a single allegation of groping and unwanted kissing (after they'd been told they weren't interested) - I think possibly originally nott naming them. Then lots of other women in journalism said they'd had the exact same experience, or knew who they were talking about. I think what they did probably were crimes but no-one ever reported them and they weren't ever prosecuted.

But, because of their behaviour becoming public, they basically stopped getting commissioned. People also started unfollowing them and not tweeting or retweeting their stuff (I think one had a blog). And there was a lot of talk about them having a reputation which their friends/ideological allies just ignored. As I say the thing I thought was interesting was that they are both back just a couple of years later although by going to places/writing for communities that don't know them as well.

But those both seemed to me to be examples where I'd describe what happened as people being "cancelled", so I clearly think it's a bit broader than speech but I'm not sure that I have any real idea on what the definition is or where the lines are. I wasn't using "cancel culture" in relation to them to try and make a point about how ridiculously wide its usage is, but because that's how I thought about what happened to them.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 29, 2022, 02:13:47 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 29, 2022, 01:50:10 PMWhat is ridiculous is that in this particular case, people on the left are actually using the fact that the right does this as a way of simply dismissing actual criticism of "woke" politics. This is happening right here in this very thread, right now.

You struggle to see the forest for the trees. You sound like Mearsheimer in his interview with the New Yorker a few days ago when he was talking about Putin / Russia. There is a world where Russia has some legitimate claims vis-a-vis NATO and Ukraine, choosing to give them air in an environment of massive lies and dishonesty by Putin is simply carrying water for him, it isn't being smart, nuanced, self-critical or anything else. Same deal with the Republican Jihad and their nonsense.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 29, 2022, 02:18:44 PM
[deleted]
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 29, 2022, 02:25:16 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 29, 2022, 02:13:47 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 29, 2022, 01:50:10 PMWhat is ridiculous is that in this particular case, people on the left are actually using the fact that the right does this as a way of simply dismissing actual criticism of "woke" politics. This is happening right here in this very thread, right now.

You struggle to see the forest for the trees. You sound like Mearsheimer in his interview with the New Yorker a few days ago when he was talking about Putin / Russia. There is a world where Russia has some legitimate claims vis-a-vis NATO and Ukraine, choosing to give them air in an environment of massive lies and dishonesty by Putin is simply carrying water for him, it isn't being smart, nuanced, self-critical or anything else. Same deal with the Republican Jihad and their nonsense.
Like I said, thank goodness we can all just stop worrying about anything the left does, because to do so is just carrying water for the right.

Is there a war on that I was not aware of, btw?

Or is the left always at war with the right, and hence any criticism of the left will always be "just like Putin/Russia"?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 29, 2022, 02:26:37 PM
Quoteuseful idiot
noun
plural useful idiots
: a naive or credulous person who can be manipulated or exploited to advance a cause or political agenda
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 29, 2022, 02:37:22 PM
Ad hominem. I would post a definition, but you know it already. You don't care of course, because you lack integrity, as usual.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 29, 2022, 02:46:55 PM
How Berkut sees himself:
(https://i.imgur.com/RXY7XkK.jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 29, 2022, 02:51:01 PM
Is that Cal on the right?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on November 29, 2022, 04:46:13 PM
Double down on the ad hom, well done.

I wonder what you hope to accomplish with this kind of just...nastiness. Are you trying to give Musk a run for his money at being just an all around unpleasant person who cannot have a discussion without resorting to this kind of petty bullshit?

Are you trying to give an object lesson in how to shut down other views you have failed to dispute with reason?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 29, 2022, 04:49:35 PM
Quote from: Valmy on November 29, 2022, 12:12:13 PM(though...you know...sexual harassment is a crime)

QuoteSexual harassment generally violates civil laws—you have a right to work or learn without being harassed—but in many cases is not a criminal act, while sexual assault usually refers to acts that are criminal.

From rainn.org when I asked google.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on November 29, 2022, 05:09:32 PM
Interesting, over here it is a crime. Just one that doesn't necessarily involve jail time.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 29, 2022, 05:17:32 PM
Some forms of sexual harassment are crimes, but some aren't. Sexual harassment is a broad term in employment law that includes things that are only a civil violation but also includes more serious sexual crimes (sexual assault / rape), in the case when it crosses over into those more serious crimes it usually isn't referred to as harassment colloquially, but definitionally sexual harassment is a broad term that encapsulates any type of sexual misconduct in a workplace or professional setting.

Sexual harassment in an employment setting is investigated by the EEOC who can issue civil penalties and initiate civil proceedings. For a more serious workplace incident like a workplace sexual assault or rape, depending on the context, there may be a criminal prosecution of the perpetrator but also a civil proceeding with the EEOC against the employer.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on November 29, 2022, 05:19:52 PM
Going back to Musk's deranged management style...

QuoteSaddle up, Twitter engineering managers. Elon Musk expects you to be writing a lot of code and he wants to see it tonight, according to an internal memo first reported by Platformer's Zoe Schiffer that I also obtained. Here is the full email, which was sent just after 3 AM Pacific time on Monday with the subject line "Code Reviews Tonight:"

QuotePlease be prepared to show what you've accomplished in the past ten days.

As a reminder, all managers are expected to write a meaningful amount of software themselves. Being unable to do so is like a cavalry captain who can't ride a horse.

Thanks,

Elon
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 29, 2022, 05:41:08 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 29, 2022, 05:17:32 PMSome forms of sexual harassment are crimes, but some aren't. Sexual harassment is a broad term in employment law that includes things that are only a civil violation but also includes more serious sexual crimes (sexual assault / rape), in the case when it crosses over into those more serious crimes it usually isn't referred to as harassment colloquially, but definitionally sexual harassment is a broad term that encapsulates any type of sexual misconduct in a workplace or professional setting.

Sexual harassment in an employment setting is investigated by the EEOC who can issue civil penalties and initiate civil proceedings. For a more serious workplace incident like a workplace sexual assault or rape, depending on the context, there may be a criminal prosecution of the perpetrator but also a civil proceeding with the EEOC against the employer.

There is a separate charge of criminal harassment in Canadian law: you have to conduct a pattern of behaviour that causes someone to fear for their safety.  Obviously that kind of harassment could carry out an element of fear for your personal sexual safety and integrity - but also clear that one could be sexually harassed, feel deeply uncomfortable, yet not fear for your safety.

So what remedy do you have if you're sexually harassed, but short of criminal harassment?  Some courts (very few) have suggested there is a tort of harassment so you could sue and get damages - but that is not widely adopted.  There are more well established torts of intentional infliction of emotional distress, and the tort of battery.

BUt typically you're stuck with relying on human rights law or a claim of constructive dismissal.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on November 29, 2022, 09:19:17 PM
If I had to define "woke" in one word, there is a very good word for this:  Latinx.  It neatly captures almost everything that is wrong with the woke.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sophie Scholl on November 29, 2022, 09:31:45 PM
Quote from: The Larch on November 29, 2022, 05:19:52 PMGoing back to Musk's deranged management style...

QuoteSaddle up, Twitter engineering managers. Elon Musk expects you to be writing a lot of code and he wants to see it tonight, according to an internal memo first reported by Platformer's Zoe Schiffer that I also obtained. Here is the full email, which was sent just after 3 AM Pacific time on Monday with the subject line "Code Reviews Tonight:"

QuotePlease be prepared to show what you've accomplished in the past ten days.

As a reminder, all managers are expected to write a meaningful amount of software themselves. Being unable to do so is like a cavalry captain who can't ride a horse.

Thanks,

Elon
...people keep pointing out to him that that isn't how things work and he just keeps pushing ahead with his idiocy. Absolutely astounding. The reports of the companies he buys having success despite him and having to have a whole division to keeping him from breaking things and coddling his ego seems more and more accurate by the day. What an out of touch and awful manchild. It's like all of the worst traits of the children from Willy Wonka got amalgamated into one person.  :yucky:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 29, 2022, 09:34:04 PM
Quote from: Berkut on November 29, 2022, 01:50:10 PMWhat is ridiculous is that in this particular case, people on the left are actually using the fact that the right does this as a way of simply dismissing actual criticism of "woke" politics. This is happening right here in this very thread, right now.

I don't know exactly what Woke politics is. I think gays should be allowed to adopt children and get  married. I think trans people should have their rights respected. I think those are good things. Generally what I agree with is criticisms of means, like using bullying and deplatforming and other mob justice techniques. I am completely on board with Woke Politics, as I understand it. Though granted I don't fully get what exactly it refers to. If you have some legitimate reason I should be against leftwing social politics let me know. I thought we were talking about assholes and fanatics and their actions.

And the thing I was talking about was using terms used to criticize the actions of the fanatics and using them to attack their beliefs rather than their actions.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 29, 2022, 09:35:45 PM
Quote from: Sophie Scholl on November 29, 2022, 09:31:45 PM...people keep pointing out to him that that isn't how things work and he just keeps pushing ahead with his idiocy. Absolutely astounding. The reports of the companies he buys having success despite him and having to have a whole division to keeping him from breaking things and coddling his ego seems more and more accurate by the day. What an out of touch and awful manchild. It's like all of the worst traits of the children from Willy Wonka got amalgamated into one person.  :yucky:

Well he is wasting 44 Billion dollars on a money losing company when that capital is needed for SpaceX and Tesla. That sucks. I feel like he is betraying his own causes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 29, 2022, 09:37:36 PM
Quote from: DGuller on November 29, 2022, 09:19:17 PMIf I had to define "woke" in one word, there is a very good word for this:  Latinx.  It neatly captures almost everything that is wrong with the woke.

Oh yeah that sucks. And kind of racist. If Spanish needs to be fixed why aren't we also fixing the other Romance languages? Where is ItalianX? FrançaiX? It is because Spanish is the language of the barbaric brown skins who need to be enlightened. Leave their damn language alone you stupid fucks.

I will use the term LatinX the moment the Spanish speakers in this Hemisphere ask that I use it and not a moment before. Not some busybody English speakers.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sophie Scholl on November 29, 2022, 09:45:27 PM
Quote from: Valmy on November 29, 2022, 09:35:45 PMWell he is wasting 44 Billion dollars on a money losing company when that capital is needed for SpaceX and Tesla. That sucks. I feel like he is betraying his own causes.
I feel like his causes are making money, gaining power, and trying to be popular and seem smart. His hobbies happened to match up with and lean into his causes for a while, but they were never his true passions. Now we're seeing how little those hobbies really meant to him when measured against his true motivators.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 30, 2022, 12:16:11 AM
Quote from: Valmy on November 29, 2022, 09:37:36 PM
Quote from: DGuller on November 29, 2022, 09:19:17 PMIf I had to define "woke" in one word, there is a very good word for this:  Latinx.  It neatly captures almost everything that is wrong with the woke.

Oh yeah that sucks. And kind of racist. If Spanish needs to be fixed why aren't we also fixing the other Romance languages? Where is ItalianX? FrançaiX? It is because Spanish is the language of the barbaric brown skins who need to be enlightened. Leave their damn language alone you stupid fucks.

I will use the term LatinX the moment the Spanish speakers in this Hemisphere ask that I use it and not a moment before. Not some busybody English speakers.

:huh:

I don't personally care for the term but not sure why you would decide the motivating factor was racism.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/word-history-latinx
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 30, 2022, 12:43:24 AM
Quote from: garbon on November 30, 2022, 12:16:11 AM
Quote from: Valmy on November 29, 2022, 09:37:36 PM
Quote from: DGuller on November 29, 2022, 09:19:17 PMIf I had to define "woke" in one word, there is a very good word for this:  Latinx.  It neatly captures almost everything that is wrong with the woke.

Oh yeah that sucks. And kind of racist. If Spanish needs to be fixed why aren't we also fixing the other Romance languages? Where is ItalianX? FrançaiX? It is because Spanish is the language of the barbaric brown skins who need to be enlightened. Leave their damn language alone you stupid fucks.

I will use the term LatinX the moment the Spanish speakers in this Hemisphere ask that I use it and not a moment before. Not some busybody English speakers.

:huh:

I don't personally care for the term but not sure why you would decide the motivating factor was racism.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/word-history-latinx

It apparently makes people feel better to believe that this is a word that arrogant white leftists are trying to impose on the poor helpless Hispanics.  Dunno why. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 30, 2022, 03:27:43 AM
Quote from: DGuller on November 29, 2022, 09:19:17 PMIf I had to define "woke" in one word, there is a very good word for this:  Latinx.  It neatly captures almost everything that is wrong with the woke.

What's wrong with Latinx? I mean, it doesn't exactly flow off the tongue I'll give you that... but I don't think that's your issue with woke?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 30, 2022, 03:57:58 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 30, 2022, 03:27:43 AM
Quote from: DGuller on November 29, 2022, 09:19:17 PMIf I had to define "woke" in one word, there is a very good word for this:  Latinx.  It neatly captures almost everything that is wrong with the woke.

What's wrong with Latinx? I mean, it doesn't exactly flow off the tongue I'll give you that... but I don't think that's your issue with woke?

I'd imagine something along the lines of what is noted in this article.

https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in-four-u-s-hispanics-have-heard-of-latinx-but-just-3-use-it/

But that makes me think the problem (as it were) is less about being woke and about what happens to terminology when it spreads from a minority group to mainstream visibility (and other cultural contexts).

The same sort of thing that happened with the terms 'woke' and 'cancelled'.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 30, 2022, 04:13:28 AM
Quote from: garbon on November 30, 2022, 03:57:58 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 30, 2022, 03:27:43 AM
Quote from: DGuller on November 29, 2022, 09:19:17 PMIf I had to define "woke" in one word, there is a very good word for this:  Latinx.  It neatly captures almost everything that is wrong with the woke.

What's wrong with Latinx? I mean, it doesn't exactly flow off the tongue I'll give you that... but I don't think that's your issue with woke?

I'd imagine something along the lines of what is noted in this article.

https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in-four-u-s-hispanics-have-heard-of-latinx-but-just-3-use-it/
Yes. Also I think a sense of Latinx being used heavily in the American academy. My understanding is that in Spanish speaking countries Latine is preferred and I've started to see it used more in North American/English-speaking academic context in place of Latinx.

QuoteBut that makes me think the problem (as it were) is less about being woke and about what happens to terminology when it spreads from a minority group to mainstream visibility (and other cultural contexts).

The same sort of thing that happened with the terms 'woke' and 'cancelled'.
I think there's a lot to that and it's always the issue when a term has meaning in a specific context because of the community using and understanding it - whether it's technical or whatever else.

It's why I always hate the Private Eye sneering in "Pseud's Corner" is because very often it's just the use of vocabulary that has a meaning in a specific context being pulled out of that and held up for mockery.

I think the slight circular feedback of activism and academia is perhaps an issue that maybe exacerbates this perception. Not just around Latinx or woke but other ideas that have come from a part of a community, then been incorporated into theory at an academic level then being re-used by well-educated activists out of that community without necessarily the understanding or grounding or background to use it appropriately. Then it gets distorted from its original context.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on November 30, 2022, 04:37:04 AM
Quote from: Berkut on November 29, 2022, 01:01:39 PMWhew, that's a relief.

We figured out that anyone criticizing the left is just an attempt to deny other peoples basic freedoms!

Now we can all pat each other on the back and not have to worry about left wingers anymore!

We won't even notice the irony of shutting down criticism from within our own ranks by ad hominem in the service of "free speech"!

A bunch of upper class wealthy white progressives canceling dissent by others, who are progressives as well, and who have expressed their desire for progressive ideals their entire life--and they did so because they claim they support progressivism! It's just delicious!

Great, so the disclaimer added by me and OvB was conveniently ignored by you, since that lets you dismiss our point altogether.

I can have this level of "debate" with any randoms on Reddit or wherever, so I'll leave you guys to it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 30, 2022, 04:43:19 AM
To me the most important political dividing line today, just like in the 20th century, is not between right and left, but between those who are pro-democracy and pro-freedom of speech and those who are anti-democracy and anti-freedom of speech.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 30, 2022, 04:48:51 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 30, 2022, 04:13:28 AMI think there's a lot to that and it's always the issue when a term has meaning in a specific context because of the community using and understanding it - whether it's technical or whatever else.

It's why I always hate the Private Eye sneering in "Pseud's Corner" is because very often it's just the use of vocabulary that has a meaning in a specific context being pulled out of that and held up for mockery.

I think the slight circular feedback of activism and academia is perhaps an issue that maybe exacerbates this perception. Not just around Latinx or woke but other ideas that have come from a part of a community, then been incorporated into theory at an academic level then being re-used by well-educated activists out of that community without necessarily the understanding or grounding or background to use it appropriately. Then it gets distorted from its original context.

How should Latinx be used appropriately?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 30, 2022, 04:56:10 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 30, 2022, 04:48:51 AMHow should Latinx be used appropriately?
I think it's probably helpful in queer diaspora communities in the Anglo world and in academic research on that.

Outside of that I'd go for Latine if you're looking for gender neutral or queering because it's from within the language.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 30, 2022, 05:02:30 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 30, 2022, 04:13:28 AMYes. Also I think a sense of Latinx being used heavily in the American academy. My understanding is that in Spanish speaking countries Latine is preferred and I've started to see it used more in North American/English-speaking academic context in place of Latinx.

Which makes sense given its origins as a term in the US. As you've highlighted before, there is a bit of a problem when activists/academics try to transplant the same terminology to other socio-political contexts.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 30, 2022, 05:05:11 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 30, 2022, 04:48:51 AMHow should Latinx be used appropriately?

I'd think it probably sits in similar space to Xicano and then according to this link Xicanx (which I hadn't seen). More of ingroup term / academic discussion of those movements.

https://www.dailydot.com/irl/xicano/
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on November 30, 2022, 05:27:46 AM
Quote from: The Brain on November 30, 2022, 04:43:19 AMTo me the most important political dividing line today, just like in the 20th century, is not between right and left, but between those who are pro-democracy and pro-freedom of speech and those who are anti-democracy and anti-freedom of speech.

What happens when a majority wishes to curtail speech?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 30, 2022, 05:30:48 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on November 30, 2022, 05:27:46 AM
Quote from: The Brain on November 30, 2022, 04:43:19 AMTo me the most important political dividing line today, just like in the 20th century, is not between right and left, but between those who are pro-democracy and pro-freedom of speech and those who are anti-democracy and anti-freedom of speech.

What happens when a majority wishes to curtail speech?

If it's a democracy then typically speech gets curtailed.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on November 30, 2022, 05:42:49 AM
But do the pros abide by the decision? Do the antis suddenly favor democracy? (Yeah, this is where the Palpatine gif fits). Point is, those two issues don't flow together neatly and instead of two sides you have four.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 30, 2022, 05:48:52 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 30, 2022, 04:56:10 AMI think it's probably helpful in queer diaspora communities in the Anglo world and in academic research on that.

Outside of that I'd go for Latine if you're looking for gender neutral or queering because it's from within the language.

Thinking about this a little, it seems the only time you should use it is when referring to a person who identifies as non binary.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 30, 2022, 05:49:04 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on November 30, 2022, 05:42:49 AMBut do the pros abide by the decision? Do the antis suddenly favor democracy? (Yeah, this is where the Palpatine gif fits). Point is, those two issues don't flow together neatly and instead of two sides you have four.

Depends on which one they think is the most important.

My impression is that people who are pro one but anti the other are a fairly small minority without any major impact.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 30, 2022, 08:55:09 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 30, 2022, 05:48:52 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 30, 2022, 04:56:10 AMI think it's probably helpful in queer diaspora communities in the Anglo world and in academic research on that.

Outside of that I'd go for Latine if you're looking for gender neutral or queering because it's from within the language.

Thinking about this a little, it seems the only time you should use it is when referring to a person who identifies as non binary.

My understanding (and I'm 20 years removed from my pathetic attempts at learning Spanish), it could be used anytime you just wanted to be gender neutral when referring to all Latinos, which because Spanish (like many European languages) has "genders" for their nouns and lots of broadly used terms that encompass men and women default to male gendered forms in Spanish.

It's sort of like in English we used to have the convention of saying things like "men" to sometimes expansively refer to all of humanity, including women, then it shifted to trying to actively use conventions like "he or she", which was always cumbersome but seemed to be the norm in "formal" academic writing and etc for many decades, now it is shifted to trying to just use non-gendered words like "they" more.

FWIW there are plenty of Spanish speaking lefty types who have embraced Latinx, so it isn't entirely the case of educated ivory tower whites trying to push it on an unwitting minority population; but it definitely is not widely used at all in the American Spanish speaking community, I think I've seen estimates that less than 2% of American Spanish language speakers use the term. As Sheilbh mentioned 'Latine' serves the same purpose, and I think has a little more cultural acceptance (its use is still minimal.) There is a linguistic argument against using Latinx at all because pronunciation-wise it is a very unnatural sounding word to a Spanish speaker and just not a sound they use in their language, while Latine is more natural.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on November 30, 2022, 09:18:13 AM
Yeah, -e is the form pushed over here as neutral gender decension. It's not official though, the Spanish language academy (never the most progressive institution) still backs the "grammatical gender doesn't imply actual gender" stance and thus refuses to adopt a neutral gender. They kinda have a point, though, in that you need the usage to gain significant traction before really considering making it part of the grammar, languages are not top-down. So far, -e (or -x or any other alternative) still has very little traction outside of very limited use cases. That may change, like languages always do over time.

In Catalan we have a fight between proponents of -e and proponents of -i. That one makes me chuckle.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 30, 2022, 10:14:26 AM
Elmo keeps haphazardly firing the wrong employees. (https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-twitter-firing-workers-accident-hr-2022-11)

Happening so often Twitter HR had to create a new "accidental termination " category.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 30, 2022, 10:26:55 AM
So the Musk / Apple feud is pretty hilarious, Apple was apparently Twitter's single largest advertiser in part because Apple had made a strategic decision many years ago to not advertise on Facebook at all, so they actually put a lot of their digital ad budget into Twitter.

Musk appears to be rallying the typical right wing trolls (including Senator Hawley and Governor DeSantis) threatening to "go after" Apple if Apple kicks Twitter off the app store. Note that in my research I have not found any proof whatsoever that anyone from Apple is saying they plan to remove Twitter from the App Store. It appears the entire rumor starts and ends with Musk and people repeating what Musk says. While not an app store expert, in previous app removals I've never seen Apple "threaten" to remove it first, they usually seem to review an app every time a new version is pushed, and when they decide an app has violated its TOS they will often suspend it without any warning. I think their typical first step is to just block the offending update, it is relatively rare that they take action against an already deployed version of an app.

Looking on the app store right now, the Twitter app is still there and listed as an "Editor's Choice", with a last published date of 1 week ago, so it seems like they have been accepting Twitter app updates as normal.

It also just seems relatively unlikely to me they would take action against Twitter--it is a popular app, and they already have both Parler and Truth Social on there. Parler was engaged in some pretty egregious stuff when it was initially blocked from the app store--including not even doing due diligence on serious stuff like removing child porn from the platform, once Parler started doing some bare minimum stuff it was allowed on.

From a business perspective it seems really smart for Musk, who is angry that his largest customer suspended their relationship, to respond by waging a PR campaign against that company's CEO. Like in what world does berating your customer get them to come back to you?

To me it shows Musk just has no sense of how a business like this works and the sort of relationship management intrinsic to an ad-supported product.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 30, 2022, 11:02:00 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 30, 2022, 10:26:55 AMSo the Musk / Apple feud is pretty hilarious, Apple was apparently Twitter's single largest advertiser in part because Apple had made a strategic decision many years ago to not advertise on Facebook at all, so they actually put a lot of their digital ad budget into Twitter.

Musk appears to be rallying the typical right wing trolls (including Senator Hawley and Governor DeSantis) threatening to "go after" Apple if Apple kicks Twitter off the app store. Note that in my research I have not found any proof whatsoever that anyone from Apple is saying they plan to remove Twitter from the App Store. It appears the entire rumor starts and ends with Musk and people repeating what Musk says. While not an app store expert, in previous app removals I've never seen Apple "threaten" to remove it first, they usually seem to review an app every time a new version is pushed, and when they decide an app has violated its TOS they will often suspend it without any warning. I think their typical first step is to just block the offending update, it is relatively rare that they take action against an already deployed version of an app.

Looking on the app store right now, the Twitter app is still there and listed as an "Editor's Choice", with a last published date of 1 week ago, so it seems like they have been accepting Twitter app updates as normal.

It also just seems relatively unlikely to me they would take action against Twitter--it is a popular app, and they already have both Parler and Truth Social on there. Parler was engaged in some pretty egregious stuff when it was initially blocked from the app store--including not even doing due diligence on serious stuff like removing child porn from the platform, once Parler started doing some bare minimum stuff it was allowed on.

From a business perspective it seems really smart for Musk, who is angry that his largest customer suspended their relationship, to respond by waging a PR campaign against that company's CEO. Like in what world does berating your customer get them to come back to you?

To me it shows Musk just has no sense of how a business like this works and the sort of relationship management intrinsic to an ad-supported product.

I'm not sure why he constantly wants to be the story.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 30, 2022, 11:18:25 AM
Quote from: garbon on November 30, 2022, 11:02:00 AMI'm not sure why he constantly wants to be the story.

Daddy didn't give affection, no
And the boy was something that mommy wouldn't wear?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Darth Wagtaros on November 30, 2022, 05:00:57 PM
He's cool now. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on December 01, 2022, 02:36:40 AM
First review of Australia's news code (which forces Facebook and Google to pay publishers) and it's been a success. Regulator is recommending adding other tech companies, such as Twitter.

A large number of Australian publishers are getting payments from one or both:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fi3yO4hUcAImdYw?format=png&name=small)

I mentioned this before because my view is that a lot of issues we have with social media are about supply - I think especially with local media. So great to see that ABC have outlined what they've used the Google/Facebook money for in the first year. They've appointed 57 regional positions "including reporters in 19 locations, 10 of which did not previously have them".

I know Google and Meta are expecting everyone in the world to follow this policy eventually and I really hope the ROTW is studying this. Especially because I think basically taxing social media to pay publishers who can then invest in journalism will do an infinite amount more to combat disinformation/misinformation than Google or Meta's various plans around moderation, or, in my opinion, any platform-led approach.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 01, 2022, 03:20:33 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 01, 2022, 02:36:40 AMEspecially because I think basically taxing social media to pay publishers who can then invest in journalism will do an infinite amount more to combat disinformation/misinformation than Google or Meta's various plans around moderation, or, in my opinion, any platform-led approach.

Surely that depends on how much of the media is alt right.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 01, 2022, 03:33:23 AM
Doesn't this run the risk of entrenching established big money media outlets?

Fake news is a issue but legit grassroots journalism also exists.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on December 01, 2022, 04:02:08 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 01, 2022, 03:20:33 AMSurely that depends on how much of the media is alt right.
That's always a risk unless we ban them as a matter of law. They are incredibly small in the scheme of things though - I think the bigger issue is Fox and the mainstream media. I think CNN going live to all Trump's rallies and playing them in full in 2016 is more important to him winning than, say Newsmax (the alt right outlet with probably the highest viewership).

Also as I say I think commenting on social media trends - including the alt right - boost them and is also cheap content for most mainstream news providers. Again I think if they had a bigger budget editorially they would not need to focus so much on that. My general view is that this is a supply issue and it's difficult for the good to drive out the bad when most media companies are really struggling - especially for the higher cost, long-term commitment types of journalism that have the most impact. I think getting the distribution networks to pay a fair price is a better solution than getting them to assume a quasi-regulatory role.

Practically it's slightly more complicated than a tax. It's a law makes bargaining mandatory between news media in Australia and the big platforms. The idea is that it provides incentives for them to reach a deal on licensing where the news publisher gets paid for the content. That would not help the alt-right/alternative media because normally their content is rated as less valuable (one, fair, criticism of the Aussie law was that it massively favours the established media - in Australia, particularly, News Corp ove small media companies). The parties can negotiate a deal and if they fail then there's a mandatory, binding, non-appealable arbitration process. But there are also entities that are not really subject to the mandatory barganing process - Google reports lots of lifestyle publications and city guides trying to do deals who are out of scope. It's a broad definition but not inexaustible so some alternative media might fall out of scope - I think the definition was worked up by the Aussie regulators. And the overall policy goal which is what the regulators have reported (positively) on is to "sustain public interest journalism in Australia" - so it does prioritise journalism over comment which may impact the alternative media.

There's gaps/issues with it. It's not doing well in covering radio networks and, as Jos says, it absolutely favours the established media (because their content is a "higher-quality" click and they have vastly higher readership) - although I'd dispute that any of them are "big money" that's part of the problem. It had a lot of negative international coverage - but I know of deals and they are absolutely transformative for newsrooms. At the point of this review, the Guardian Australia has grown by over 40 journalists including 10 FTE (not all directly because of this), there's ABC up there, Nine Entertainment has also reported being able to hire new journalists, SBS (which aims to deliver content reflecting multi-cultural Australia) has said its allowed them to increase full time staff particularly for telling First Nations' stories.

It will expand to other smaller publishers. This is the first year but Google and Meta are still engaged in these negotiations with lots of other publishers. Meta's deals are all for 3 years so it'll be really interesting to see how they try to wriggle out of renewals in a couple of years, Google's are for 5.

I keep reading proposals and ideas on how to get money into local reporting or, say, media in Africa and it seems to me that making the platforms pay fair value to producers for the commercial benefit they get from distributing content would be a really good way of doing it. It would give a stable income stream, allow re-investment and, possibly, a move away from the insane levels of disruptive ads (see any Reach publication in the UK like the Liverpool Echo which is borderline unreadable). But it also wouldn't give platforms more power by making them quasi-regulators or rely on their discretion like all of the proposals about them funding trusts for local journalism which also just entrenches their power.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 01, 2022, 04:18:01 AM
The point I was trying to make is that some of that licensing money will go to disseminators of misinformation.  And we know Facebook's algorithm pushes angry click bait.  I know I get enough of it on my youtube feed.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on December 01, 2022, 04:29:45 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 01, 2022, 04:18:01 AMThe point I was trying to make is that some of that licensing money will go to disseminators of misinformation.  And we know Facebook's algorithm pushes angry click bait.  I know I get enough of it on my youtube feed.
Yeah. My view is they're not the issue and if there's a problem with content then it should be banned and addressed by regulators - not private actors like Meta who already have a lot of institutional power. The alternative media is genuinely tiny in terms of actual page views etc. They won't get much because they're smaller and their clicks tend to be lower value. But generally in my view alternative media is not special and should be regulated by, but also able to benefit from, the exact same laws that apply to the mainstream, established media.

In fact we had a case just yesterday in the UK of aggravated damages (basically to the amount he'd crowdfunded) against a Corbynite alternative journalist for libel. It was all to do anti-semitism issues in Labour.

Although one of the other requirements in Australia is transparency on algorithms and how they impact publishers as well as advance notice of any changes.

Not sure how it works with YouTube. I'd asume they're part of the Google deals :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on December 01, 2022, 08:41:45 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/01/elon-musk-resolves-apple-row-over-removal-of-twitter-from-iphone-store

QuoteElon Musk 'resolves' Apple row over 'removal of Twitter from iPhone store'

After chat with Tim Cook the tycoon admits misunderstanding and Apple had 'never considered removing platform'

Elon Musk has said he has "resolved" a misunderstanding with Apple over his claim that Twitter was being threatened with removal from the iPhone maker's app store.

The new Twitter owner tweeted on Wednesday that he had had a "good conversation" with Apple CEO Tim Cook and that Apple had "never considered" removing the social media platform from its app store.

On Monday, Musk used his Twitter account to claim that Apple had broached removing Twitter for unspecified reasons. The Tesla CEO then indicated it was related to moderation standards at Twitter, while he launched a series of tweets criticising Apple including its policy of taking a cut of up to 30% from app sales.

Now he can resolve matters that weren't even real. What can't he do?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on December 01, 2022, 08:57:09 AM
I am kind of impressed he lied and then admitted the lied the very next day and somehow comes out of it looking like some kind of peace maker.

This is the kind of bullshit circus ringmaster shit he is a master of. It is amazing. He should run for political office.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on December 02, 2022, 03:51:55 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/dec/02/kanye-west-suspended-from-twitter-after-posting-swastika-inside-the-star-of-david

QuoteKanye West suspended from Twitter after posting swastika inside Star of David

Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, has been suspended from Twitter after he tweeted an image of a swastika blended with a star of David, less than two weeks after he returned to the platform.

The suspension took place hours after Ye praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in an interview on InfoWars, a show hosted by the rightwing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Ye was one of several high-profile Twitter users whose accounts were banned or restricted on the site who then had them reinstated after Elon Musk took over as owner.

Ye's account was unlocked on 21 November, having previously been restricted for tweeting an antisemitic message.

Musk tweeted: "I tried my best. Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence. Account will be suspended."

Musk has previously described his approach to content moderation as: "If in doubt, let the speech exist." As well as reinstating Trump's account, Musk has declared a "general amnesty" for previously suspended accounts. Musk did not clarify whether Ye's suspension would be permanent.

On Thursday night, Ye shared the image of the swastika over the Star of David, a symbol of Judaism. The tweet was swiftly deleted. Also on Thursday, it was announced that Ye was no longer buying Parler, the rightwing social media network. Parler said the decision was made "in the interest of both parties".

"Let's always remember this as my final tweet," Ye wrote, posting an unflattering image of Musk half-naked on a yacht.

"That is fine," Musk replied. "This is not," he wrote on the deleted swastika tweet.

...

Guess this is what happens when hyperbolic free speech rhetoric meets reality.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 02, 2022, 03:56:23 AM
The man is at least capable of learning from his mistakes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 02, 2022, 04:02:10 AM
Will Trump be banned again if he attempts another coup?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 02, 2022, 05:21:02 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrhSIDu4_Zw

Here's the Elon we all used to love.  Semi rollout.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Darth Wagtaros on December 02, 2022, 09:38:34 AM
Quote from: The Brain on December 02, 2022, 04:02:10 AMWill Trump be banned again if he attempts another coup?
Nothing happened. Patriots were brutalized by rogue police.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on December 02, 2022, 02:00:36 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 02, 2022, 05:21:02 AMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrhSIDu4_Zw

Here's the Elon we all used to love.  Semi rollout.

Thanks. That did my heart good.

More of that, less social media bullshit.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: alfred russel on December 02, 2022, 04:10:36 PM
Quote from: The Brain on December 02, 2022, 04:02:10 AMWill Trump be banned again if he attempts another coup?

As with most things of this nature, I guess it depends on whether the coup is successful?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on December 04, 2022, 01:00:51 PM
QuoteMusk says 'possible' that Twitter gave preference to leftists during Brazil election

 Twitter owner Elon Musk said on Saturday he thought it was "possible" that personnel at the social media firm gave preference to left-wing candidates during Brazil's election this year, without providing evidence.

Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter on Oct. 27, just days before Brazil's presidential second round runoff vote, when far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro was defeated by leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

I don't think this is a thing you can happily say in this time and age without providing evidence for it. Otherwise it's just going to, at best, fuel conspiracy theories, and at worst might ignite civil disorder.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Darth Wagtaros on December 04, 2022, 07:24:51 PM
Quote from: The Larch on December 04, 2022, 01:00:51 PM
QuoteMusk says 'possible' that Twitter gave preference to leftists during Brazil election

 Twitter owner Elon Musk said on Saturday he thought it was "possible" that personnel at the social media firm gave preference to left-wing candidates during Brazil's election this year, without providing evidence.

Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter on Oct. 27, just days before Brazil's presidential second round runoff vote, when far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro was defeated by leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

I don't think this is a thing you can happily say in this time and age without providing evidence for it. Otherwise it's just going to, at best, fuel conspiracy theories, and at worst might ignite civil disorder.
So? He's not doing anything the other ultra libertarian/Q types have been doing.  FOr that matter, its the same thing History Channel et al does with their Ancient Aliens shit.

Is it possible that the pilgrims were alien leftists? Could the Pyramids hold the key to destroying Marxism?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on December 05, 2022, 09:17:21 PM
Quote from: The Larch on December 04, 2022, 01:00:51 PM
QuoteMusk says 'possible' that Twitter gave preference to leftists during Brazil election

 Twitter owner Elon Musk said on Saturday he thought it was "possible" that personnel at the social media firm gave preference to left-wing candidates during Brazil's election this year, without providing evidence.

Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter on Oct. 27, just days before Brazil's presidential second round runoff vote, when far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro was defeated by leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

I don't think this is a thing you can happily say in this time and age without providing evidence for it. Otherwise it's just going to, at best, fuel conspiracy theories, and at worst might ignite civil disorder.
:secret: I don't think he cares.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 06, 2022, 04:21:29 AM
But of course when social medias dabbling in elections finally gets serious action taken against it, it will be against the left.  :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on December 09, 2022, 06:18:58 PM
The hyping up on Twitter of the so-called "Twitter Files" by the likes of Bari Weiss, Matt Taibi, et al is extremely nauseating.  :wacko:

The wheels really are off
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on December 09, 2022, 06:41:50 PM
Quote from: FunkMonk on December 09, 2022, 06:18:58 PMThe hyping up on Twitter of the so-called "Twitter Files" by the likes of Bari Weiss, Matt Taibi, et al is extremely nauseating.  :wacko:

The wheels really are off

I hang out at this big Discord channel about stock trading. Bunch of young guys mostly, I think. Many of them lap up all the ring wing bullshit, to varying degree. Some seem like reasonably alright kids just gullible to the whole "OMG freedoms" thing, thinking everything sounding anti-authority must be true (and some are just racist bastards).

So anyways today they were big on these twitter files thing.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on December 10, 2022, 12:58:59 AM
What stupid ass thing is the Twitter files?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on December 10, 2022, 01:28:32 AM
I gotta say, I feel my quality of life has gotten a lot better after I stopped checking Twitter daily.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on December 10, 2022, 02:25:28 AM
My interaction with twitter has always been limited to a few selected accounts that have a habit of retweeting random comedy stuff that I often like. Then this year I started following some Ukraine war accounts that I find reliable, but that's about it. My last own tweet is from 2014  :lol: 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on December 10, 2022, 03:16:30 AM
Quote from: Valmy on December 10, 2022, 12:58:59 AMWhat stupid ass thing is the Twitter files?

Musk selectively releasing chat logs and emails and screenshots of moderation actions against far right fruitcakes.

There are some cases I think of real shadowbanning when people's tweets were pushed into the background without them being informed about it, but also e.g. the latest "leak" I believe are the internal discussions around whether they should ban Trump after the insurrection or not - shocking revelation of pros and cons weighed before a decision is made.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on December 10, 2022, 03:29:23 AM
Also Musk announcing a policy of shadow banning:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FjfyOkUXkAcIVPy?format=jpg&name=900x900)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 10, 2022, 03:30:11 AM
And this file is in his possession and he is talking about publishing it?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on December 10, 2022, 03:34:52 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 10, 2022, 03:30:11 AMAnd this file is in his possession and he is talking about publishing it?

He is currently giving internal docs to two writers who are releasing bits.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 10, 2022, 05:14:28 AM
I just read the new Twitter policy and I must say that sounds like a fucking righteous policy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 10, 2022, 06:34:17 AM
Works for random nuts but for those with big followings it does little to impact their ability to break the law using twitter.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 10, 2022, 07:13:23 AM
Quote from: Josquius on December 10, 2022, 06:34:17 AMWorks for random nuts but for those with big followings it does little to impact their ability to break the law using twitter.

Max deboosted it seems to me means unsearchable.  That's death.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on December 10, 2022, 07:15:49 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 10, 2022, 07:13:23 AM
Quote from: Josquius on December 10, 2022, 06:34:17 AMWorks for random nuts but for those with big followings it does little to impact their ability to break the law using twitter.

Max deboosted it seems to me means unsearchable.  That's death.

I think those promoting Twitter files are bemoaning about prior leadership doing such things while Musk has brought in similar policies. His rhetoric notwithstanding.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on December 10, 2022, 07:30:48 AM
Quote from: garbon on December 10, 2022, 07:15:49 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 10, 2022, 07:13:23 AM
Quote from: Josquius on December 10, 2022, 06:34:17 AMWorks for random nuts but for those with big followings it does little to impact their ability to break the law using twitter.

Max deboosted it seems to me means unsearchable.  That's death.

I think those promoting Twitter files are bemoaning about prior leadership doing such things while Musk has brought in similar policies. His rhetoric notwithstanding.

Has he? The whole thing seems to be running off his mood swings and twitter polls.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 10, 2022, 07:39:33 AM
Quote from: garbon on December 10, 2022, 07:15:49 AMI think those promoting Twitter files are bemoaning about prior leadership doing such things while Musk has brought in similar policies. His rhetoric notwithstanding.

I don't follow your point.  Please rephrase.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on December 10, 2022, 08:32:06 AM
Near bottom third of article which points out he castigates prior leadership for deamplification while his new policy does the same thing.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/12/elon-musk-twitter-files-documents-bari-weiss/672421/
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 10, 2022, 08:41:09 AM
I semi-skimmed my way through that link and saw a wide variety of indictments.  Whereas you seem to be focusing on one.

The author claims he's Trumpist but he has hamstrung Charlie Kirk.  Kirk on the right.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 10, 2022, 08:45:04 AM
And these nefarious Twitter files just seem like screenshots of examples of the moderation policy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on December 10, 2022, 09:03:39 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 10, 2022, 08:41:09 AMI semi-skimmed my way through that link and saw a wide variety of indictments.  Whereas you seem to be focusing on one.

The author claims he's Trumpist but he has hamstrung Charlie Kirk.  Kirk on the right.

Yes, I am focusing on one. The one where his new policy is similar to old even though he lambasts the old.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on December 10, 2022, 09:06:29 AM
Sorry I should clarify an aspect of policy that seems suspiciously similar. I don't think the policies are identical.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on December 10, 2022, 01:30:14 PM
This whole "freedom of speech, not freedom of reach" is another one of those Orwellian end runs around the freedom of speech, in the template of "you have freedom of speech, but not freedom to something necessary for truly free speech".  It's like "we'll let you write books, we just won't let you publish them".  I wonder how long it's going to be before we reach the logical conclusion of "you have freedom of speech, but not freedom from summary execution as a result of your speech".
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 10, 2022, 03:57:02 PM
Quote from: DGuller on December 10, 2022, 01:30:14 PMThis whole "freedom of speech, not freedom of reach" is another one of those Orwellian end runs around the freedom of speech, in the template of "you have freedom of speech, but not freedom to something necessary for truly free speech".  It's like "we'll let you write books, we just won't let you publish them".  I wonder how long it's going to be before we reach the logical conclusion of "you have freedom of speech, but not freedom from summary execution as a result of your speech".

:hmm:
But this is the publisher. Its their right not to publish your books.
Quite a different thing to having a willing publisher and the government banning you from doing it
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on December 11, 2022, 12:43:03 PM
Seems like he went off the rails with little chance of recovery.(https://i.redd.it/42k3gnl2c95a1.jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on December 11, 2022, 03:04:14 PM
Quote from: Zanza on December 11, 2022, 12:43:03 PMSeems like he went off the rails with little chance of recovery.(https://i.redd.it/42k3gnl2c95a1.jpg)

What a 1st class wanker.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on December 11, 2022, 03:38:41 PM
The right's obsession with persecuting medical professionals is disgraceful.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on December 11, 2022, 04:02:13 PM
Quote from: Jacob on December 11, 2022, 03:38:41 PMThe right's obsession with persecuting medical professionals is disgraceful.

I miss when it was mainly granola liberals that didn't trust medical science. Sure it sucked for the kid with measles who they tried to cure with crystals and magic water while the "listened to their bodies", but at least the general public was more or less safe.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on December 11, 2022, 04:05:56 PM
Quote from: Jacob on December 11, 2022, 03:38:41 PMThe right's obsession with persecuting medical professionals is disgraceful.

Indeed.

And if I were still using Twitter that one comment from the owner would ensure I never used it again.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on December 11, 2022, 04:09:48 PM
Yeah, his behavior is becoming increasingly disgusting and I've decided I'll stop blessing it with my (very limited) patronage.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on December 11, 2022, 04:52:41 PM
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FjunTjGWYAAhbQ-?format=jpg&name=medium)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on December 11, 2022, 04:56:01 PM
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fjukq_NWQAU7K68?format=jpg&name=small)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 11, 2022, 05:08:27 PM
Musk has to be one of the most tiresome persons on the planet.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on December 11, 2022, 06:24:47 PM
Isn't he like a year late with this?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 11, 2022, 07:32:43 PM
Yeah what's with the lockdown crying? Shit has been over for like 1.5 years.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on December 11, 2022, 07:37:50 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 11, 2022, 07:32:43 PMYeah what's with the lockdown crying? Shit has been over for like 1.5 years.

At this point I think it's a radical rightist / q-anon / anti-democracy shibboleth.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on December 11, 2022, 07:44:59 PM
I sure hope that US intelligence agencies are looking into Musk, and making sure he's just a genuine idiot and not a compromised one.  He may be a private citizen, but he's a pretty damn key one to the security of the country and its allies.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tonitrus on December 11, 2022, 11:05:59 PM
That would be an FBI job...and J. Edgar ain't around no more.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on December 12, 2022, 12:14:52 AM
Quote from: Syt on December 11, 2022, 04:56:01 PM(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fjukq_NWQAU7K68?format=jpg&name=small)

Biden didn't do the lockdowns. That was all in 2020. How bizarre.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on December 12, 2022, 12:27:24 AM
Quote from: Syt on December 11, 2022, 04:52:41 PM(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FjunTjGWYAAhbQ-?format=jpg&name=medium)
Because before Musk came over, Twitter was the ideal platform to exchange child porn? :huh:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on December 12, 2022, 08:56:02 AM
QuoteElon Musk
@elonmusk
The woke mind virus is either defeated or nothing else matters

I must say that I didn't imagine that Musk's transformation into a full blown alt-right troll would proceed so fast.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 12, 2022, 08:58:00 AM
Which major companies are still advertising on Twitter? I'd like to avoid giving them my money.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on December 12, 2022, 09:01:41 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 10, 2022, 08:45:04 AMAnd these nefarious Twitter files just seem like screenshots of examples of the moderation policy.
I'm with Semafor - I think there is a story in these files, especially because it doesn't seem to align with what Twitter were saying at the time.

But this feels like Wikileaks 2016 selectively leaking things to target political opponents rather than just a massive data dump - with Elon Musk acting as Julian Assange.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 12, 2022, 09:12:54 AM
Quote from: The Brain on December 12, 2022, 08:58:00 AMWhich major companies are still advertising on Twitter? I'd like to avoid giving them my money.

I think Apple is probably the biggest one still advertising there. A lot of other major companies I think are still on "hold", they haven't pulled out of Twitter completely but also haven't said they won't restart campaigns on the platform.

The thing about Twitter is for most major companies it was a tiny, tiny slice of their digital advertising budget because it is seen as a relatively low importance platform for ads (Facebook / Google are the behemoths who have almost a duopoly on digital advertising.) Given the relatively lower stakes involved I think some of the advertisers will eventually start ads again just because it will be seen as relatively low cost and pain free for moderate return.

I think Apple has stayed on the platform because unlike the other majors, Twitter was one of its major digital ad outlets--in part because Apple actually doesn't spend a ton on digital advertising, and for other reasons that have never been entirely clarified, Apple as a matter of practice does not advertise with Facebook at all. Some of Tim Cook's actions over the last 3 years in fact show a fairly obvious open hostility towards Facebook.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 12, 2022, 09:24:00 AM
Good. I don't buy Apple stuff anyway. I hate to make personal sacrifices.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Gups on December 12, 2022, 09:55:19 AM
Quote from: The Brain on December 12, 2022, 09:24:00 AMGood. I don't buy Apple stuff anyway. I hate to make personal sacrifices.

Yeah, they're the worst kind of sacrifices.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 12, 2022, 10:19:42 AM
I will say some controversy I had to research a bit to know about has finally affected my "personal" use of Twitter. Up to this point the main negatives I had seen from Musk's ownership were a slight uptick in shitty trending topics and a few random posts on my feed that wouldn't have been there before that I didn't want to see. I guess Musk did some sort of personal attack against Twitter's former head of Trust and Safety (Yoel Roth), Yahoo News has some specifics:

Quote"People really want him to be the villain of the story, and they want him to be unequivocally wrong and bad, and everything he says is duplicitous," Roth told tech journalist Kara Swisher earlier this month. "That wasn't my experience... he's not the unequivocal villain of the story, and I think it would be unfair to suggest that he is."

But the sense of charity clearly wasn't mutual. On Saturday, Musk used his giant public megaphone to groundlessly imply that Roth – an openly gay Jewish man who was already the target of an ongoing right-wing hate campaign – was a danger to children or an enabler of child abuse.

Where this affects me personally is this has been the first time a good chunk of my important follows have actually left the platform--a lot of my law/legal and national security high visibility guys I follow have left the platform in the last 24 hours over this (which is what clued me in on it being a thing, I had not heard of it otherwise.)

It's annoying because there is no real good platform to follow these guys on collectively.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 12, 2022, 10:50:52 AM
This FWIW is kind of how I imagined Twitter "dying" a while back in this thread, it won't ever shut down or go away, so I don't really think it dies. But as I start to have to utilize multiple tools to follow the same people I used to follow just on Twitter, it becomes less and less valuable to me and I'll spend less time there--which I think is going to be a pretty common experience.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on December 12, 2022, 11:17:20 AM
I guess suing Musk for slander for that kind of thing (baseless allegations of pedophilia etc) is a long, tedious, expensive, and uncertain process?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on December 12, 2022, 11:18:43 AM
He's really likes accusations of pedophilia. Wonder if he diddled or got diddled.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 12, 2022, 11:19:36 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 12, 2022, 10:19:42 AMI will say some controversy I had to research a bit to know about has finally affected my "personal" use of Twitter. Up to this point the main negatives I had seen from Musk's ownership were a slight uptick in shitty trending topics and a few random posts on my feed that wouldn't have been there before that I didn't want to see. I guess Musk did some sort of personal attack against Twitter's former head of Trust and Safety (Yoel Roth), Yahoo News has some specifics:

Quote"People really want him to be the villain of the story, and they want him to be unequivocally wrong and bad, and everything he says is duplicitous," Roth told tech journalist Kara Swisher earlier this month. "That wasn't my experience... he's not the unequivocal villain of the story, and I think it would be unfair to suggest that he is."

But the sense of charity clearly wasn't mutual. On Saturday, Musk used his giant public megaphone to groundlessly imply that Roth – an openly gay Jewish man who was already the target of an ongoing right-wing hate campaign – was a danger to children or an enabler of child abuse.

Where this affects me personally is this has been the first time a good chunk of my important follows have actually left the platform--a lot of my law/legal and national security high visibility guys I follow have left the platform in the last 24 hours over this (which is what clued me in on it being a thing, I had not heard of it otherwise.)

It's annoying because there is no real good platform to follow these guys on collectively.

Someone needs to start a legal mastadon server it sounds.
Hop to?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 12, 2022, 11:25:00 AM
Quote from: Jacob on December 12, 2022, 11:17:20 AMI guess suing Musk for slander for that kind of thing (baseless allegations of pedophilia etc) is a long, tedious, expensive, and uncertain process?

Having Musk's army of scumbags going through every little detail of your life and making public a misleading version of anything that might harm you doesn't seem attractive.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 12, 2022, 11:41:26 AM
Does NASA plan to do any more business with SpaceX? Seems hard to respect NASA if they don't sever ties with Musk.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 12, 2022, 11:55:49 AM
Eh, NASA / DOD have procurement rules they can't just stop doing business with SpaceX because Musk is a piece of shit. However there are significant national security issues with that procurement and some of Musk's behavior absolutely merits closer analysis of him personally and what exactly he is doing and who he is having relationships with.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on December 12, 2022, 11:57:36 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 12, 2022, 11:55:49 AMEh, NASA / DOD have procurement rules they can't just stop doing business with SpaceX because Musk is a piece of shit. However there are significant national security issues with that procurement and some of Musk's behavior absolutely merits closer analysis of him personally and what exactly he is doing and who he is having relationships with.

Given that until very, very recently NASA was doing significant business with Roscosmos I think NASA has a fairly flexible interpretation of national security issues.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 12, 2022, 12:05:40 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 12, 2022, 11:55:49 AMEh, NASA / DOD have procurement rules they can't just stop doing business with SpaceX because Musk is a piece of shit. However there are significant national security issues with that procurement and some of Musk's behavior absolutely merits closer analysis of him personally and what exactly he is doing and who he is having relationships with.

Barring something even more grotesque than Musk's present behavior existing contracts will have to run their course I assume. But they don't need to be renewed. Funding can suddenly disappear, programs be cancelled...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 12, 2022, 12:06:29 PM
Quote from: Barrister on December 12, 2022, 11:57:36 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 12, 2022, 11:55:49 AMEh, NASA / DOD have procurement rules they can't just stop doing business with SpaceX because Musk is a piece of shit. However there are significant national security issues with that procurement and some of Musk's behavior absolutely merits closer analysis of him personally and what exactly he is doing and who he is having relationships with.

Given that until very, very recently NASA was doing significant business with Roscosmos I think NASA has a fairly flexible interpretation of national security issues.

Do you think anything has changed in the last 10 months that might affect the likelihood of relationships like that happening in the future?  :rolleyes:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on December 12, 2022, 12:12:09 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 12, 2022, 12:06:29 PM
Quote from: Barrister on December 12, 2022, 11:57:36 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 12, 2022, 11:55:49 AMEh, NASA / DOD have procurement rules they can't just stop doing business with SpaceX because Musk is a piece of shit. However there are significant national security issues with that procurement and some of Musk's behavior absolutely merits closer analysis of him personally and what exactly he is doing and who he is having relationships with.

Given that until very, very recently NASA was doing significant business with Roscosmos I think NASA has a fairly flexible interpretation of national security issues.

Do you think anything has changed in the last 10 months that might affect the likelihood of relationships like that happening in the future?  :rolleyes:

:rolleyes:

The relationship with Roscosmos was always incredibly fraught, but NASA had no other choice - they had no other way of getting to the ISS.

Space X gave them that way.  And right now Falcon / Crew Dragon are still the only way of getting there.  So I suspect NASA will continue doing business with Space X.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 12, 2022, 12:14:59 PM
Maybe relying on Musk for the manned space program isn't a great idea. He doesn't seem to get less unhinged with time.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 12, 2022, 12:25:39 PM
The ISS is being shutdown relatively soon.

Boeing's craft which was awarded an ISS contract at the same time as SpaceX is also expected to start sending crewed missions up in the first half of 2023, even if it's delayed again it is fairly close to being ready, they've had extensive test launches / flights.

All that is to say, I don't care? If we find evidence Musk is improperly doing stuff with countries we have security concerns about under the table SpaceX gets blacklisted, we'll work around the implications of that after.

For what it is worth, I see zero proof of that--but lots of smoke, which simply means an investigation is warranted, which is also all I ever said.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 12, 2022, 12:28:35 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 12, 2022, 12:25:39 PMThe ISS is being shutdown relatively soon.

Good. Good.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Caliga on December 12, 2022, 12:29:44 PM
Quote from: Caliga on July 18, 2018, 08:50:26 AMI think I've mentioned before that I think Elon Musk is a piece of shit and a con artist. :hmm:
Just wanted to quote myself here. :)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on December 12, 2022, 12:33:54 PM
I just wish we had 50 more billionaires calling on their 120 million followers to prosecute public health officials.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 12, 2022, 12:35:12 PM
Indeed, 50 more like that and we'd be floating in cities on Jupiter and shit man, big brain Genius.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on December 12, 2022, 12:37:20 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 12, 2022, 12:25:39 PMThe ISS is being shutdown relatively soon.

Boeing's craft which was awarded an ISS contract at the same time as SpaceX is also expected to start sending crewed missions up in the first half of 2023, even if it's delayed again it is fairly close to being ready, they've had extensive test launches / flights.

All that is to say, I don't care? If we find evidence Musk is improperly doing stuff with countries we have security concerns about under the table SpaceX gets blacklisted, we'll work around the implications of that after.

For what it is worth, I see zero proof of that--but lots of smoke, which simply means an investigation is warranted, which is also all I ever said.

Boeing / ULA are all kinds of terrible though.  Boeing Starliner was finally rated for human flight - but it's first attempt to prove the capsule completely failed in 2019.  They finally did a do-over this year.

But even worse though is it launches on an Atlas V rocket - which is power by engines from our good friends at Roscosmos.  My understanding is that they have a set number of engines in stock, good for another couple years of launches, but beyond that they are going to rely on a new rocket - Vulcan - with engines in part developed by Jeff Bexos' Blue Origin.  That rocket has also had numerous delays, but also hopes to have its first flight in 2023.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 12, 2022, 12:40:17 PM
Boeing / ULA are responsible for some of the most important achievements in manned spaceflight, through their various iterations. They have a development model that was probably unfortunately designed more to efficiently capture government funding than to reduce costs, but the idea they aren't capable of producing manned spaceflight solutions is crazy, they were literally landing people on the moon when Musk was still in his dad's nutsack.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 12, 2022, 12:43:18 PM
Boeing's CST-100 also isn't locked to the Atlas-V--which ULA announced would cease production back in 2021 and there are only ~20 of them left with no plans to produce more, so it would be insane if Boeing had tied its craft to a rocket that is leaving service. It can launch with the Delta-9, Falcon 9, and an in-development rocket by ULA.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on December 12, 2022, 12:46:58 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 12, 2022, 12:40:17 PMBoeing / ULA are responsible for some of the most important achievements in manned spaceflight, through their various iterations. They have a development model that was probably unfortunately designed more to efficiently capture government funding than to reduce costs, but the idea they aren't capable of producing manned spaceflight solutions is crazy, they were literally landing people on the moon when Musk was still in his dad's nutsack.

JFK said the US should go to the moon in 1962, and 7 years later it happened.

Development of the Commercial Crew Program started in 2010, and Starliner still hasn't carried humans into LEO.  Development of Vulcan started in 2014, and it still hasn't launched.

I'm not saying Boeing/ULA will never launch a human into orbit - but it will take an enormously long time with numerous delays and at huge cost.  Something is deeply wrong with their development model, and comparisons to what happened 50-60 years ago are no longer particularly valid.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 12, 2022, 12:47:37 PM
NERD FIGHT!!!!11 :w00t:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on December 12, 2022, 12:52:18 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 12, 2022, 12:43:18 PMBoeing's CST-100 also isn't locked to the Atlas-V--which ULA announced would cease production back in 2021 and there are only ~20 of them left with no plans to produce more, so it would be insane if Boeing had tied its craft to a rocket that is leaving service. It can launch with the Delta-9, Falcon 9, and an in-development rocket by ULA.

The in-development rocket is Vulcan, which I've already mentioned.

I assume you mean Delta-IV.  It is not human-rated, although apparently that could happen.  Problem though is it is also being retired, also to be replaced by Vulcan.

Falcon 9 brings you back to Elon Musk.

"insane" was retiring the Space Shuttle with no other way of getting humans into orbit, leaving a ten year gap in capability.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 12, 2022, 01:00:17 PM
Boeing/ULA was carrying people to space for many years--remember the shuttle program? ULA has like 4 rocket platforms that could easily carry things (including people) to the ISS or other targets in low earth orbit. The thing is Boeing/ULA does its work based on what cost+ contracts the governments wants to have with it. It had no reason to build a capsule to mount on a rocket because the U.S. wasn't using that technology to send people to space--it was using the space shuttle.

When we decided to stop flying the shuttle after the last accident, the only good option for a crewed craft were ones that Roscosmos was using. There was basically no real incentive for Boeing/ULA to try and compete...Roscosmos was doing the job fine with pretty old, well tested, and fairly cheap rockets. Why push into a low margin business when they had lots of contracts for defense / intelligence / commercial / supply launches with their existing rocket platforms none of which required developing a new crewed craft for which there was no immediate need. Then years later when it became obvious continuing to rely on Russia for ISS launches was a problem Boeing starts developing a crewed craft design.

But it's weird considering Boeing / ULA launch all kinds of shit into space all the time that they somehow haven't been doing anything since the shuttle quit flying. You do know more goes on in space than the relatively unimportant ISS missions right?

It's worth noting Boeing built the space shuttle (specifically the orbiting space plane which was developed by Rockwell and Boeing) in the 1970s and it remains significantly more complicated and capable of advanced missions than anything SpaceX has, 40 years later.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 12, 2022, 01:02:13 PM
Quote from: Barrister on December 12, 2022, 12:52:18 PM"insane" was retiring the Space Shuttle with no other way of getting humans into orbit, leaving a ten year gap in capability.

Not really, getting humans into space just isn't that important--particularly not the ISS, which I think is basically just a propaganda (expensive) device that should have been de-orbited at the end of its original planned missions.

Most human spaceflight is a significant waste of resources providing life support and supplies / accommodations for humans that are unnecessary for most missions of scientific / commercial importance.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 12, 2022, 03:14:48 PM
The ISS is dumb yes. Should never have been built. They should have looked to put a space station into a more stable and useful orbit.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on December 12, 2022, 07:28:12 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 12, 2022, 10:19:42 AM
QuoteBut the sense of charity clearly wasn't mutual. On Saturday, Musk used his giant public megaphone to groundlessly imply that Roth – an openly gay Jewish man who was already the target of an ongoing right-wing hate campaign – was a danger to children or an enabler of child abuse.

What the fuck?

 :huh:

Quote from: The Larch on December 12, 2022, 08:56:02 AM
QuoteElon Musk
@elonmusk
The woke mind virus is either defeated or nothing else matters

I must say that I didn't imagine that Musk's transformation into a full blown alt-right troll would proceed so fast.

Oh for fuck sake.

He just decided to be an extremist alt-right guy? How do you go from "yeah I used to be a Democrat but some of them are little too wacky" to "now I am fully on team far-right" in two seconds? It seems a little...unlikely.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Darth Wagtaros on December 12, 2022, 07:46:54 PM
He likes attention and he gets their unconditional love and devotion just by saying stupid shit. Isn't that enough?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on December 12, 2022, 07:53:30 PM
Main character syndrome. He didn't buy twitter to not be the main character.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on December 12, 2022, 08:07:14 PM
Quote from: Valmy on December 12, 2022, 07:28:12 PMHe just decided to be an extremist alt-right guy? How do you go from "yeah I used to be a Democrat but some of them are little too wacky" to "now I am fully on team far-right" in two seconds? It seems a little...unlikely.

My guess would be that he was never a Democrat to begin with, and only said it to appear tolerable/be accepted, or something.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on December 12, 2022, 08:33:58 PM
Quote from: The Larch on December 12, 2022, 08:07:14 PM
Quote from: Valmy on December 12, 2022, 07:28:12 PMHe just decided to be an extremist alt-right guy? How do you go from "yeah I used to be a Democrat but some of them are little too wacky" to "now I am fully on team far-right" in two seconds? It seems a little...unlikely.

My guess would be that he was never a Democrat to begin with, and only said it to appear tolerable/be accepted, or something.

Yeah, it's looking like that was just a pose he adopted because he knew his Tesla/Powerwall etc customers skewed heavily left.  Now that he has a new toy he's forgetting his old toys and their needs.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 13, 2022, 03:19:53 AM
So Forbes has Musk dipping down to the world's second richest person. I can only hope that his companies keep imploding.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2022/12/12/elon-musk-starts-week-as-worlds-second-richest-person/?sh=4bfee4076a1c
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on December 13, 2022, 03:41:57 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/12/elon-musk-booed-dave-chappelle-san-francisco-show

QuoteCrowd boos Elon Musk after Dave Chappelle says to 'make some noise'

The polite version is that it didn't go quite according to plan when Elon Musk made his most recent stage appearance.

"Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for the richest man in the world," the comedian Dave Chappelle roared on stage at the Chase Center in San Francisco as he invited the Twitter owner out to join him on Sunday night.

For the first couple of seconds Musk appeared ready to accept a euphoric welcome from the crowd of 18,000. He raised his arms high in the air and spun around as though he'd just scored a World Cup decider.

Then the booing started. And it continued. And it got louder. And louder. For the best part of 10 minutes Musk was given a real-time readout of his current popularity ratings.


"Controversy, buddy," was Chappelle's uncharacteristically diplomatic response to Musk as the booing echoed around the auditorium. "Weren't expecting this, were you?"

That summed up perhaps the strangest aspect of the mass booing Musk endured on Sunday – that both men on stage appeared to be genuinely taken aback by the reception. After all, this was San Francisco, where thousands of employees were fired by Musk after his $44bn takeover of Twitter in October, and even those who kept their jobs were told by him that they had to work "long hours at high intensity".

"It sounds like some of the people you fired are in the audience," Chappelle said, and this time he wasn't joking.

On top of that there was the fact that Musk had agreed to appear before one of the most progressive audiences – a comedy club – in arguably the most progressive city in America. All of which was perhaps ill-advised, given that he had spent much of the weekend spouting far-right tropes.

He had called for the pandemic health chief Anthony Fauci to be prosecuted, spread QAnon conspiracies and made transphobic remarks.

A normally irrepressible Musk seemed to be dumbstruck by the booing. He remained speechless, only opening his mouth to cry for help: "Dave, what shall I say?"

"Don't say nothing," Chappelle counseled. "You hear that sound, Elon? That's the sound of pending civil unrest."

At least there was alternative facts to fall back on. By Monday morning Musk had perked up and was busily rewriting history. The deafening noise, he reassured his Twitter followers, had in fact been "90% cheers & 10% boos".

Tell that to James Yu, a writer who was in the crowd on Sunday. "A good 80% of the stadium boos," he estimated, noting that once the jeering started Musk withered on stage and turned "into a corncob".

https://news.sky.com/story/elon-musk-booed-on-stage-at-dave-chappelle-gig-12766825
QuoteHe has since insisted "it was 90% cheers" that greeted him at the gig, and said the "10% boos" were a result of having "offended San Francisco's unhinged leftists".

"But, still, that's a lot of boos, which is a first for me in real life (frequent on Twitter)," he added in a tweet.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on December 13, 2022, 04:21:59 AM
I guess this is bound to happen when you limit your fanbase to basement-dwelling incels.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on December 13, 2022, 04:36:52 AM
https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-business-a9b795e8050de12319b82b5dd7118cd7

QuoteMusk's Twitter disbands its Trust and Safety advisory group

Elon Musk's Twitter has dissolved its Trust and Safety Council, the advisory group of around 100 independent civil, human rights and other organizations that the company formed in 2016 to address hate speech, child exploitation, suicide, self-harm and other problems on the platform.

The council had been scheduled to meet with Twitter representatives Monday night. But Twitter informed the group via email that it was disbanding it shortly before the meeting was to take place, according to multiple members.

The council members, who provided images of the email from Twitter to The Associated Press, spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fears of retaliation. The email said Twitter was "reevaluating how best to bring external insights" and the council is "not the best structure to do this."

"Our work to make Twitter a safe, informative place will be moving faster and more aggressively than ever before and we will continue to welcome your ideas going forward about how to achieve this goal," said the email, which was signed "Twitter."

The volunteer group provided expertise and guidance on how Twitter could better combat hate, harassment and other harms but didn't have any decision-making authority and didn't review specific content disputes. Shortly after buying Twitter for $44 billion in late October, Musk said he would form a new "content moderation council" to help make major decisions but later changed his mind.

"Twitter's Trust and Safety Council was a group of volunteers who over many years gave up their time when consulted by Twitter staff to offer advice on a wide range of online harms and safety issues," tweeted council member Alex Holmes. "At no point was it a governing body or decision making."

Twitter, which is based in San Francisco, had confirmed the meeting with the council Thursday in an email in which it promised an "open conversation and Q&A" with Twitter staff, including the new head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin.

That came on the same day that three council members announced they were resigning in a public statement posted on Twitter that said that "contrary to claims by Elon Musk, the safety and wellbeing of Twitter's users are on the decline."

Those former council members soon became the target of online attacks after Musk amplified criticism of them and Twitter's past leadership for allegedly not doing enough to stop child sexual exploitation on the platform.

"It is a crime that they refused to take action on child exploitation for years!" Musk tweeted.

A growing number of attacks on the council led to concerns from some remaining members who sent an email to Twitter earlier on Monday demanding the company stop misrepresenting the council's role.

Those false accusations by Twitter leaders were "endangering current and former Council members," the email said.

The Trust and Safety Council, in fact, had as one of its advisory groups one that focused on child exploitation. This included the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the Rati Foundation and YAKIN, or Youth Adult Survivors & Kin in Need.

Former Twitter employee Patricia Cartes, whose job it was to form the council in 2016, said Monday its dissolution "means there's no more checks and balances." Cartes said the company sought to bring a global outlook to the council, with experts from around the world who could relay concerns about how new Twitter policies or products might affect their communities.

She contrasted that with Musk's current practice of surveying his Twitter followers before making a policy change affecting how content gets moderated.

"He doesn't really care as much about what experts think," she said.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on December 13, 2022, 05:37:58 AM
He is now talking about the woke mind virus and following outright Nazis. By Christmas he will post about adenochrom and lizard people.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 13, 2022, 05:45:19 AM
I guess the rise in insanity tracks well with the decline in his wealth- the richest people in the planet being the lizard people rather than those shouting about them.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 13, 2022, 08:12:58 AM
I don't want to try too much to "analyze" Musk because I lack the capacity to psychoanalyze anyone very well, let alone someone I haven't met. I don't think Musk is a full MAGA righty, but I also think when you are behaving as a right-wing troll with a big megaphone primarily advancing the interests of full MAGA righties--the distinction is one without a difference.

I think he is more troll than ideologue, and I think he has that common "mind virus", where he is so annoyed by "wokeism" that it overrides his reasonability and good sense in all other ways politically. In part because politics has a self-reinforcing element. You shit on woke stuff, and then more people on your side start saying mean things about you. This makes you want to make them angrier (especially if you have a troll's personality), and after a few cycles of that everyone hates you, so now you want to embrace the right wing because they are now "your people", even if you've never done much of an analysis of their policies and core ideology, and even if you are opposed to much of that.

Note that this is a guy whose car company would have literally never gotten off the ground without left wing subsidy programs for electric vehicles.

On top of that I think he has garden variety Asperger's spectrum personality issues, and an intolerance of dissent. This leads to more reinforcement of this bad behavior because anyone close to him who would help steer him in a better direction doesn't exist--he likely fires anyone from his inner circle that disagrees with him, and eventually that insures none of them will dare do so.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on December 13, 2022, 09:12:37 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 13, 2022, 08:12:58 AM(snip)
On top of that I think he has garden variety Asperger's spectrum personality issues, and an intolerance of dissent. This leads to more reinforcement of this bad behavior because anyone close to him who would help steer him in a better direction doesn't exist--he likely fires anyone from his inner circle that disagrees with him, and eventually that insures none of them will dare do so.

That seems likely.  The question then becomes: do we watch Musk today to see what Putin will be tomorrow, or vice-versa?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on December 13, 2022, 02:12:03 PM
Guess selling off furniture and odds and ends is a way to make money for Twitter now.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/13/twitter-hq-office-auction-items
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on December 13, 2022, 02:49:27 PM
There's a wave of piracy on Twitter, lots of accounts reported as being hijacked.  Celebrities, local or not so local, as well as nobodies.

Well, before that happens to a nobody like me, I decided it was time to flush my Twitter account.  Done.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PJL on December 13, 2022, 03:01:18 PM
Perhaps it should be rebranded as Twatter. :D
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 13, 2022, 03:57:47 PM
Twitter's declining ops security might worry me, but as I mentioned a while back I have nothing "real" linked to my Twitter. Pseudonym account, no real life data on it at all, a throwaway email and password, if my account gets hacked I'll just let the hacker have it and move on.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on December 13, 2022, 08:53:35 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 12, 2022, 01:00:17 PMBoeing/ULA was carrying people to space for many years--remember the shuttle program?

(snip)

It's worth noting Boeing built the space shuttle (specifically the orbiting space plane which was developed by Rockwell and Boeing) in the 1970s and it remains significantly more complicated and capable of advanced missions than anything SpaceX has, 40 years later.

Designing the Space Shuttle doesn't show technical brilliance, it shows the opposite.  One in twenty-six people who flew in the Shuttle died in the Shuttle. One in sixty-two launches resulted in the loss of the vehicle.  Forty percent of the fleet was lost on missions.  Payload costs per weight were more than 30 times what had been promised.  Cost per launch was more than three times the initial estimate.  The launch rate was one-sixth the number required to meet the technical and budgetary requirements.

The Space Shuttle is the classic example of the failure of the US space program prior to SpaceX, and reflects shame on ULA, not pride.  It was gold-plated beyond the tolerance of the technology.

ULA violated what I call "the Feynman Rule:"
QuoteFor a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 13, 2022, 09:09:05 PM
Quote from: grumbler on December 13, 2022, 08:53:35 PMDesigning the Space Shuttle doesn't show technical brilliance, it shows the opposite.  One in twenty-six people who flew in the Shuttle died in the Shuttle

The shuttle was designed to NASA's specifications for a reusable space plane, neither shuttle disaster related to the design of the plane itself--Boeing didn't design the overall system, just the space plane part--and technically Rockwell did a lot of that work although I think Boeing later absorbed that part of their business (can't recall specifics.)

One fatal shuttle accident was largely caused by NASA choosing to launch in very cold weather and people ignoring warnings about the consequences from an experienced engineer at Thiokol, the physical failure was in the solid rocket booster which wasn't Boeing designed. The other was caused by debris hitting the shuttle during launch, which again--wasn't due to the shuttle design but the breach mounted system as a concept, which again, wasn't Boeing.

There is a different between the shuttle space plane, which Boeing was involved in, and the overall decision to make a breach-mounted spaceplane system that was intended to be reusable--which was largely a NASA decision and the design of a consortium of aerospace companies.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 13, 2022, 09:31:16 PM
Also this isn't really about Boeing's history or operating efficiency--it is about the specific claim of "advancing human spaceflight", which to my mind incrementally reducing the cost for multinational corporations to fill earth orbit with junk associated with profit seeking ventures is not something I view as advancing human spaceflight.

Wise or unwise, the space shuttle was an undeniable advancement in human spaceflight capabilities. SpaceX's rockets seem to largely be advancements in corporate bottom line for putting stuff into space, none of which appears to be meaningfully advancing human spaceflight.

Worse still, the end goal of SpaceX is a very poor one--which is to advance human spaceflight, specifically for a human Mars mission. A wholly stupid endeavor that should not occur, and has no reason to occur, at least not with technology we will have for many years (probably 100+.) Any scientific missions to Mars can be far more effectively done via robotics teams--and the teams at JPL and others have meaningfully advanced the ability of humans to study other planets in the solar system continuously over the last 30 years--in a way that actually matters and that serves human scientific ends.

A mission to Mars is almost anti-scientific, and a massive waste of potential public resources and energy to a vanity project of billionaires. It is disgraceful that human spaceflight is the goal of the two billionaire led space private companies (Blue Origin and SpaceX), and shows the sort of decision making when "little boys" with lots of money are allowed to make such decisions.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on December 13, 2022, 09:48:40 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 13, 2022, 09:09:05 PMThe shuttle was designed to NASA's specifications for a reusable space plane, neither shuttle disaster related to the design of the plane itself--Boeing didn't design the overall system, just the space plane part--and technically Rockwell did a lot of that work although I think Boeing later absorbed that part of their business (can't recall specifics.)

One fatal shuttle accident was largely caused by NASA choosing to launch in very cold weather and people ignoring warnings about the consequences from an experienced engineer at Thiokol, the physical failure was in the solid rocket booster which wasn't Boeing designed. The other was caused by debris hitting the shuttle during launch, which again--wasn't due to the shuttle design but the breach mounted system as a concept, which again, wasn't Boeing.

There is a different between the shuttle space plane, which Boeing was involved in, and the overall decision to make a breach-mounted spaceplane system that was intended to be reusable--which was largely a NASA decision and the design of a consortium of aerospace companies.

ULA was NASA's prime contractor for SLS operations, not just construction.  NASA launched Challenger because ULA assured it that the contractors agreed that launch was safe.  Colombia was lost because the heat shield tiles (designed and installed by Rockwell, then Boeing) were far too fragile for the intended purpose.

It is a bit macabre, but the NASA/ULA team knew from launch that Colombia was doomed, but didn't investigate the total damage because they didn't want the crew to realize that they were dead folks flying.

The SLS was a failure by any measure.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on December 13, 2022, 10:02:01 PM
Musk Shakes Up Twitter's Legal Team as He Looks to Cut More Costs (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/13/technology/elon-musk-twitter-shakeup.html)
QuoteTwitter has stopped paying rent on offices and is considering not paying severance packages to former employees, among other measures. 

Twitter has stopped paying rent on offices and is considering not paying severance packages to former employees, among other measures.

Mr. Spiro is no longer working at Twitter, according to six people familiar with the decision. Those people said that Mr. Musk has been unhappy with some of the decisions made by Mr. Spiro, a noted criminal defense lawyer who successfully defended the billionaire in a high-profile defamation case in late 2019 and worked his way into the Twitter owner's inner circle.
Among those decisions was Mr. Spiro's call to retain the Twitter deputy general counsel, James A. Baker, through Mr. Musk's various rounds of layoffs and firings. Mr. Baker had served as general counsel at the F.B.I. until May 2018 — advising the agency on politically fraught investigations into Hillary Clinton's private email server and Donald J. Trump's campaign — and joined Twitter in 2020.

Last week, Mr. Musk said he terminated Mr. Baker after he learned that the lawyer had been responsible for reviewing internal communications about the company's decision to suppress a 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop. Mr. Musk had ordered that those communications, which he has called the "Twitter Files," be given to a group of journalists to release and discredit the decision-making of the company's past executives.

With Twitter drained of legal talent from layoffs and departures, Mr. Musk has sought lawyers from his other companies, including rocket maker SpaceX, to fill the void. More than half a dozen lawyers from the space exploration company have been given access to Twitter's internal systems, according to two people and documents seen by The Times. SpaceX employees who have been brought in to Twitter include Chris Cardaci, the company's vice president of legal, and Tim Hughes, its senior vice president, global business and government affairs.

A SpaceX spokesman did not return a request for comment.

Among its legal challenges, Twitter is facing more questions from the Federal Trade Commission, which is investigating whether the company is still adhering to a consent decree. In 2011, the company signed a consent decree with the F.T.C. after two data breaches and said it would not mislead users about privacy protection. In May, the company paid $150 million to the F.T.C. and Justice Department to settle allegations that it had violated the terms of that consent decree, which was expanded.
The F.T.C. has sent Twitter letters asking whether it still has the resources and staff to adhere to the consent decree, two people with knowledge of the matter said. An F.T.C. spokeswoman declined to comment.
On Friday, as Mr. Musk encouraged the release of internal information through the continuation of his Twitter Files, he also sent an email to employees noting "many detailed leaks of confidential Twitter information" showed that some were violating their nondisclosure agreements.
"If you clearly and deliberately violate the NDA that you signed when joining Twitter, you accept liability to the full extent of the law and Twitter will immediately seek damages," he wrote. The email was first reported by the Platformer newsletter.

Mr. Musk's team has also deliberated the merits of not paying severance to the thousands of people who have left the company since he took over, when there were about 7,500 full-time employees. While Mr. Musk and his advisers had previously considered forgoing any severance when discussing cuts in late October, the company ultimately decided that U.S.-based employees would be given at least two months of pay and one month of severance pay so that the company would be compliant with federal and state labor laws.
Mr. Musk's team is now reconsidering whether it should pay some of those months, according to two people familiar with the discussions, or just face lawsuits from disgruntled former employees. Many former employees still have not received any paperwork formalizing their separation from Twitter, five people said. Mr. Musk has already refused to pay millions of dollars in exit packages to executives he claims were terminated "for cause."
As Twitter has downsized, Mr. Musk's team has been hoping to renegotiate the terms of lease agreements, two people familiar with the discussion said. The company has received complaints from real estate investment and management firms including Shorenstein, which owns the San Francisco buildings that Twitter occupies.
A spokesman for Shorenstein declined to comment.
In other money-saving moves, Twitter has laid off its kitchen staff and begun to list office supplies, industrial-grade kitchen equipment and electronics from its San Francisco office for auction.
Mr. Musk also continues to cut staff and leaders, including Nelson Abramson, Twitter's global head of infrastructure, and Alan Rosa, the global information technology head and vice president of information security, according to four people familiar with the moves.
On Sunday night, Mr. Musk sent two emails to Twitter's staff with advice about how to work for him that he had previously shared with SpaceX and Tesla employees. One message focused on first principles thinking, a worldview based on the teachings of Aristotle to reduce assumptions to basic axioms, which Mr. Musk credited with helping him make difficult decisions. The other advocated against workplace hierarchies.
On Monday, Twitter notified members of its trust and safety council, an advisory group formed in 2016, that it would dissolve immediately. The council was created to guide Twitter through challenging safety problems and content moderation issues, and was made up of organizations focused on civil rights and child safety.

"Safety online can mean survival offline," said Jodie Ginsberg, the president of the Committee to Protect Journalists, one of the organizations involved in the council. "As a platform that has become a critical tool in both open and repressive countries, Twitter must play a constructive role in ensuring that journalists and the public at large are able to receive and impart information without fear of reprisals."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on December 13, 2022, 10:23:28 PM
One weird trick to lower your monthly payments - creditors hate it!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on December 13, 2022, 10:35:21 PM
Quote from: grumbler on December 13, 2022, 09:48:40 PMIt is a bit macabre, but the NASA/ULA team knew from launch that Colombia was doomed, but didn't investigate the total damage because they didn't want the crew to realize that they were dead folks flying.
It seems more complicated than that.
Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaster#Debris_strike_concerns)

In short, one team seemed to have concerns about the mission, but another didn't, since Atlantis had the same problems before and nothing bad happened. Also, typical govt bulsshit interfered:

QuoteTo assess the possible damage to Columbia's wing, members of the Debris Assessment Team made multiple requests to get imagery of the orbiter from the Department of Defense (DoD). Imagery requests were channeled through both the DoD Manned Space Flight Support Office and the Johnson Space Center Engineering Directorate.[5]: 150–151  Hale coordinated the request through a DoD representative at KSC. The request was relayed to the U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), which began identifying imaging assets that could observe the orbiter. The imagery request was soon rescinded by NASA Mission Management Team Chair Linda Ham after she investigated the origin of it. She had consulted with a Flight Director Phil Engelauf and members of the Mission Management Team, who stated that they did not have a requirement for imagery of Columbia. Ham did not consult with the Debris Assessment Team, and cancelled the imagery request on the basis that it had not been made through official channels.


I think you are confusing with NASA engineers saying that even if they'd knew from the start, nothing could have been done:
Link (https://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts107/030430save/)

I thought for missions like this they kept the other shuttle in a semi-ready condition, with a backup crew on standby, but it seems like this was not the case, and there was not enough fuel to reach the ISS on its orbit.  But they didn't know from the beginning there was important structural damage.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 13, 2022, 10:42:31 PM
For Columbia I once read a long writeup about whether or not they could have saved them had they known about the damage incurred during the launch. Essentially--yes maybe. The plan would not be try to intercept ISS (they had nowhere near the delta V required to change orbit so dramatically), nor did they have a backup shuttle ready to go. Instead, the plan would have been to just keep the shuttle in orbit, where it had about 30 days of food. They believed with rationing they could extend that out to maybe 45 days, and in that window they believed NASA could probably rush a supply rocket to intercept and extend their time. The end goal would be to rush the next planned shuttle launch up (which was a few months out), to rescue the stranded shuttle crew with the other shuttle.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on December 13, 2022, 10:49:50 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 13, 2022, 10:42:31 PMFor Columbia I once read a long writeup about whether or not they could have saved them had they known about the damage incurred during the launch. Essentially--yes maybe. The plan would not be try to intercept ISS (they had nowhere near the delta V required to change orbit so dramatically), nor did they have a backup shuttle ready to go. Instead, the plan would have been to just keep the shuttle in orbit, where it had about 30 days of food. They believed with rationing they could extend that out to maybe 45 days, and in that window they believed NASA could probably rush a supply rocket to intercept and extend their time. The end goal would be to rush the next planned shuttle launch up (which was a few months out), to rescue the stranded shuttle crew with the other shuttle.
From the link I posted:
Cain's review did not address the possibility of launching an emergency shuttle rescue mission. But engineers say they do not believe it would have been possible to get the next shuttle in the launch sequence - Atlantis - into orbit before Columbia's crew ran out of carbon dioxide-scrubbing lithium hydroxide.

I believe after that they kept Atlantis on standby to rescue stranded astronauts during missions.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tonitrus on December 14, 2022, 12:58:58 AM
Quote from: viper37 on December 13, 2022, 10:02:01 PMMr. Musk's team has also deliberated the merits of not paying severance to the thousands of people who have left the company since he took over, when there were about 7,500 full-time employees. While Mr. Musk and his advisers had previously considered forgoing any severance when discussing cuts in late October, the company ultimately decided that U.S.-based employees would be given at least two months of pay and one month of severance pay so that the company would be compliant with federal and state labor laws.
Mr. Musk's team is now reconsidering whether it should pay some of those months, according to two people familiar with the discussions, or just face lawsuits from disgruntled former employees.

Now, I am not a law-talker...but isn't deliberating planning to violate the law...even labor laws...amount to criminal conspiracy?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on December 14, 2022, 01:55:11 AM
He's a billionaire, what's the worst that would happen? He gambles on not having to pay the money, and if he still has to pay (plus damages), he will still be richer than all of us here combined, with more money than we or our kids will spend in our combined lifetimes. :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tonitrus on December 14, 2022, 02:08:04 AM
I may be an old-fashioned sort of chap, but I think a conspiracy to violate the law...especially labor laws if one is a corporate CEO...warrants prison time.  :sleep:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on December 14, 2022, 02:14:17 AM
I like your optimism. :D
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on December 14, 2022, 04:42:54 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 13, 2022, 09:31:16 PMA mission to Mars is almost anti-scientific, and a massive waste of potential public resources and energy to a vanity project of billionaires. It is disgraceful that human spaceflight is the goal of the two billionaire led space private companies (Blue Origin and SpaceX), and shows the sort of decision making when "little boys" with lots of money are allowed to make such decisions.

Like JFK?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on December 14, 2022, 05:01:56 AM
https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-vacancies-staff-shortage-berlin/

QuoteTesla's Berlin Hub Can't Hire Enough People, or Keep Them

The company's staffing problems have been magnified in Germany, where it is unable to meet targets as more workers head for the exit.

AS ELON MUSK attempts to manage Twitter after mass layoffs in November, his flagship company Tesla is also facing staffing problems globally, with vacancies doubling since mid-June, coupled with exits at its newest gigafactory in Germany.

When the gigafactory in Berlin opened in March, it had a target to produce 5,000 vehicles a week by the end of this year. But it is far from reaching its goals after facing major recruitment problems—the company has so far managed to hire just 7,000 people out of a planned 12,000. This lack of personnel is coupled with missed ambitious production targets; in 2022 Musk told German media he expected to build half a million Teslas in Berlin in 2022.

The company is also losing experienced personnel, according to former and current employees at the gigafactory. They say that current staffers are leaving jobs due to low and unequal pay and inexperienced management in the highly competitive German manufacturing sector. Tesla did not respond to WIRED's requests for comment.

One current employee, who requested anonymity out of fear of losing their job, describes the Berlin gigafactory as "total chaos." "Some people are off sick longer than they've actually worked. There are people who I haven't seen working for three weeks in six months. Many people are signed off sick because the motivation isn't there," they say, blaming poor working conditions. The exits involve temporary staff and permanent employees who have been there for over a year, hired before the gigafactory opened, they claim.

Worldwide, Tesla reached a record number of vacancies for the year in November, listing almost 7,500 jobs. This is double the postings in mid-June, according to data from its own website. Though most of these vacancies were in the US, Germany was in second place, with 386 vacancies advertised at the Berlin plant on November 11, including one for a "high-volume recruiter."

Local labor specialists say it is unlikely Tesla will be able to find more qualified workers to fill the gap, because it is seen as an unattractive employer in the heavily unionized German auto sector, and it competes with rival carmaker Volkswagen for skilled workers in the Berlin area. The Job Centre in nearby Frankfurt (Oder) said on October 4 that Tesla had hired 1,000 previously unemployed workers already, calling it "the biggest recruitment project since reunification," and according to some reports, Tesla is already the largest private employer in Brandenburg.

According to the German metalworkers union IG Metall, Tesla is paying 20 percent less than similar businesses based on staff contracts and job descriptions. IG Metall representative Birgit Dietze wrote in a press release in June, "We know from active IG Metall members that recruitment is not happening at the planned speed."

Holger Bonin, research director at the Institute of Labor Economics, based in Bonn, said that this was a problem with the specialist job market in the country generally, not helped by the fact that many qualified workers in the Berlin region can easily commute to Volkswagen's main plant in Wolfsburg instead.

"Fundamentally, the German labor market has record employment despite coronavirus and inflation. There is a shortage of qualified workers everywhere," Bonin says. "Everyone who could be employed is already employed. That makes it very difficult to fill jobs."

Around 10 percent of the gigafactory's workers are foreign, mostly from neighboring Poland. Tesla had hoped to attract more Polish workers by advertising Polish-speaking hiring managers at the gigafactory, which is just 60 miles from the border. But Polish media reports that these hopes have been dashed by Tesla's German language requirement.

Staffing is just the latest setback for Tesla's Berlin gigafactory, which has already faced a legion of difficulties. Before it opened, it faced environmental protests and court orders over its construction harming endangered lizards, and causing deforestation as well as water contamination.

In September, the Tesla factory's fire brigade was unable to put out a large cardboard fire itself and called in help from local firefighters. It then emerged that Tesla had no working fire alarms.

In the last year, Tesla dropped from being German engineering graduates' second preferred employer (behind Google) to sixth. It is now behind German car manufacturers like Porsche, with some respondents pointing to Elon Musk's comments about firing employees who wanted to work from home.

Tesla's Berlin gigafactory reached a production benchmark of 2,000 Model Y cars a week at the end of October. This means that gigafactory workers have doubled their output since June. But even if they continue to increase production at that rate, they will still be far off their goal of 5,000 a week by the end of the year. This is much lower than the output from the company's other gigafactories: Tesla data tracker Troy Teslike points out that Giga Shanghai reached 20,000 units in exactly 100 days, followed by Giga Texas in 151 days, and Giga Berlin in 187 days.

One of the reasons for this production deficit is the delay of the planned full third-shift system to keep the factory running 24 hours a day, a source familiar with the matter says. This shift was supposed to be implemented in September 2022, but it has reportedly been pushed back. This third shift will require production workers to change their shift patterns every day, across a seven-working-day period. A number of current staff at Tesla Grünheide were unhappy about this, complaining that these working conditions were not in their contract and saying that it exacerbated preexisting staffing problems, the current employee says. They blamed numbers-driven recruitment targets. "People in HR want to hit their targets for recruitment, so they will say anything to get people in, but not pay attention to keeping these workers," they say.

One former employee, who left Tesla in September alongside other staff members after working there for over a year, describes sudden, unannounced changes in working conditions. The former employee, who requested anonymity to speak openly, had been recruited for a mid-level position via LinkedIn, and had signed a contract to move hundreds of miles to Berlin from a smaller German city.

Just before they started, the former employee says they received an updated contract with a new job title. The initial job description had specified that staff must be "willing to work weekends and nights determined by project," which they had understood to mean occasional nights and weekends in special circumstances.

But without any warning, they were given a new job description that required them to work early, night, and weekend shifts. "After two months they changed my shift to a 24/7 three-shift system. I have a young son, and for us it was hard to manage," the former employee says, adding that they had no family support available, because they had moved away from family for the job. When they complained about this, "there was a lack of empathy" from Tesla, and the employee claims they reported inflexibility in changing shift plans, even when the factory was not producing cars due to machines not functioning, with significantly reduced tasks.


Tesla's attempt to improve recruitment and retention by increasing pay for new staff also backfired, as longer-term employees were being paid less than employees who had just arrived doing the same jobs with similar qualifications. This is not usually possible in the heavily unionized auto sector in Germany, as salaries are usually negotiated according to union rates. This caused conflict with the IG Metall union, negative press, and accusations from the Confederation of German Employers' Associations of "threatening Germany's social partnership model" of cooperation between businesses and unions. Tesla received threats of legal action from IG Metall, causing it to eventually raise overall pay by 6 percent, though the union says inequalities remain.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on December 14, 2022, 05:10:45 AM
Yeah, all kinds of tech companies are competing for hiring technical roles, iormlund's comparison to being a hot girl on Tinder was pretty spot on. Given the amount of effort companies put on presenting themselves as attractive places to work, I've never understood Musk's longstanding policy of treating workers like shit (this is pretty documented) as being conducive to sustained success. He seems to have relied on just the brand and the mission, and he's shitting on that too now.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on December 14, 2022, 05:40:58 AM
Quote from: celedhring on December 14, 2022, 05:10:45 AMYeah, all kinds of tech companies are competing for hiring technical roles, iormlund's comparison to being a hot girl on Tinder was pretty spot on. Given the amount of effort companies put on presenting themselves as attractive places to work, I've never understood Musk's longstanding policy of treating workers like shit (this is pretty documented) as being conducive to sustained success. He seems to have relied on just the brand and the mission, and he's shitting on that too now.

On top of that, Musk's companies penchant for changing working conditions overnight does not really jive with a heavily regulated and unionized work environment such as the German car manufacturing one.

I really wonder why was Germany the country where it was decided to build this factory. Aren't most new car factories being built in places like the Czech Republic, Romania or Slovakia?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on December 14, 2022, 06:00:35 AM
Or Hungary. Orban spent a lot of effort on removing worker protections over the last several years, sounds like that's a very Musk-friendly environment.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 14, 2022, 06:07:11 AM
Musk had previously been pretty big on selling his credentials as a old school good employer no?
No exporting jobs for shitty overseas labour, we build them AMERICAN as things used to be as its better.
Maybe with Germany in Europe he was going for similar vibes?

All this of course makes his descent into madness all the more interesting.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 14, 2022, 06:51:27 AM
Quote from: Josquius on December 14, 2022, 06:07:11 AMMusk had previously been pretty big on selling his credentials as a old school good employer no?
No exporting jobs for shitty overseas labour, we build them AMERICAN as things used to be as its better.
Maybe with Germany in Europe he was going for similar vibes?

He built a plant in China.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on December 14, 2022, 07:03:04 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 14, 2022, 06:51:27 AM
Quote from: Josquius on December 14, 2022, 06:07:11 AMMusk had previously been pretty big on selling his credentials as a old school good employer no?
No exporting jobs for shitty overseas labour, we build them AMERICAN as things used to be as its better.
Maybe with Germany in Europe he was going for similar vibes?

He built a plant in China.

One can assume that that plant is geared towards supplying the Chinese market, which AFAIK is, after the American one, Tesla's key market.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 14, 2022, 08:16:58 AM
Quote from: viper37 on December 13, 2022, 10:49:50 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 13, 2022, 10:42:31 PMFor Columbia I once read a long writeup about whether or not they could have saved them had they known about the damage incurred during the launch. Essentially--yes maybe. The plan would not be try to intercept ISS (they had nowhere near the delta V required to change orbit so dramatically), nor did they have a backup shuttle ready to go. Instead, the plan would have been to just keep the shuttle in orbit, where it had about 30 days of food. They believed with rationing they could extend that out to maybe 45 days, and in that window they believed NASA could probably rush a supply rocket to intercept and extend their time. The end goal would be to rush the next planned shuttle launch up (which was a few months out), to rescue the stranded shuttle crew with the other shuttle.
From the link I posted:
Cain's review did not address the possibility of launching an emergency shuttle rescue mission. But engineers say they do not believe it would have been possible to get the next shuttle in the launch sequence - Atlantis - into orbit before Columbia's crew ran out of carbon dioxide-scrubbing lithium hydroxide.

I believe after that they kept Atlantis on standby to rescue stranded astronauts during missions.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/the-audacious-rescue-plan-that-might-have-saved-space-shuttle-columbia/
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Darth Wagtaros on December 14, 2022, 08:27:41 AM
I think it is interesting the reaction all this is getting from predominantly Republican fans.  Even people I know were laid off and wound up in sad financial straits as  result are gloating over all this.  
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 14, 2022, 09:47:26 AM
Quote from: The Larch on December 14, 2022, 07:03:04 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 14, 2022, 06:51:27 AM
Quote from: Josquius on December 14, 2022, 06:07:11 AMMusk had previously been pretty big on selling his credentials as a old school good employer no?
No exporting jobs for shitty overseas labour, we build them AMERICAN as things used to be as its better.
Maybe with Germany in Europe he was going for similar vibes?

He built a plant in China.

One can assume that that plant is geared towards supplying the Chinese market, which AFAIK is, after the American one, Tesla's key market.

Really stretching my memory here but I am pretty sure there was an excuse there about him having to do this as foreign built cars have insane tariffs in China.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 14, 2022, 09:49:50 AM
That doesn't seem shocking? Doing things that trigger lots of libs is a great way to make Republicans love you. I just don't fully understand what Musk believes he is gaining by doing that? For a shill or politician, the benefits are obvious--it can help you win elections as an (R) and if you're not a politician, it can get you one of those sweet gigs spewing nonsense on Fox News or Newsmax, or running a right wing podcast / YouTube channel etc. But those are good grifts for "normal" people, maybe netting you decent six figures income; if you become a right wing star it'll make you rich--but Musk is already rich to a degree far beyond such grifts to the point he has zero financial motivation to be a right wing shill. He, as far as I know, has zero interest in running for elected office.

For what Musk does do, his behavior while maybe not catastrophic to his other business interests, certainly doesn't help.

He already got a little bit of scrutiny as the CEO of SpaceX when he smoked marijuana on a podcast with Joe Rogan--because it could affect his security clearance, and the CEO of the company having a clearance revoked would be bad for future SpaceX DoD contracts. That was relatively nothingburger ultimately, but it shows the risks of acting like a child as a CEO of a company with extensive government contracts.

For Tesla, I think the risks are more serious--a significant driver of adoption of expensive EVs like Tesla is absolutely a progressive desire to embrace the virtuousness of driving an EV. If the company and its leader are seen as supporters of the far right, this significantly mutes this effect. How much will that matter? I have no earthly idea. But I think there is a good reason almost all other consumer products companies try to strike a fairly middling line on politics--certain issues they simply have to take a stand because societal forces don't allow them to ignore the issue, but whenever possible most consumer facing companies strive very hard to not be seen as "Democrat" or "Republican", unless they serve a very targeted market in which that serves their interests. EVs don't really fit the bill, to be a successful car company you want the whole country at least willing to consider buying your cars.

I have seen some speculation (which I don't buy--I think this is all personal/emotional for Elon), that he is just aping a right winger to cause EVs and Tesla to get social cachet with right wingers, who are largely culturally opposed to EV adoption. If that was his ploy (which I don't think it is), it's not a smart one--I don't think support of Elon owning the libs is in and of itself significant inducement for a guy who drives a V8 F250 to swap it out for an EV.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on December 14, 2022, 10:10:10 AM
I think it's pretty obvious none of us can ever fully understand Elon because he is a Big Brain 200 IQ Genius.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on December 14, 2022, 10:32:52 AM
Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on December 14, 2022, 08:27:41 AMI think it is interesting the reaction all this is getting from predominantly Republican fans.  Even people I know were laid off and wound up in sad financial straits as  result are gloating over all this. 

It owns the libs I guess.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on December 14, 2022, 11:25:48 AM
Is there anything other than branding that makes Tesla factories "giga factories"?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 14, 2022, 11:49:26 AM
Quote from: Jacob on December 14, 2022, 11:25:48 AMIs there anything other than branding that makes Tesla factories "giga factories"?
Doesn't it just mean a factory making electric car batteries?
There was a big scam about a non tesla related one being built locally and gigafactory is the term used.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 14, 2022, 11:50:59 AM
Quote from: Jacob on December 14, 2022, 11:25:48 AMIs there anything other than branding that makes Tesla factories "giga factories"?

I don't think so, no.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on December 14, 2022, 12:34:39 PM
Quote from: Jacob on December 14, 2022, 11:25:48 AMIs there anything other than branding that makes Tesla factories "giga factories"?

The name comes from "gigawatt", it's how they designate their battery factories.

I do recall that the first one was designed to be the largest building in the world though (in acreage), but it hasn't been fully built.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on December 14, 2022, 12:37:47 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 14, 2022, 08:16:58 AM
Quote from: viper37 on December 13, 2022, 10:49:50 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 13, 2022, 10:42:31 PMFor Columbia I once read a long writeup about whether or not they could have saved them had they known about the damage incurred during the launch. Essentially--yes maybe. The plan would not be try to intercept ISS (they had nowhere near the delta V required to change orbit so dramatically), nor did they have a backup shuttle ready to go. Instead, the plan would have been to just keep the shuttle in orbit, where it had about 30 days of food. They believed with rationing they could extend that out to maybe 45 days, and in that window they believed NASA could probably rush a supply rocket to intercept and extend their time. The end goal would be to rush the next planned shuttle launch up (which was a few months out), to rescue the stranded shuttle crew with the other shuttle.
From the link I posted:
Cain's review did not address the possibility of launching an emergency shuttle rescue mission. But engineers say they do not believe it would have been possible to get the next shuttle in the launch sequence - Atlantis - into orbit before Columbia's crew ran out of carbon dioxide-scrubbing lithium hydroxide.

I believe after that they kept Atlantis on standby to rescue stranded astronauts during missions.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/the-audacious-rescue-plan-that-might-have-saved-space-shuttle-columbia/
Interesting read, thanks!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on December 14, 2022, 12:38:24 PM
Quote from: Valmy on December 14, 2022, 10:32:52 AM
Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on December 14, 2022, 08:27:41 AMI think it is interesting the reaction all this is getting from predominantly Republican fans.  Even people I know were laid off and wound up in sad financial straits as  result are gloating over all this. 

It owns the libs I guess.

As I said many pages before, there's still a semi-good outcome here where owning a Tesla substitutes "rolling coal" as a way to own the libs.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 14, 2022, 01:02:04 PM
The trouble there is the sort rolling coal are not the sort this kind of edgelordy shit really appeals to. Its a different branch of fascism he's appealing to.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on December 14, 2022, 01:27:37 PM
Quote from: celedhring on December 14, 2022, 12:38:24 PM
Quote from: Valmy on December 14, 2022, 10:32:52 AM
Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on December 14, 2022, 08:27:41 AMI think it is interesting the reaction all this is getting from predominantly Republican fans.  Even people I know were laid off and wound up in sad financial straits as  result are gloating over all this. 

It owns the libs I guess.

As I said many pages before, there's still a semi-good outcome here where owning a Tesla substitutes "rolling coal" as a way to own the libs.

That was a wishcast I had as well.

Of course Tesla stock is taking a beating...whatever that means for the future.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 14, 2022, 04:31:17 PM
What's the QAnon Nigeria angle? I hear that Twitter named some official Norwegian government accounts Nigerian. Twitter claimed that it was a mistake but since Twitter has zero credibility...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on December 15, 2022, 06:00:33 AM
Quote from: Valmy on December 14, 2022, 01:27:37 PMOf course Tesla stock is taking a beating...whatever that means for the future.

For now it means that Elon is cashing in on his shares:

QuoteElon Musk sells new $3.6bn tranche of Tesla shares

Latest selloff takes total sale this year to $23bn and follows loss of world's richest man title

I knew he lost the "world's richest man" title recently, but was not aware that it was to the owner of Louis Vuitton.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on December 15, 2022, 06:22:13 AM
Quote from: The Larch on December 15, 2022, 06:00:33 AMI knew he lost the "world's richest man" title recently, but was not aware that it was to the owner of Louis Vutton.

Will a certain notable poster here be along shortly to proclaim the genius of this person and how much humanity is benefitting from designer leather goods?  :D
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 15, 2022, 07:31:31 AM
At least I can see a value in musks cars and rockets. Vutton number 1?really?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on December 15, 2022, 07:40:36 AM
Quote from: Josquius on December 15, 2022, 07:31:31 AMAt least I can see a value in musks cars and rockets. Vutton number 1?really?

It's a massive luxury goods corporation, not just fancy handbags.

QuoteLVMH controls around 60 subsidiaries that each manage a small number of prestigious brands, 75 in total. These include Christian Dior, Fendi, Givenchy, Marc Jacobs, Stella McCartney, Loewe, Loro Piana, Kenzo, Celine, Sephora, Princess Yachts, TAG Heuer, Bulgari, and Tiffany & Co. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Gups on December 15, 2022, 08:15:49 AM
Quote from: The Larch on December 15, 2022, 07:40:36 AM
Quote from: Josquius on December 15, 2022, 07:31:31 AMAt least I can see a value in musks cars and rockets. Vutton number 1?really?

It's a massive luxury goods corporation, not just fancy handbags.

QuoteLVMH controls around 60 subsidiaries that each manage a small number of prestigious brands, 75 in total. These include Christian Dior, Fendi, Givenchy, Marc Jacobs, Stella McCartney, Loewe, Loro Piana, Kenzo, Celine, Sephora, Princess Yachts, TAG Heuer, Bulgari, and Tiffany & Co.


Lots of top end wineries as well - Moet et Chandon, Krug, Veuve Cliquet, Dom Perignon, Cheval Blanc, Yquem and others
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 15, 2022, 08:29:46 AM
Yah, LVMH has steadily grown through mergers and acquisitions over the last 30 years. I know they bought Tiffany--I was actually a moderate beneficiary of that deal as I had been a Tiffany shareholder and cashed out when their stock surged on the merger announcement. LVMH actually later tried to bail out on the Tiffany deal I believe for money reasons, but I think were forced to carry through.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on December 15, 2022, 08:59:33 AM
Feel like when forced to buy a company against your will, that it is one you understand and that fits in with the rest of your businesses is maybe part of why Arnault is the world's richest man and Musk isn't.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Gups on December 15, 2022, 09:17:24 AM
Worth noting that Tesla is substantially bigger than LMVH (by market capitalisation), it's just that Arnault owns much more of LMVH than Musk owns of Tesla
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 15, 2022, 09:29:18 AM
LVMH is a lot closer to its fundamentals than TSLA too--LVMH PE ratio in the mid-20s is high, but not totally unusual for a luxury goods maker which often seem to have higher PE ratios. LVMH has a similar total revenue as Tesla with a gross margin of almost 70%.

Tesla with its nearly 50 PE ratio is totally wild for a company in a very well-established market (auto manufacturing), and with a much lower gross margin (which is entirely normal for manufacturers of consumer autos.)

Tesla has benefited tremendously from very sustained and enthusiastic speculation in its stock, which has allowed Elon to hold multiple secondary offerings to raise more cash and largely funded the company for the decade or so during which it never turned a profit. I do think there is just a bit of cold water of reality going on though, we're at a point now where you either believe the speculative price premium on Tesla will continue forever (which is generally not supported by historical trends in such stocks) or you think Tesla is going to grow to be a bigger car manufacturer than Ford and GM combined (which would be required for its valuation and fundamentals to be close to aligned.)

I think Elon doing things that break the illusion of genius around him is perhaps causing some people to look at the stock with more scrutiny--especially in an era when many similar stocks (Amazon, Google, et al) are being scrutinized more now that it seems like the era of endless speculative gains may be winding down.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on December 15, 2022, 09:36:44 AM
Tbf, Musk leveraging Tesla's stock price to buy himself another company before TSLA comes back to Earth is a smart move. Just not twitter.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on December 15, 2022, 11:40:28 AM
Quote from: celedhring on December 15, 2022, 09:36:44 AMTbf, Musk leveraging Tesla's stock price to buy himself another company before TSLA comes back to Earth is a smart move. Just not twitter.

Yeah. it's like leveraging your shares in RMS Titanic to buy control of Exxon Valdez.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on December 15, 2022, 05:01:19 PM
Quote from: celedhring on December 15, 2022, 09:36:44 AMTbf, Musk leveraging Tesla's stock price to buy himself another company before TSLA comes back to Earth is a smart move. Just not twitter.

Reminds me of the AOL-Time Warner merger (which was actually just structured as the purchase of Time Warner by AOL).

Within a year the former AOL stockholders still held shares in the successful Time Warner, while Time Warner shareholders saw the value of their stick decline precipitously.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on December 15, 2022, 05:21:34 PM
Elon Musk Suggested a Gay Former Twitter Employee Sexualized Kids. He's Now in Hiding (https://www.them.us/story/elon-musk-gay-twitter-employee-grooming-twitter-files)

QuoteOn Saturday, Musk tweeted a brief, out-of-context excerpt from Roth's 300-page doctoral dissertation.

"Looks like Yoel is arguing in favor of children being able to access adult Internet services in his PhD thesis," he tweeted. Roth's 2016 thesis, which is titled Gay Data, analyzes the LGBTQ+ hookup app Grindr.

In the actual excerpt, Roth concludes that Grindr isn't "a safe and age-appropriate resource for teenagers," but because young queer people use the platform anyway, it "should instead focus on crafting safety strategies that can accommodate a wide variety of use cases."

Nowhere in the dissertation does Roth advocate for the sexualization of children, but spreading the false claim that LGBTQ+ people are sexual predators who are "grooming" children has become a popular smear tactic for right-wing hatemongers, particularly after Florida's "Don't Say Gay" law went into effect in August. This is the exact kind of misinformation that's led to devastating real-life instances of violence against queer and trans people throughout 2022.

CNN reports that Roth has recently had to flee his home due to an escalation in threats oagainst him.
Roth has been the target of attacks online since Musk began unveiling the "Twitter Files," a set supposed excerpts from internal communications that Musk has been releasing with the help of right-wing journalists Matt Taibibi and Bari Weiss. On Monday, Weiss tweeted a screenshots that appear to show internal Twitter communications in which Roth and others deliberate whether to ban Donald Trump's account. 

"Watching Elon launch a digital mob against his former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, an openly gay Jewish man, is one of the most vile and disgusting things I've ever seen," Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School's Cyberlaw Clinic, tweeted on Saturday. "He's putting Yoel's life in danger and he knows it. It's sick, twisted, and sociopathic."
Knowing the widespread discourse around grooming and that, as recently as one weekend ago, Proud Boys stormed a drag show accusing the queer people inside of grooming, it's no stretch to say that Musk was fully aware that he was putting this former employee's life in danger.

Musk even doubled down on his homophobic tweets on Sunday, when he tweeted that his pronouns were "Prosecute/Fauci." The billionaire once claimed that his acquisition of Twitter wouldn't turn the platform into a "free-for-all hellscape," but based on recent events, it's hard to believe.

You know, I'm not so sure we need 50 like him.  He may have brought money to Tesla and SpaceX, but at this point, he's harming a lot of people, and hurting investors' returns on Tesla.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 15, 2022, 06:05:52 PM
Oh, gay people are paedophiles. Is that a thing again? Are flairs back too?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 15, 2022, 07:15:41 PM
Quote"Watching Elon launch a digital mob against his former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, an openly gay Jewish man, is one of the most vile and disgusting things I've ever seen," Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School's Cyberlaw Clinic, tweeted on Saturday. "He's putting Yoel's life in danger and he knows it. It's sick, twisted, and sociopathic."

"But not bad enough to make me stop using Twitter. Hell no."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 15, 2022, 08:08:49 PM
A decent chunk of media accounts I follow have actually deplatformed since the Yoel Roth thing. It also looks like Musk has just started banning critical journalists--accounts from NYT and WaPo journalists that had been critical of Musk have been suspended or banned in the last day.

The thing is, I think for most people media accounts in general are one of the main value propositions of Twitter. Whether people use it to keep up with the news, sports etc--it is the media creating a lot of the highest visibility "content" on the platform, if he starts going after them I don't really see how Twitter doesn't enter a pretty severe decline. There's lots of platforms out there for right wing trolling, if that's all Musk wants Twitter to be, it boggles the mind why he paid $44bn for something that will decay down to 4chan's size / influence.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on December 15, 2022, 09:39:53 PM
Is 44 billion really too much to destroy Twitter?  :hmm:

This thought reminds me of the guy who wants to buy Friends to remove the laugh track.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on December 15, 2022, 10:12:05 PM
Let's assume for a moment that Twitter was a valuable service that is not worth destroying.  If that is the case, then I think the whole Twitter saga is revealing some flaws in the ideology of "the shareholder value is paramount".  The people running Twitter were put in a perverse position where they had to force Musk to vandalize their company, because the shareholders would get a bigger payoff for that than for any other outcome.  It's like lawyers sentenced to death appealing to the court to have their sentences carried out, for the sake of rule of law.

You don't always have absolute rights to do whatever you want to the property you own.  Musk can't just buy an Empire State building and demolish it because it gives him a boner.  Maybe the same concept should extend to other things that while privately owned, are nevertheless valuable to a whole lot of people.  It's not only shareholders that are the stakeholders.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 15, 2022, 10:18:48 PM
CNN is saying if there isn't a satisfactory explanation for the random journalist bannings they will be pulling out of Twitter.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on December 15, 2022, 10:25:48 PM
I imagine all credible media outlets would order a boycott of Twitter, journalists seem pretty good about sticking up for each other regardless of affiliation.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 15, 2022, 10:26:28 PM
Quote from: DGuller on December 15, 2022, 10:12:05 PMLet's assume for a moment that Twitter was a valuable service that is not worth destroying.  If that is the case, then I think the whole Twitter saga is revealing some flaws in the ideology of "the shareholder value is paramount".  The people running Twitter were put in a perverse position where they had to force Musk to vandalize their company, because the shareholders would get a bigger payoff for that than for any other outcome.  It's like lawyers sentenced to death appealing to the court to have their sentences carried out, for the sake of rule of law.

You don't always have absolute rights to do whatever you want to the property you own.  Musk can't just buy an Empire State building and demolish it because it gives him a boner.  Maybe the same concept should extend to other things that while privately owned, are nevertheless valuable to a whole lot of people.  It's not only shareholders that are the stakeholders.

Yeah, it's hard because with a building like the Empire State building you have tenants with tenancy rights, and it is also a historic landmark. There are well established areas of law protecting those vested interests that are specific limits to the rights of the property owner. We really have no legal standards like that for social media. Should we? I think that's a real thorny issue.

Something Musk has said is that he bought Twitter because he wanted to "protect" the public square, and that the public square is important.

But Twitter was never the public square. The metaphor doesn't work. Public squares are physical, community owned places, that were what they were because no one owned them and because they were central to the communities in which they served. Public squares also were not intrinsically good--like Ezra Klein pointed out recently, they simply reflected their local community. Some public squares were the meeting place for important movements. Other public squares were the venues for lynchings.

Some time ago I had said a federated, decentralized service like Mastodon could never replace Twitter, and I think I was right--but since then I've moved into Mastodon and started using it, and I find it...pretty good? One of my big concerns is the nature of Mastodon instances is some random open source enthusiast nerd owns your instance, and they can randomly get bored and shut it down or impose weird rules. So I found that the small Norwegian company that runs the Vivaldi browser are also running their own Mastodon instance, using their existing enterprise servers (a big issue some Mastodon operators are running into is they are just throwing them up on cloudhosts like AWS or Azure, and quickly getting hit with unsustainable bandwidth charges.) I think finding a nice, organization controlled Mastodon instance is the way to go.

I stand by it won't replace Twitter, but I get most major news on Mastodon, and a large % of my law/legal/policy follows on Twitter have migrated to Mastodon. My big loss is Sports, which has minimal presence on Mastodon. I'm fine to keep using Twitter for sports, if something better comes along for sports I'd also be fine just having two services / apps.

I had a blocker in my mind that you can't replace Twitter with something smaller / more decentralized, and you can't--but that could be fine, right? Like we're all people who were big internet nerds in the 90s before it turned into what it is today. Communities like Languish used to be just how the internet was...and it was...fine? This idea that we need these giant social media platforms controlled by billionaires...that design them to drive engagement and angst...I'm just not sure that's true. I think there is actually real value in seeing something like Twitter (and even moreso Facebook, which I have always thought is a much worse actor but just isn't in the crosshairs right now) decay off. Like I've said, "die" is too strong a word, remember even MySpace is still alive. But decline in importance / userbase? That's a good thing.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on December 15, 2022, 10:32:11 PM
So Musk's big effort to secure free speech on twitter is to ban critics?

That doesn't make any sense.

This is going to create a huge hole in the market and some competitor will pop up and all the journalists will just go there. It's not like it is going to seriously inconvenience anybody it is just going to hurt himself.

This is clearly personal for him and not business. It is like he just hated twitter, the company and a lot of the customers and just decided to take it down. Nothing of value is really lost because people will just elsewhere. I don't get this, even as a personal vendetta and I certainly don't get it as a business move. There is not even some moral crusade against banning people on social media since he himself is doing it.

A whole bunch of money wasted and sturm und drang for no particular reason.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 15, 2022, 10:36:08 PM
Nah, he loved the fuck out of Twitter. He loved that he had 70-80 million followers (his #s before the purchase) and he loved shitposting and trolling, sometimes to the tune of hundreds of replies a day. The dude was a serial Tweeter.

I think he just hated that a) other people could troll him, b) there were rules on Twitter that some people he liked kept breaking and being suspended for and....in his mind that justified spending $44bn to buy it and run Twitter as a personal clubhouse where he'd abuse his authority like a second rate reddit mod of a random subreddit.

It's his money and he can do what he wants with it but it is crazily wasteful on a pretty unprecedented scale. He has destroyed any genuine "societal value" Twitter had (I'm skeptical it really had much--I'm just repeating Elon's claims as to why he bought Twitter.) I don't think he was making a business decision when he purchased it, but it is obviously a terrible business decision. The worst thing for Musk is I think it's clearly going to massively tank his reputation (in fact I think it already has), and I think his biggest other business is actually at real risk of reputational harm.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on December 15, 2022, 11:11:21 PM
Quote from: Valmy on December 15, 2022, 10:32:11 PMSo Musk's big effort to secure free speech on twitter is to ban critics?

That doesn't make any sense.

This is going to create a huge hole in the market and some competitor will pop up and all the journalists will just go there. It's not like it is going to seriously inconvenience anybody it is just going to hurt himself.

This is clearly personal for him and not business. It is like he just hated twitter, the company and a lot of the customers and just decided to take it down. Nothing of value is really lost because people will just elsewhere. I don't get this, even as a personal vendetta and I certainly don't get it as a business move. There is not even some moral crusade against banning people on social media since he himself is doing it.

A whole bunch of money wasted and sturm und drang for no particular reason.
I once heard the tale of a telecom CEO, back then, local to Quebec, since then, sold to an Albertan company, who went to a bar and wanted a drink after the last call. 

Since the waitress refused to serve him, he asked to speak to the boss.  The boss obviously refused to serve him.  So he asked how much for the bar and he bought it on the spot and then got his drink.

Probably partly untrue, but he did end up with a small bar.  But it gives you an idea of what rich people will do to get what they want.  It's not always about business when you have money.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on December 16, 2022, 03:15:46 AM
The banning of the journalists - is it related to the account Musk banned that tweeted the whereabouts of his private jet (and also jets of other people of note)? I saw him posting something that he was ok with people criticizing him ( :lol: ) but that doxxing was off limits.

Now, I'm general in favor of protection of privacy, but I feel he may be barking up the wrong tree. From what I understand the guy who had the twitter accounts for tracking famous peoples' private planes made use of publicly available data, i.e. he didn't access any info that wasn't readily available to pretty much anyone in the world.

Instead of blocking such an account, the better question would be whether such data should be out in the public domain or not in the first place (which is definitely a matter worth discussing IMHO).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on December 16, 2022, 03:28:09 AM
Hadn't he given plane guy a internship at Twitter? Or am i misremebering?


 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on December 16, 2022, 03:44:03 AM
Quote from: HVC on December 16, 2022, 03:28:09 AMHadn't he given plane guy a internship at Twitter? Or am i misremebering?


 

Maybe. I only read a story that he offered him $5000 for the account, but plane guy refused.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on December 16, 2022, 03:48:39 AM
Possibly the weirdest thing is Elon's mother scolding his critics on Twitter.  :lol:

Also, Elon redoing the poll in which he asked if he should unban these journalists until he got the answer he wanted lol

Incredible content
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on December 16, 2022, 04:14:03 AM
This thread is less fun without someone defending musk.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Eddie Teach on December 16, 2022, 06:04:42 AM
Quote from: HVC on December 16, 2022, 04:14:03 AMThis thread is less fun without someone defending musk.

What makes the muskrat defend his Musk? Courage!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 16, 2022, 06:07:00 AM
There's surely a subredit out there full of fans you can play with?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on December 16, 2022, 07:36:34 AM
Quote from: Syt on December 16, 2022, 03:15:46 AMInstead of blocking such an account, the better question would be whether such data should be out in the public domain or not in the first place (which is definitely a matter worth discussing IMHO).
Apparently there is a US federal court case that decided that flight records are public and publishing them is protected under the 1st Amendment. You can of course still ban this information from your private social media platform.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on December 16, 2022, 09:10:22 AM
Quote from: HVC on December 16, 2022, 04:14:03 AMThis thread is less fun without someone defending musk.

I think the types who would defend Musk's behavior left here a long time ago.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on December 16, 2022, 10:39:55 AM
Quote from: Valmy on December 15, 2022, 10:32:11 PMSo Musk's big effort to secure free speech on twitter is to ban critics?

That doesn't make any sense.

This is going to create a huge hole in the market and some competitor will pop up and all the journalists will just go there. It's not like it is going to seriously inconvenience anybody it is just going to hurt himself.

This is clearly personal for him and not business. It is like he just hated twitter, the company and a lot of the customers and just decided to take it down. Nothing of value is really lost because people will just elsewhere. I don't get this, even as a personal vendetta and I certainly don't get it as a business move. There is not even some moral crusade against banning people on social media since he himself is doing it.

A whole bunch of money wasted and sturm und drang for no particular reason.

He thought we was buying a giant continent spanning megaphone ( bullhorn ) , instead of just renting it off of someone else.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on December 16, 2022, 11:07:12 AM
Quote from: HVC on December 16, 2022, 04:14:03 AMThis thread is less fun without someone defending musk.

You guys just don't get he's playing 4-dimensional chess.
Two dimensions consist of the chess board, the other two are sativa and indica.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on December 16, 2022, 12:05:26 PM
(https://i.imgur.com/SlWELDH.jpg)

He would if he could...?!?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Habbaku on December 16, 2022, 12:07:31 PM
He absolutely would if he could.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on December 16, 2022, 12:12:27 PM
Apparently fake though. Sorry.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Legbiter on December 16, 2022, 12:18:15 PM
Quote from: DGuller on December 15, 2022, 10:12:05 PMLet's assume for a moment that Twitter was a valuable service that is not worth destroying.  If that is the case, then I think the whole Twitter saga is revealing some flaws in the ideology of "the shareholder value is paramount".  The people running Twitter were put in a perverse position where they had to force Musk to vandalize their company, because the shareholders would get a bigger payoff for that than for any other outcome.  It's like lawyers sentenced to death appealing to the court to have their sentences carried out, for the sake of rule of law.

The current social media model mostly dying out and being replaced with many smaller tribally-affiliated networks would be ideal I think.  :hmm:  The big platforms mostly promote narcissists, endless high school drama and ever ratchetting sociopathic hysterics to drive engagement. Since the effects now regularly spill into real life with various toxic effects that would be for the best I think.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on December 16, 2022, 12:30:59 PM
Quote from: Legbiter on December 16, 2022, 12:18:15 PM
Quote from: DGuller on December 15, 2022, 10:12:05 PMLet's assume for a moment that Twitter was a valuable service that is not worth destroying.  If that is the case, then I think the whole Twitter saga is revealing some flaws in the ideology of "the shareholder value is paramount".  The people running Twitter were put in a perverse position where they had to force Musk to vandalize their company, because the shareholders would get a bigger payoff for that than for any other outcome.  It's like lawyers sentenced to death appealing to the court to have their sentences carried out, for the sake of rule of law.

The current social media model mostly dying out and being replaced with many smaller tribally-affiliated networks would be ideal I think.  :hmm:  The big platforms mostly promote narcissists, endless high school drama and ever ratchetting sociopathic hysterics to drive engagement. Since the effects now regularly spill into real life with various toxic effects that would be for the best I think.

Indeed, here's hoping Leggy that you're right. :cheers:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 16, 2022, 12:33:18 PM
What is stopping a mass migration to Instagram?  I just saw that Britney Griner posted a statement on Instagram.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on December 16, 2022, 12:35:27 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 16, 2022, 12:33:18 PMWhat is stopping a mass migration to Instagram?  I just saw that Britney Griner posted a statement on Instagram.

Isn't instagram for sharing pictures and videos?

I don't really use it myself.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 16, 2022, 12:37:57 PM
Quote from: Barrister on December 16, 2022, 12:35:27 PMIsn't instagram for sharing pictures and videos?

I don't really use it myself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qt6xYWlCl8

Apparently not.

It does look like there's no comment function.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on December 16, 2022, 12:44:36 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on December 16, 2022, 11:07:12 AM
Quote from: HVC on December 16, 2022, 04:14:03 AMThis thread is less fun without someone defending musk.

You guys just don't get he's playing 4-dimensional chess.
Two dimensions consist of the chess board, the other two are sativa and indica.



:hug: thanks for the attempt
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 16, 2022, 12:52:47 PM
Nothing technically is stopping a mass migration to Instagram. Instagram is already a much bigger platform than Twitter, and I assume a large % of Twitter users also have Instagram accounts.

However, the zeigeist of the two platforms is very different, and some of the technical aspects are different as well.

Instagram is primarily about sharing media (video, pictures) sometimes with a bit of text in the post to go along with it. This is what its users want and expect.

Twitter is primarily about sharing short text messages, with sometimes embedded video / pictures. It is a text forward platform and its users expect that.

Instagram you can't easily / directly just make a text only post. If you want to share text you basically have to go into the Instagram interface to "type" one of those "media text" panels you've probably seen on social media--colorful background, big letters, and post that, it will technically be an image file. instagrammers that want to post relatively long text content usually use the "link in bio" paradigm--basically an image post with a quick blurb about what you're talking about and then telling your followers to "check your bio." This is because Instagram disallows direct linking to external sites in the main posts, so when you see an Instagrammer say "link in bio" they are saying "I want to show you longer form off-site content, go to my bio page and look at my links there."

This is all quite intentional, Instagram wants its engagement to be centered primarily around the media its users upload and brief blurbs about said media. It doesn't want what Twitter has--which is largely text based content and lots of links to external sources.

Instagram would have to make technical changes to allow more Twitter like engagement--but it is also quite likely Instagram's 1 billion+ users won't want that, it is more popular than Twitter for a reason--most people don't actually like Twitter or how it operates from a user perspective. Most people want to look at cat pictures or funny videos, not rageTweet 250 character arguments back and forth. This is why Twitter is a much smaller platform. Instagram would be highly unlikely to change its platform to be more like a less successful competitor.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PJL on December 16, 2022, 01:23:45 PM
The TLDR version of what OvB wrote. Twitter is a text based platform that lets you insert pics as an option. Instagram is a picture based format that lets you insert text as an option.  They're as different as chalk and cheese.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on December 16, 2022, 03:09:45 PM
Musk (or anyone else) can easily stop the dissemination of his private jet location information. FAA "LADD" (https://www.faa.gov/pilots/ladd)

Easier, though to just ban posters in the name of "freedom of speech."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 16, 2022, 03:46:34 PM
It looks like that doesn't work for Elon because of this:

QuoteADS-B Out transmits flight data directly from the aircraft to internet vendors not participating in the LADD program. Non-participating internet vendors collect and post all ADS-B Out flight data on the internet. To address ADS-B Out privacy concerns, the FAA has initiated the Privacy ICAO Address (PIA) program to improve the privacy of eligible aircraft.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on December 16, 2022, 03:56:58 PM
Vice has done a bit of a summary of recent events.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjk5yx/elon-musk-had-his-most-absurd-disturbing-24-hours-at-twitter-yet

QuoteElon Musk Had His Most Absurd, Disturbing 24 Hours at Twitter Yet

Musk banned accounts that he said he never would, made up new rules, and asked his 121 million followers to identify a man.

On Wednesday, Twitter chief Elon Musk banned accounts he said he never would in order to protect free speech, made up new rules to justify it, threatened legal action against a 20-year-old, pontificated on how doxing is banned on the platform, and then immediately posted a video doxing a man and asked his 121 million followers to identify him.

It was the most confusing and publicly volatile series of events yet in the richest man in the world's takeover of Twitter, which has been characterized by unmitigated chaos and the site transforming more and more into a bullhorn for its powerful owner.

It began when Twitter banned the account @elonjet, which had 500 thousand followers and tweeted automated updates about Musk's personal flights using legal, publicly-available aviation data. Anyone can request that the FAA not broadcast that data, which Musk has also done, flight tracker site FlightAware told Motherboard. Previously, Musk had said of the @elonjet account, "My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk," he tweeted on November 6. Musk has also said he is "against censorship that goes far beyond the law."

The highly targeted ban against an account clearly annoying Musk and almost nobody else caused an immediate uproar, and it was followed by more bans. The personal account of 20-year-old @elonjet creator Jack Sweeney was banned, and so were all of his other flight tracking accounts, including those that tracked Mark Zuckerberg and Russian oligarchs. Twitter then retroactively added a new policy that banned accounts "dedicated to sharing someone's live location."

Musk then took to his personal account to launch a PR offensive. He said in a tweet, "Any account doxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation," but that "posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis" will be allowed. He then went on to claim that a "crazy stalker" in LA had blocked a car carrying his child, X, and jumped on the hood. He posted a video of an unknown man and asked his 121 million followers if anyone recognized the car or the person driving it.

In the video, the masked man is sitting in a car and appears to say, "I'm not..." while an unknown man films and replies, "Yep, pretty sure." The man in the car takes out his own phone and films back, asking, "What's your name?" The camera pans around to put his license plate in view.

"Anyone recognize this person or car?" Musk tweeted, offering no further context.

It was a stunning, and disturbing, moment. The richest man in the world asking his millions of rabid fans to identify an individual—versus, say, going to the police—is reckless, and possibly dangerous, behavior. It aso flies in the face of his anti-doxing stance, even if it technically conforms to the new "delayed locations only" rule. Twitter also bans sharing video of private individuals, with the caveat that it could be newsworthy or relevant to public discourse on important topics. The video Musk shared is clearly neither, but he is the boss now, and nobody is going to tell him otherwise.

Musk's meltdown—which follows a public embarrassment where he was booed on stage at a Dave Chappelle show—had other troubling moments. He publicly threatened legal action against @elonjet creator Sweeney and "organizations who supported harm to my family." Again, Sweeney was doing nothing more than sharing legally-protected public information—the issue was that it bothered Musk.

Musk is free to moderate his new platform as he wishes. That was the entire premise of Twitter's previous approach, which, for all its failings, typically followed a corporate-bureaucratic process with many people giving input, as Musk's own Twitter Files have shown. Now, it's clear that Musk is running Twitter as his personal fiefdom, playing Calvinball with the rules, and his commitments to free speech and moderating within the law have gone out the window.

Update: After this article was published, Twitter banned half a dozen prominent journalists who had covered Musk and were critical of him on the platform.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7v89b/twitter-purges-several-journalists-who-cover-elon-musk

QuoteTwitter Purges Several Journalists Who Cover Elon Musk

Twitter suspended a number of journalists who covered and criticized owner Elon Musk, who once claimed to be a champion of free speech.

On Thursday night, Twitter banned a number of prominent journalists who had reported on Elon Musk and in some cases criticized him.

Some of the banned journalists—Mashable's Matt Binder and CNN's Donie O'Sullivan, for example—had shared an update from the LAPD on Musk's recent claim that a man had attacked a car carrying his child, saying that no crime report had been filed (Motherboard has not independently verified this quote). Others, as captured in a Twitter thread by NBC's Ben Collins, merely tweeted about Musk's ban of competitor social media platform Mastodon's Twitter account, which also happened on Thursday. New York Times reporter Ryan Mac was also banned.

"Loving the free speech," Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell's final tweet said.

Keith Olberman's last tweet before being banned, as captured by Collins, was a tweet encouraging others to share the materials that had gotten other journalists banned.

"Tonight's suspension of the Twitter accounts of a number of prominent journalists, including The New York Times's Ryan Mac, is questionable and unfortunate," a spokesperson for The New York Times told Motherboard. "Neither The Times nor Ryan have received any explanation about why this occurred. We hope that all of  the journalists' accounts are reinstated and that Twitter provides a satisfying explanation for this action."

Motherboard reached out to Mashable, The Washington Post, and CNN, and will update this post when we hear from them.

Mastodon's account was banned after sharing a link to the Mastodon profile for @elonjet, a bot by 20-year-old programmer Jack Sweeney that automatically tweets the location of Musk's plane based on publicly-available data pulled from transponders required by the Federal Aviation Administration. Twitter banned @elonjet, Sweeney's personal account, and dozens of other flight tracking accounts on Wednesday night in a chaotic spectacle that ended with Musk's claim about the assailant in LA and him tweeting a video of an unknown man and his license plate and asking his 121 million followers to identify him.

Elon Musk purchased Twitter earlier this year in a $44 billion dollar deal. He framed himself as a champion of free speech and made a number of claims, including that he was not in favor of censorship that goes beyond the letter of the law. He specifically said that he would not ban accounts tracking his plane due to his commitment to free speech.


Anyways, I guess this is as good a time as any to bow out of Twitter. I'll miss following some of the more interesting accounts there, as well as some of the Star Wars/Trek nerd content, but meh.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on December 16, 2022, 09:15:01 PM
When bowing out do folks typically take steps to deactivate theirbacciut, or does it just mean "never log in again"?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on December 16, 2022, 11:16:23 PM
I deleted it at one point but it wasn't easy. And whenever I find myself back on twitter for some reason (usually because I got linked there) twitter seems to remember I once had an account.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on December 17, 2022, 01:08:08 AM
Quote from: Jacob on December 16, 2022, 09:15:01 PMWhen bowing out do folks typically take steps to deactivate theirbacciut, or does it just mean "never log in again"?

I deactivate my theirbacciut.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 17, 2022, 01:25:07 AM
I don't advise deactivation because after x number of days you lose your @tag, I just would reduce usage.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on December 17, 2022, 01:41:11 AM
Quote from: Jacob on December 16, 2022, 09:15:01 PMWhen bowing out do folks typically take steps to deactivate theirbacciut, or does it just mean "never log in again"?

For me, I deactivated it. You then have 30 days to re-activate it before it gets deleted and your handle becomes available for registering again.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on December 17, 2022, 03:02:50 AM
Yeah, I haven't logged into twitter (or checked twitter while logged out) for a few days now. Again, I never was the heaviest of users, and I hadn't posted a single tweet in years, but I can only vote with my feet/engagement time.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on December 17, 2022, 03:10:04 AM

Quote from: Syt on December 17, 2022, 01:41:11 AM
Quote from: Jacob on December 16, 2022, 09:15:01 PMWhen bowing out do folks typically take steps to deactivate theirbacciut, or does it just mean "never log in again"?

For me, I deactivated it. You then have 30 days to re-activate it before it gets deleted and your handle becomes available for registering again.
In 30 days I'll take your name and people will think I'm the real Syt!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on December 17, 2022, 04:14:51 AM
I expect I will want to be using it next year when the Ukraine war heats up again.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on December 17, 2022, 04:53:49 AM
I am using nitter to read some Twitter feeds. No ads either.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on December 17, 2022, 09:08:34 AM
Most of my online interactions are on various Discord servers nowadays. Twitter is only used for some soccer news and occasionally I'll scroll through my unfiltered feed to catch some reactions to Elon's now-daily beclowning of himself.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Legbiter on December 17, 2022, 10:04:36 AM
Quote from: FunkMonk on December 17, 2022, 09:08:34 AMMost of my online interactions are on various Discord servers nowadays. Twitter is only used for some soccer news and occasionally I'll scroll through my unfiltered feed to catch some reactions to Elon's now-daily beclowning of himself.

I use an observer account to keep up with Ukraine and a few scholars I like. I ruthlessly block American culture war smoothbrains (both shitlibs and conservatards) when I accidentally come across them as well as all political NPCs. I get my latest Elon gossip from here. :D
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on December 18, 2022, 09:17:33 AM
Yeah, I guess for following some news etc. it might be better to keep it for now. -_-
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on December 18, 2022, 11:31:38 AM
I am just waiting for the creation of the ESPN mastodon server. Most of my twitter activity revolves around sports, which so far is unaffected by Elon's war on decency.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 18, 2022, 11:47:23 AM
I see Elon getting into it with Adam Schiff now. I think the biggest problem I personally see in Elon is he has zero ability to not respond, and seems oblivious to the power of just not engaging with everything negative said about him.

I'm not even sure what he thinks he's accomplishing with some of this--politicians in modern day politics basically live in the sewer, they are being insulted and berated all day every single day. Your random Tweet isn't "dunking" on anyone, it's just bringing you down to that level of discourse and getting you dirty too. It really does not make sense for anyone to be wading into those waters unless they also plan to run for elected office--it truly makes no sense at all for a businessman whose two chief businesses is one where you need a tight relationship with the U.S. government and another where you need broad consumer appeal. He is attacking both things on an almost daily basis.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on December 18, 2022, 04:40:42 PM
Quote from: Syt on December 18, 2022, 09:17:33 AMYeah, I guess for following some news etc. it might be better to keep it for now. -_-
Foiled again. :cry:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on December 18, 2022, 05:32:34 PM
So now Elon is banning people who advertise links to other social media platforms on Twitter. Aaah, the free speech absolutist...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on December 18, 2022, 06:13:42 PM
Quote from: The Larch on December 18, 2022, 05:32:34 PMSo now Elon is banning people who advertise links to other social media platforms on Twitter. Aaah, the free speech absolutist...

I have also noticed that all the free speech platforms that were created earlier in opposition to Twitter censorship also seem to be very ban happy. Which might be interpreted that they were being disingenuous about the free speech thing. Not to be uncharitable or anything.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sophie Scholl on December 19, 2022, 01:50:35 AM
I think the Saudis yanked the chain and Elon will be out as CEO of Twitter soon. He's currently running, and losing, a poll where he asked if he should resign as CEO of Twitter. I think it's all a cover for what he's being forced to do anyway. Maybe he'll be out at Tesla, too, if their stock price continues its freefall. I'd love for this ego trip to land him in the poorhouse. He most definitely is deserving.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on December 19, 2022, 02:31:49 AM
I think he was smart enough to cash out enough of his stock that the poorhouse is not in the cards.  It's possible that ten years ago he could've been leveraged enough for his net worth to go negative if the value of his assets dropped enough, but I think he now pumped and dumped his way into unassailable cash wealth.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 19, 2022, 02:42:32 AM
Calling Tesla a pump and dump is silly.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on December 19, 2022, 02:50:54 AM
I suspect that Musk's talk of leaving as CEO and even the rumors he's looking to sell Twitter shares has more to do with things going a bit south at Tesla lately and needing to refocus there. That's still what butters his bread (SpaceX is actually rather small in the great scheme of things), and some major investors have been complaining.

At the same time, I think Tesla right now needs more of an execution-focused CEO than more noise. Musk's tactic of overpromising and underdelivering has worked for a good while, but I think the market is getting frustrated with the company, and at the same time is starting to get credible competition.

The whole spectacle of crowdsourcing major business decisions is surreal though :D
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 19, 2022, 03:42:38 AM
Given the wide reporting it the twitter resignation poll, integrated in BBC news et al, I suspect Musk plans to do this and is looking to legitimise it in a way where he can claim to be a good fair guy who was ousted by outsiders?
I guess he will get some data on which accounts vote which way.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 19, 2022, 02:42:32 AMCalling Tesla a pump and dump is silly.

Stoke and broke?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on December 19, 2022, 04:19:28 AM
Feed and Seed.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on December 19, 2022, 04:31:39 AM
Well, there's a lovely couple, at the World Cup final:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FkSgodNWYAMUpJ7?format=jpg&name=900x900)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FkUBFZAXwAARJaV?format=jpg&name=small)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on December 19, 2022, 05:01:16 AM
(https://i.postimg.cc/tJvb763t/image.png)

 :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on December 19, 2022, 09:49:51 AM
Quote from: Syt on December 19, 2022, 04:31:39 AMWell, there's a lovely couple, at the World Cup final:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FkSgodNWYAMUpJ7?format=jpg&name=900x900)


It's like they don't understand at all what's happening.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on December 19, 2022, 11:09:49 AM
Quote from: Sophie Scholl on December 19, 2022, 01:50:35 AMI think the Saudis yanked the chain and Elon will be out as CEO of Twitter soon. He's currently running, and losing, a poll where he asked if he should resign as CEO of Twitter. I think it's all a cover for what he's being forced to do anyway. Maybe he'll be out at Tesla, too, if their stock price continues its freefall. I'd love for this ego trip to land him in the poorhouse. He most definitely is deserving.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-no-working-ceo-stock-225039462.html

Quote[...]
On Wednesday, Leo Koguan, one of Tesla's largest individual shareholders, called for a leadership change, tweeting: "Elon abandoned Tesla and Tesla has no working CEO. Tesla needs and deserves to have working full time CEO."
Leo said someone more focused on the operational side of the company, similar to Tim Cook at Apple, should take over the company. Cook became Apple CEO after the death of co-founder Steve Jobs, who like Musk was strong on the visionary side.
"Elon is a mere hired hands," Leo added. "He is our employee...Elon was the proud father, Tesla has grown up. An executioner, Tim Cook-like is needed, not Elon."
Tesla investor frustration
Leo's comments were in sharp contrast to ones he himself offered in January, when he tweeted, "Tesla bulls, the future rainbow are here and now. Smile to your fortunate self."
At that time, Tesla had a market cap of $1.2 trillion and ranked among the world's most valuable companies. On Wednesday, its market cap dropped below $500 billion for the first time since Nov. 23, 2020.
"For investors, the clock has struck 12. Frustration has massively built, and Musk appears to be doubling-down, not backing away," Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives told CBS MoneyWatch.
Ives believes Musk overpaid for Twitter by about $20 billion and needed to tap into his Tesla shares to pay for the acquisition.
"One of investors' bigger concerns is that Musk is using Tesla as an ATM machine," Ives said. "That has been a massive overhang on Tesla's stock."
Another concern is that Musk's perceived lean toward far-right beliefs on Twitter could translate to left-leaning car buyers avoiding Teslas. They'll certainly have more options, with more automakers piling into the EV space. S&P Global Mobility recently predicted that Tesla's market share in the U.S. will drop from 65% this year to below 20% by 2025.
Gary Black, managing partner of the Future Fund and a Tesla shareholder, tweeted on Wednesday about Musk: "He will realize soon (if not already) that his polarizing political views are hurting customer perceptions of $TSLA EVs. Customers don't want their cars to be controversial. They want to be proud as hell to drive them — not embarrassed."
[...]

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 19, 2022, 11:37:16 AM
Quote from: Josquius on December 19, 2022, 03:42:38 AMStoke and broke?

Where's the stoking?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 19, 2022, 11:52:15 AM
Did anyone vote in the poll?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on December 19, 2022, 12:04:59 PM
I don't think it is a controversial statement to say that:

1) Tesla valuations got quite frothy over the past 2 years
2) Musk happened to sell TSLA stock at those high valuations
3) TSLA stock has declined significantly as the Musk-Twitter drama has played out.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on December 19, 2022, 12:10:22 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on December 19, 2022, 12:04:59 PMI don't think it is a controversial statement to say that:

1) Tesla valuations got quite frothy over the past 2 years
2) Musk happened to sell TSLA stock at those high valuations
3) TSLA stock has declined significantly as the Musk-Twitter drama has played out.

I don't think that controversial at all.

I think what Yi was objecting to was a notion that this was all done deliberately by Musk to have that effect.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on December 19, 2022, 12:11:57 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 19, 2022, 11:52:15 AMDid anyone vote in the poll?

No. I am not an enabler for attention whoring.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 19, 2022, 12:45:26 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on December 19, 2022, 12:04:59 PMI don't think it is a controversial statement to say that:

1) Tesla valuations got quite frothy over the past 2 years
2) Musk happened to sell TSLA stock at those high valuations
3) TSLA stock has declined significantly as the Musk-Twitter drama has played out.

The frothiness of Tesla is debateable.  Pre tightening bear market (I think it was before the most recent split) I saw an analyst on MSNBC talk about his firm's valuation of Tesla at $930 a share based on sales projections of X.  I did the math on that came up with IIRC a PE of 24.

But my main objection to pump and dump is that it requires a malicious actor to "talk up" the share price based on false information.  That is the missing element.

Now I concede the one time way way way back when Elon tweeted about the "firm offer to take Tesla private at such and such price" does fit the definition of talking up the price based false information.  But to take an action 10 or so years ago and sales of shares in the present as constituting a pump and dump is specious.

Elon is deeply unpopular at the moment.  He may be an awful person.  I oppose making false claims about awful, unpopular people.  I support true statements about everyone.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on December 19, 2022, 12:50:53 PM
I think the idea that Elon is intentionally tanking the stock of a company he is CEO of is ridiculous. I think he stood to make far more money by having the stock stay high.

Trying to make any logical business sense, either ethical or criminal, out of Musk's erratic behavior is a fools errand because he has been acting like a fool.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 19, 2022, 01:10:27 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LnT699vUB0

Live stream titled I'm resigning as CEO of Twitter and then the stream is talking about bitcoin.  At least right now.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on December 19, 2022, 01:12:42 PM
Bitcoin?  :huh:

Ah well. You had a good run as CEO. Came in and fired everybody for no particular reason and then left.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on December 19, 2022, 01:14:32 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 19, 2022, 11:52:15 AMDid anyone vote in the poll?
Musk's?
Yes, I voted for him to leave.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on December 19, 2022, 02:00:18 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 19, 2022, 12:45:26 PMElon is deeply unpopular at the moment.  He may be an awful person.  I oppose making false claims about awful, unpopular people.  I support true statements about everyone.

If Elon deliberately took advantage of what he perceived as a flattering price for TSLA by coming up with an excuse to offload lots of stock for cash, without conveying the impression that he thought it was overvalued, then my perception of his acumen would go up.

I think you right and there was no master plan, just flailing about to finance twitter in a chaotic fashion by willy-nilly liquidation of his most easily available and highly marketable asset.  Which I guess says better things about his business ethics than the alternative.  But it hardly reassures as to him being a reliable pair of hands for managing the company going forward.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 19, 2022, 02:29:30 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on December 19, 2022, 02:00:18 PMIf Elon deliberately took advantage of what he perceived as a flattering price for TSLA by coming up with an excuse to offload lots of stock for cash, without conveying the impression that he thought it was overvalued, then my perception of his acumen would go up.

This theory of the case is a shambles.  It relies on Elon being clever and duplicitious enough to concoct a scheme to cash out some of his position in a stock he knows is overvalued without affecting the share price, but to stupid to realize adding millions of shares worth billions of dollars to the free float will affect share price.

How about the dog wagging the tail instead of vice versa?  An impulsive, narcissitic very high net worth individual decides to buy Twitter and to finance the transaction uses his *only* liquid asset, Tesla stock. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on December 19, 2022, 03:09:45 PM
Counter-intuitive - maybe hot take - given how polarised the US is on political lines, maybe we'll see loads of conservatives/Trump-fans start adopting EVs by buying Teslas?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on December 19, 2022, 04:29:24 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 19, 2022, 03:09:45 PMCounter-intuitive - maybe hot take - given how polarised the US is on political lines, maybe we'll see loads of conservatives/Trump-fans start adopting EVs by buying Teslas?

... and giving up rolling coal? Because they think climate change is real? And the oil industry is harmful?

I'm guessing a bit more work needs to be done before the Trump wing of the American public gets on that particular train.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on December 19, 2022, 04:33:00 PM
Quote from: Jacob on December 19, 2022, 04:29:24 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 19, 2022, 03:09:45 PMCounter-intuitive - maybe hot take - given how polarised the US is on political lines, maybe we'll see loads of conservatives/Trump-fans start adopting EVs by buying Teslas?

... and giving up rolling coal? Because they think climate change is real? And the oil industry is harmful?

I'm guessing a bit more work needs to be done before the Trump wing of the American public gets on that particular train.

Also wicked-fast acceleration, and stick it to the Saudis by not using their oil?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on December 19, 2022, 04:50:20 PM
Quote from: Jacob on December 19, 2022, 04:29:24 PM... and giving up rolling coal? Because they think climate change is real? And the oil industry is harmful?

I'm guessing a bit more work needs to be done before the Trump wing of the American public gets on that particular train.
No to signal that they love Musk because he annoys the libs/what Musk seemingly now signifies politically and culturally etc. Maybe the reverse of I imagine liberal Americans right now who might want an EV possibly scoping out non-Musk associated options.

Given polarisation at the back of my head I always wonder if it would have been good if Americans had somehow identified one of the vaccines as "Trumpy".
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on December 19, 2022, 05:37:35 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 19, 2022, 02:29:30 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on December 19, 2022, 02:00:18 PMIf Elon deliberately took advantage of what he perceived as a flattering price for TSLA by coming up with an excuse to offload lots of stock for cash, without conveying the impression that he thought it was overvalued, then my perception of his acumen would go up.

This theory of the case is a shambles.  It relies on Elon being clever and duplicitious enough to concoct a scheme to cash out some of his position in a stock he knows is overvalued without affecting the share price, but to stupid to realize adding millions of shares worth billions of dollars to the free float will affect share price.

How about the dog wagging the tail instead of vice versa?  An impulsive, narcissitic very high net worth individual decides to buy Twitter and to finance the transaction uses his *only* liquid asset, Tesla stock. 
I'll stick with my marijuana binge smoking where he lost touch with reality and made some dumb offer he couldn't get out of.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 19, 2022, 05:41:17 PM
That tesla was over valued is something that is in question?
I thought there was quite the consensus there.

It's logical that Musk wanted to offload some of it and make his gains real however it should have been obvious to him it would damage the price to be seen to be doing so.

Whether twitter therefore was basically a spin on money laundering in giving him an excuse to sell tesla stock.... That's where the theory doesn't really add up. You launder money by making it real and usable. Not by throwing it on a fire.

At best I would believe that he thought he could get out of it having already sold his tesla stock. More likely he fucked up with a joke not expecting to see the offer accepted and scrambled to try and make the best of a bad situation.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on December 19, 2022, 05:47:25 PM
Let's see now if he actually steps down. Rumour goes that he's being forced out of the CEO position by other investors in the acquisition and this is just a charade to save face.

QuoteElon Musk's Twitter poll: 10 million say he should step down
Billionaire chief executive of Tesla insists there is no successor in the wings at social media platform

More than 10 million people have voted in favour of Elon Musk stepping down as the chief executive of Twitter in a poll he posted on the site late on Sunday.

However, the billionaire, who bought the company and installed himself as its head only 50 days ago, has insisted there is no successor in the wings. "No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive," he said on the social network. "There is no successor."

Replying to another user who said they could do the job, Musk added: "You must like pain a lot. One catch: you have to invest your life savings in Twitter and it has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy since May. Still want the job?"

On Sunday, Musk asked Twitter users whether he should step down as the head of the company, promising to abide by the results of his poll.

When the poll closed on Monday, 57.5% said he should step down.

As the majority owner of the privately held company, no one can force Musk out, but a series of baffling decisions over the past few days has caused even some of his closest backers to break ties with him.

A decision to ban an account that tracked the location of his private jet last week was followed by a mass suspension of critical journalists who reported on the ban. That led in turn to an exodus of some engaged users to other social networks, chiefly its decentralised competitor Mastodon, whose own account was banned for posting a link to the jet tracker's account on the rival platform.

On Sunday, Musk reacted by banning all links to other social networks, including Mastodon, Instagram, Facebook, and even minor platforms such as Nostr, used by the Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, and Linktree, a homepage creation tool favoured by influencers.

That ban was rescinded by the end of the day, after a Twitter poll from the Twitter Safety account, with Musk saying: "Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Won't happen again."

However, the move was the final straw for some. Paul Graham, an Anglo-American venture capitalist who had only a month earlier backed Musk, saying: "It's remarkable how many people who've never run any kind of company think they know how to run a tech company better than someone who's run Tesla and SpaceX." Graham also declared the move "the last straw" and told users they could find a link to his Mastodon profile on his personal website. His account was suspended for the post.

Musk has a history of using Twitter polls to rubber-stamp major decisions, selling a tenth of his Tesla holdings after one poll in 2021, restoring Donald Trump's account after a second last month and reinstating a number of suspended accounts after a third. "Vox Populi, Vox Dei," Musk tweeted after the Trump poll.

However, in many cases, he has given the impression of already having decided on the outcome before posting: he had already announced a sale of his Tesla holdings, for instance, long before he put it to a vote, and his plan to reinstate Trump had been discussed since before he even bought Twitter.

The decision to step down as chief executive had also been hinted at long before the Twitter poll was published. On 16 November, he told a Delaware judge that he planned to reduce his time at Twitter and "find somebody else to run Twitter over time".
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 19, 2022, 05:52:05 PM
Musk is such a walking turd.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 19, 2022, 05:54:31 PM
Quote from: The Larch on December 19, 2022, 05:47:25 PMRumour goes that he's being forced out of the CEO position by other investors in the acquisition and this is just a charade to save face.

I just watched a clip that says the other investors put in 7.14 billion.  That means if they just vote shares they can't force him out.

The story mentioned Ellison as a minority investor and some other known name I can't remember but didn't mention the Saudis.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 19, 2022, 06:00:55 PM
Ellison was part of the Theranos fraud. He certainly has a type.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on December 19, 2022, 06:04:32 PM
I imagine there have to be some protections for minority shareholders.  I can't just form a venture where I own 51% of the shares, and decide to then sell this venture to another company that is wholly owned by me for 1 cent per share.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 19, 2022, 06:09:08 PM
Quote from: DGuller on December 19, 2022, 06:04:32 PMI imagine there have to be some protections for minority shareholders.  I can't just form a venture where I own 51% of the shares, and decide to then sell this venture to another company that is wholly owned by me for 1 cent per share.

How do you sell other people's shares?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 19, 2022, 06:13:49 PM
Quote from: The Brain on December 19, 2022, 06:09:08 PMHow do you sell other people's shares?

Happens all the time with takeovers.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 19, 2022, 06:16:16 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 19, 2022, 06:13:49 PM
Quote from: The Brain on December 19, 2022, 06:09:08 PMHow do you sell other people's shares?

Happens all the time with takeovers.

What's the legal mechanism? And what's the purpose of it?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 19, 2022, 06:19:43 PM
Quote from: The Brain on December 19, 2022, 06:16:16 PMWhat's the legal mechanism? And what's the purpose of it?

You hold a proxy vote.  Shareholders vote their shares aye or nay to the takeover at price X.  Folks who vote nay have to sell regardless.

I suppose the purpose is to enable takeovers.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 19, 2022, 06:22:24 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 19, 2022, 06:19:43 PM
Quote from: The Brain on December 19, 2022, 06:16:16 PMWhat's the legal mechanism? And what's the purpose of it?

You hold a proxy vote.  Shareholders vote their shares aye or nay to the takeover at price X.  Folks who vote nay have to sell regardless.

I suppose the purpose is to enable takeovers.

Why do the "overtakers" need 100% of the shares? From a societal perspective?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on December 19, 2022, 06:24:46 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 19, 2022, 06:19:43 PMYou hold a proxy vote.  Shareholders vote their shares aye or nay to the takeover at price X.  Folks who vote nay have to sell regardless.

I suppose the purpose is to enable takeovers.
Or if it's a private company you'd often have drag along provisions in the shareholders' agreement.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on December 19, 2022, 06:26:22 PM
Mergers happen all the time, to companies that have millions of shares outstanding.  If a single shareholder held a Liberum Veto on the merger proposal, then so many synergies would be lost and redundancies left unstreamlined.  In my case, I presume that 49% of the shares would vote no to the merger at the price of 1 cent per share, but they would be outvoted by 51% of shares that vote yes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on December 19, 2022, 06:27:14 PM
Quote from: The Brain on December 19, 2022, 06:22:24 PMWhy do the "overtakers" need 100% of the shares? From a societal perspective?
How can they work otherwise?  What would be the meaning of the share of a company that no longer exists?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 19, 2022, 06:31:21 PM
Quote from: The Brain on December 19, 2022, 06:22:24 PMWhy do the "overtakers" need 100% of the shares? From a societal perspective?

[I suppose] they prefer 100% to avoid SEC reporting requirements and regulation.

I suppose the gain to society is the freedom to contract.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 19, 2022, 06:33:30 PM
Quote from: DGuller on December 19, 2022, 06:27:14 PM
Quote from: The Brain on December 19, 2022, 06:22:24 PMWhy do the "overtakers" need 100% of the shares? From a societal perspective?
How can they work otherwise?  What would be the meaning of the share of a company that no longer exists?

Presumably it would still exist in this situation. But I buy the synergy thing.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 19, 2022, 06:36:16 PM
So are there any protections for minority shareholders, or are the "1 cent takeover" risks factored into the price of minority positions?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 19, 2022, 06:38:58 PM
Quote from: The Brain on December 19, 2022, 06:36:16 PMSo are there any protections for minority shareholders, or are the "1 cent takeover" risks factored into the price of minority positions?

Rules against self-dealing like DGuller mentioned for one.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 19, 2022, 06:39:18 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 19, 2022, 06:38:58 PM
Quote from: The Brain on December 19, 2022, 06:36:16 PMSo are there any protections for minority shareholders, or are the "1 cent takeover" risks factored into the price of minority positions?

Rules against self-dealing like DGuller mentioned for one.

Hairy palms? :(
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 19, 2022, 06:43:10 PM
Incidentally an IMF economist taking a sabbatical to teach at the Kennedy school said the failure of Russia's first attempts at free market reforms and the rise of the oligarchs was largely due to the failure to protect minority shareholder rights.  Yeltsin handed out shares to Ivan and Olga and Boris Oligarch did exactly what DGuller described.  And the country never recovered.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 19, 2022, 06:44:50 PM
Silver lining to everything I suppose.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Legbiter on December 19, 2022, 07:01:46 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 19, 2022, 03:09:45 PMCounter-intuitive - maybe hot take - given how polarised the US is on political lines, maybe we'll see loads of conservatives/Trump-fans start adopting EVs by buying Teslas?

A South African billionaire on a drunken lark sets out to "reform" social media, resulting in Red America and Blue America switching cultural status markers... :hmm:

Sounds like a great premise for a Neal Stephenson novel.  :D  :thumbsup:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on December 19, 2022, 08:01:49 PM
Quote from: The Brain on December 19, 2022, 06:36:16 PMSo are there any protections for minority shareholders, or are the "1 cent takeover" risks factored into the price of minority positions?

The management of the company has a legal responsibility to act for the benefit of the shareholders.  They cannot act in their own best interests first, else they will have their asses sued off.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on December 19, 2022, 08:19:23 PM
Quote from: grumbler on December 19, 2022, 08:01:49 PM
Quote from: The Brain on December 19, 2022, 06:36:16 PMSo are there any protections for minority shareholders, or are the "1 cent takeover" risks factored into the price of minority positions?

The management of the company has a legal responsibility to act for the benefit of the shareholders.  They cannot act in their own best interests first, else they will have their asses sued off.
The management is not acting in their own best interests, they are in fact acting in the best interest of 51% of the shareholders.  They better be.  :ph34r:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on December 19, 2022, 08:27:03 PM
Quote from: DGuller on December 19, 2022, 08:19:23 PM
Quote from: grumbler on December 19, 2022, 08:01:49 PM
Quote from: The Brain on December 19, 2022, 06:36:16 PMSo are there any protections for minority shareholders, or are the "1 cent takeover" risks factored into the price of minority positions?

The management of the company has a legal responsibility to act for the benefit of the shareholders.  They cannot act in their own best interests first, else they will have their asses sued off.
The management is not acting in their own best interests, they are in fact acting in the best interest of 51% of the shareholders.  They better be.  :ph34r:

How could selling the company at $0.01 per share be in the interests of any of the shareholders?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on December 19, 2022, 08:35:54 PM
Minority shareholders who think that their shares are being sold for less than they are worth have a statutory right (in the US, anyway) to ask a court to conduct an appraisal review.  The court can then force the buying entity to pay fair market value for those shares.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 19, 2022, 08:47:07 PM
To clarify—if a company's value is reasonably agreed to be in the range (say a large range) of $15-30 a share, a single shareholder and CEO with 51% of the voting shares cannot legally liquidate the company at $0.01 a share.

They have a lot of discretion and leeway, but not to such a crazy degree. The officers of a company have a legally binding fiduciary interest to 100% of the shareholders, having 51% of the votes is not (in the USA anyway) a way to legally steal the entire investment in the company by minority owners.

If this was legal no one but fools would throw money in as minority investors in closely held firms.

As grumbler said a management team attempting such a heist would face a tidal wave of legal problems.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on December 19, 2022, 09:02:10 PM
Quote from: grumbler on December 19, 2022, 08:27:03 PMHow could selling the company at $0.01 per share be in the interests of any of the shareholders?
I own 51% of the venture being sold, and 100% of the company that is acquiring that venture.  I get to go from owning 51% of the venture to owning 100% of it (via a fully-owned subsidiary) for a nominal expense.  I'm the shareholder, and my interests seem to be doing just fine.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 19, 2022, 09:16:25 PM
Quote from: DGuller on December 19, 2022, 09:02:10 PM
Quote from: grumbler on December 19, 2022, 08:27:03 PMHow could selling the company at $0.01 per share be in the interests of any of the shareholders?
I own 51% of the venture being sold, and 100% of the company that is acquiring that venture.  I get to go from owning 51% of the venture to owning 100% of it (via a fully-owned subsidiary) for a nominal expense.  I'm the shareholder, and my interests seem to be doing just fine.

Again—not how it works. The minority shareholders have a right to have their fiduciary interests protected.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 19, 2022, 09:32:29 PM
I'm as far from (any kind) of lawyer as it gets--but even moreso for corporate law, but my understanding is the broad rules are that:

- Controllers in companies, when their actions are ones they have an "interest" in, the law is going to put restrictions on what actions they can take and how they take them. Determining controller status and whether someone has an interest is complex in some scenarios--particularly where a controller is a minority shareholder--there have been legal cases involving both Larry Ellison (Oracle) and Musk (Tesla) in which it was asserted they were effectively controllers of their companies despite not owning anywhere near 51% of voting shares.

- When something must be decided involving interested and disinterested stockholders, i.e. a merger spearheaded by an interested stockholder who is also the controller, the courts are going to want to protect the rights and standing of the disinterested stockholders. I believe typical things that must be done are things like convening a committee representing only the disinterested stockholders and receiving their affirmative vote to move forward--this would stop cold the meme of a 51% controller being able to sell his company at $0.01 a share to a third entity he also controls.

- The courts also allow for actions to stop "oppressive actions" which is a legal term of art by the controller against minority shareholders. Oppressive actions can be things like freezing minority shareholders out of corporate records to which they are entitled to audit etc etc.

- The courts apply something called an "Entire Fairness Test" to some of these matters, that require analyzing whether an action is "Fair Dealing" and whether a transaction is a "Fair Price"

All of this gets complicated and varies from place to place based on where an entity is incorporated and the specifics, and I only understand the vague outlines, but the TLDR is you can't just fuck over minority shareholders and wipe out their entire stake in the company at a $0.01 valuation in most cases, no matter how many voting shares you own.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on December 19, 2022, 10:09:02 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 19, 2022, 09:16:25 PM
Quote from: DGuller on December 19, 2022, 09:02:10 PM
Quote from: grumbler on December 19, 2022, 08:27:03 PMHow could selling the company at $0.01 per share be in the interests of any of the shareholders?
I own 51% of the venture being sold, and 100% of the company that is acquiring that venture.  I get to go from owning 51% of the venture to owning 100% of it (via a fully-owned subsidiary) for a nominal expense.  I'm the shareholder, and my interests seem to be doing just fine.

Again—not how it works. The minority shareholders have a right to have their fiduciary interests protected.
I know that's not how it works.  I brought up this extreme hypothetical to make a point that just because non-Musk investors on aggregate are minority shareholders doesn't mean that Musk has a cart-blanche to trash Twitter however he sees fit.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 20, 2022, 01:37:32 AM
I recently ordered some stuff from Swedish company Elon which sells appliances and stuff. I got a text from the parcel delivery company that informed me "Elon is packing your items". How the mighty have fallen.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tonitrus on December 20, 2022, 01:47:22 AM
Or he really likes you, and you're in for a surprise.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 20, 2022, 01:57:11 AM
I've now received it and my shares didn't implode. :)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on December 20, 2022, 11:38:17 AM
Maybe this is a Canadian-only thing, but I could have sworn that when there's a controlling shareholder, there's a requirement that there needs to be a "majority of the minority" vote in favour.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on December 20, 2022, 12:16:58 PM
Just checking in: Is Elon Musk still a douche?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Habbaku on December 20, 2022, 12:27:58 PM
Sources say yes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on December 20, 2022, 12:40:14 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on December 20, 2022, 12:16:58 PMJust checking in: Is Elon Musk still a douche?

Always
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PJL on December 20, 2022, 01:02:26 PM
Wouldn't say always but certainly this year onwards.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on December 20, 2022, 01:03:29 PM
Quote from: PJL on December 20, 2022, 01:02:26 PMWouldn't say always but certainly this year onwards.

While I think Musk has always had some redeeming features, he's always been a douche.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PJL on December 20, 2022, 01:09:19 PM
Quote from: Barrister on December 20, 2022, 01:03:29 PM
Quote from: PJL on December 20, 2022, 01:02:26 PMWouldn't say always but certainly this year onwards.

While I think Musk has always had some redeeming features, he's always been a douche.

Bit surprised you are saying that, thought you would be more forgiving of his bad side, especially his business practices. But yes it's always been there but until this year I think he was still a net positive for humanity.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on December 20, 2022, 01:13:32 PM
Quote from: PJL on December 20, 2022, 01:09:19 PM
Quote from: Barrister on December 20, 2022, 01:03:29 PM
Quote from: PJL on December 20, 2022, 01:02:26 PMWouldn't say always but certainly this year onwards.

While I think Musk has always had some redeeming features, he's always been a douche.

Bit surprised you are saying that, thought you would be more forgiving of his bad side, especially his business practices. But yes it's always been there but until this year I think he was still a net positive for humanity.

I think reasonable people can disagree with whether Elon Musk has been a net positive or net negative for humanity.

But I think everyone surely has to agree he has a lot of negatives on that ledger that need balancing out.

I mean - he named one of his kids "X Æ A-12" - that's worth a lot of minus points just there alone!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on December 20, 2022, 02:33:23 PM
He stole Grimes from us. He deserves all ills.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on December 20, 2022, 02:35:50 PM
Quote from: Barrister on December 20, 2022, 01:13:32 PMI mean - he named one of his kids "X Æ A-12" - that's worth a lot of minus points just there alone!

Poor kid. Doomed from birth.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 20, 2022, 02:36:47 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on December 20, 2022, 02:33:23 PMHe stole Grimes from us. He deserves all ills.

Homer did that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on December 20, 2022, 02:38:00 PM
Quote from: Barrister on December 20, 2022, 11:38:17 AMMaybe this is a Canadian-only thing, but I could have sworn that when there's a controlling shareholder, there's a requirement that there needs to be a "majority of the minority" vote in favour.
No, not legally.  A corporation could have specific statutes for this though.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on December 20, 2022, 02:42:52 PM
Quote from: viper37 on December 20, 2022, 02:38:00 PM
Quote from: Barrister on December 20, 2022, 11:38:17 AMMaybe this is a Canadian-only thing, but I could have sworn that when there's a controlling shareholder, there's a requirement that there needs to be a "majority of the minority" vote in favour.
No, not legally.  A corporation could have specific statutes for this though.

No, I'm positive of it.

Lets say you're a 51% shareholder of company A.  You make a buyout offer of Company A by Company B, which you also control.

In Canada at least you must get the approval of a majority of the 49% shareholders of Company A.

What I can't recall is if that is right there in statues (the various Business Corporation Acts), or it if has just developed through caselaw as being the way to ensure you've met your fiduciary responsibilities.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on December 20, 2022, 02:52:11 PM
Quote from: Valmy on December 20, 2022, 02:35:50 PM
Quote from: Barrister on December 20, 2022, 01:13:32 PMI mean - he named one of his kids "X Æ A-12" - that's worth a lot of minus points just there alone!

Poor kid. Doomed from birth.

He's an American. You all have dumb names anyway and, like the Brits, use nicknames.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on December 20, 2022, 03:08:22 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on December 20, 2022, 02:33:23 PMHe stole Grimes from us. He deserves all ills.

Aren't they separated?

Quote from: Barrister on December 20, 2022, 01:13:32 PMI mean - he named one of his kids "X Æ A-12" - that's worth a lot of minus points just there alone!

He actually had to change that, as it went against California's naming laws. It was changed to X Æ A-Xii, though...

His next daughter is called Exa Dark Sideræl, if you want to add it to his list of sins.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on December 20, 2022, 03:17:44 PM
Why is he so into Danish/Norwegian vowels?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on December 20, 2022, 03:24:47 PM
Quote from: Jacob on December 20, 2022, 03:17:44 PMWhy is he so into Danish/Norwegian vowels?

It's worse.

The boy's name is some kind of sciencey term.

I believe the girl's name comes from elvish.  Yup, Tolkein's elvish.  (or at least the last part of it)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Legbiter on December 20, 2022, 03:55:24 PM
Quote from: Jacob on December 20, 2022, 03:17:44 PMWhy is he so into Danish/Norwegian vowels?

Sideræl is not something a sane Norwegian would name their daughter. In Norwegian it means something of low quality that's been tossed aside. :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on December 20, 2022, 05:11:52 PM
Quote from: Legbiter on December 20, 2022, 03:55:24 PM
Quote from: Jacob on December 20, 2022, 03:17:44 PMWhy is he so into Danish/Norwegian vowels?

Sideræl is not something a sane Norwegian would name their daughter. In Norwegian it means something of low quality that's been tossed aside. :hmm:

:blink: 

Did no one point this out to him??

What if a Norwegian named their son 'Trashcan' would it be picked up before the christening?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on December 20, 2022, 05:20:37 PM
Lol he lost the poll so changed the rules

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/20/elon-musk-breaks-silence-after-10-million-twitter-users-vote-for-him-to-step-down
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 20, 2022, 05:42:37 PM
It looks like in spite of changing the rules he is now saying he "plans to look" for a CEO for Twitter.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on December 20, 2022, 05:43:24 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 20, 2022, 05:42:37 PMIt looks like in spite of changing the rules he is now saying he "plans to look" for a CEO for Twitter.

Saudis getting rowdy? Or he's afraid he might lose control of tesla?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on December 20, 2022, 06:12:43 PM
Probably both.  I'm sure the Saudis had sinister reasons to finance Musk, but they probably didn't sign up for this shitshow.  Tesla investors most certainly didn't sign up for this.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on December 20, 2022, 08:15:53 PM
Quote from: Barrister on December 20, 2022, 02:42:52 PM
Quote from: viper37 on December 20, 2022, 02:38:00 PM
Quote from: Barrister on December 20, 2022, 11:38:17 AMMaybe this is a Canadian-only thing, but I could have sworn that when there's a controlling shareholder, there's a requirement that there needs to be a "majority of the minority" vote in favour.
No, not legally.  A corporation could have specific statutes for this though.

No, I'm positive of it.

Lets say you're a 51% shareholder of company A.  You make a buyout offer of Company A by Company B, which you also control.

In Canada at least you must get the approval of a majority of the 49% shareholders of Company A.

What I can't recall is if that is right there in statues (the various Business Corporation Acts), or it if has just developed through caselaw as being the way to ensure you've met your fiduciary responsibilities.
Oh, that.  I do not know for that specific a case.  You could certainly be right.

I thought more on the general principle.  Sorry, I misunderstood you.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on December 20, 2022, 11:06:18 PM
Quote from: Barrister on December 20, 2022, 11:38:17 AMMaybe this is a Canadian-only thing, but I could have sworn that when there's a controlling shareholder, there's a requirement that there needs to be a "majority of the minority" vote in favour.

So in effect a controlling shareholder's vote doesn't count at all.  An odd way to do things.  Perhaps a response to the fly by night shenanigans of the Canadian mining penny stock sector.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 21, 2022, 09:54:46 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 20, 2022, 11:06:18 PM
Quote from: Barrister on December 20, 2022, 11:38:17 AMMaybe this is a Canadian-only thing, but I could have sworn that when there's a controlling shareholder, there's a requirement that there needs to be a "majority of the minority" vote in favour.

So in effect a controlling shareholder's vote doesn't count at all.  An odd way to do things.  Perhaps a response to the fly by night shenanigans of the Canadian mining penny stock sector.

No? A controlling shareholder gets to appoint a majority of the board, which also means determining the CEO/President, and in fact the controlling shareholder can hold the Chairmanship/CEO position if they so wish--this is often the case in closely held firms. This means they get to make important decisions every day, while minority shareholders largely have no day to day say in how the business is run.

Most stipulations requiring consent of the disinterested shareholders are case-specific and limited, mostly to prevent the worst theoretical abuses.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on December 21, 2022, 10:04:37 AM
Most American corporate transactions are governed by Delaware law, the typical place of registration for most public companies.

Under Delaware law, company directors owe duties to the company not to the controlling shareholder. In practice, of course, directors hold their jobs based on shareholder votes.  However, Aa alluded to by others, there are legal duties that apply and minority shareholders can sue based on violations of those duties.

\In Delaware law, it is permitted for corporations to disclaim duties of care in their charter, and many do.  As a practical matter, this means that directors and officers can't be sued for negligence, including negligent failure to maximize returns in the sale of the company (Smith v. van Gorkum).

However, the fiduciary duty of loyalty can never be eliminated. That duty prevents a controlling person from acting in their own interests against the corporate interest.  The duty of loyalty applies in any corporate transaction - including a sale of the entire company - where the control person has an interest. The standard applied is "entire fairness" - i.e. whether the transaction is entirely fair to all shareholders. 

In Kahn v. M&F Worldwide Corp. the Delaware Supreme Court ruled that "entire fairness" is presumed if the transaction is approved by both an independent Special Committee of the Board, and a majority of the minority stockholders.  In that sense the majority of the minority concept is present in US law.

However, it is possible to do a transaction that does not satisfy those conditions as long as it can be shown it was entirely fair.  But doing so will draw a lawsuit that will take time to resolve; often a death knell for a deal.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on December 22, 2022, 05:25:01 PM
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fkg1oKCXEAQf3ln?format=jpg&name=900x900)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on December 22, 2022, 07:24:57 PM
Quote from: Syt on December 22, 2022, 05:25:01 PMsnip

:LOL:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on December 23, 2022, 12:26:08 PM
Musk really likes to go on about the stack. It's almost like it's the only buzzword he knows.

Ex Twitter employee asks musk what's wrong with Twitters code (https://twitter.com/pwnsdx/status/1605442608603463680?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1605442608603463680%7Ctwgr%5E493331e948c6676d2c345862dd668008b82eb761%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thedailybeast.com%2Fflustered-elon-musk-flips-out-on-jackass-for-questioning-him)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on December 23, 2022, 04:01:29 PM
What's the stack?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 23, 2022, 05:37:42 PM
Tech stack (sometimes called solution stack): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solution_stack
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on December 25, 2022, 02:20:51 PM
That was pretty much just a question of time since Elon fired most of the security team.

Twitter data breach: 400 millions users' data sold online (https://zeenews.india.com/technology/twitter-data-breach-hacker-posted-list-of-hacked-data-of-400-million-users-check-whether-your-data-is-leaked-or-not-2553637.html)

Account's name, email address, phone numbers, creation date of the account, just about everything someone could need to impersonate a celebrity or any influencer on Twitter.  I am unsure about the passwords though.

Raz, if you still want to impersonate Syt, this your chance, just bid on the data ;)


Seriously, this is fucked up for the victims of the hack.  It seems it was really preventable.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 25, 2022, 03:58:34 PM
Quote from: viper37 on December 25, 2022, 02:20:51 PMThat was pretty much just a question of time since Elon fired most of the security team.


Account's name, email address, phone numbers, creation date of the account, just about everything someone could need to impersonate a celebrity or any influencer on Twitter.  I am unsure about the passwords though.

Raz, if you still want to impersonate Syt, this your chance, just bid on the data ;)


Seriously, this is fucked up for the victims of the hack.  It seems it was really preventable.

Fascinating that some celebs have such utterly basic email addresses. Piers Morgan 1 at bt Internet :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on December 25, 2022, 04:59:44 PM
Are you sure our forum should have a direct link to the alleged hackers post selling the data?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on December 26, 2022, 12:22:16 AM
You're right, I've replaced it with a news link.  Jos should edit his post.  Sorry.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on December 28, 2022, 05:53:47 AM
People saying that this line in Star Trek: Discovery is (retroactively) the first clue that Lorca was from the Mirrror Universe. :lol:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FkWvTW0XoAMTLOq?format=jpg&name=900x900)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on December 28, 2022, 05:59:45 AM
Context for the non Trekkies?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 28, 2022, 06:33:48 AM
Quote from: The Larch on December 28, 2022, 05:59:45 AMContext for the non Trekkies?
He's from a the same but different opposite-dimension where the same main characters exist but are eeeviiillll and often have some opposite character traits. History broadly looks the same except people are dicks and there's a few oddities like Musk being spoken in the same light as the other two.
Zephram Cochrane invented warp drive.


Quote from: viper37 on December 26, 2022, 12:22:16 AMYou're right, I've replaced it with a news link.  Jos should edit his post.  Sorry.
K
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on December 28, 2022, 06:49:05 AM
Quote from: Josquius on December 28, 2022, 06:33:48 AMHe's from a the same but different opposite-dimension where the same main characters exist but are eeeviiillll and often have opposite characters traits. History broadly looks the same except people are dicks and there's a few oddities like Musk being spoken in the same light as the other two.
Zephram Cochrane invented warp drive.
´

What Josq said. :) In the scene, Lorca speaks to Stamets who's pioneering a new propulsion technique, and puts him in a line with the Wright Bros., Musk, and Cochrane. Obviously, when the episode aired in 2017 Musk didn't have nearly the reputation he has now. :P

Actually, Trek often is careful with such "near now" references. A notable exception was in Next Generation where Data played poker on the holodeck against Einstein, Newton and Stephen Hawking, with the latter being played by the actual one.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on December 28, 2022, 07:14:57 AM
He is on one level with Syt's family now:
(https://i.redd.it/0opy1t6hfl8a1.png)

Also:
(https://i.redd.it/arszyzv7kf8a1.jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on December 28, 2022, 11:24:42 AM
I almost feel embarrassed for him.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 28, 2022, 12:54:14 PM
Looking into Tesla more--their stock has cratered pretty badly, far worse than the overall market. It appears demand is declining for their cars and they are additionally having supply chain issues.

Hits also keep coming about their Autopilot assisted drive program, Tesla used to report quarterly safety statistics on it, but stopped a while back. NHTSA now requires at least some of those statistics to be released to them regardless, and people poring over Tesla's data have come to the conclusion that Tesla quit reporting on the statistics because the statistics got a lot worse, it is a significantly more dangerous driver-assistance program than its competitors versions.

https://mastodon.social/@owasow/109587771638625984
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on December 28, 2022, 01:05:08 PM
On their "autopilot" I always had the impression that they had more or less the same capabilities as their peers, but were significantly less risk-averse and thus gave the system more control than other OEMs.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on December 28, 2022, 01:37:21 PM
Tesla is getting slammed in China both from Covid related factory issues and competition.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on January 17, 2023, 07:57:09 PM
Tesla video promoting self-driving was staged, engineer testifies (https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-video-promoting-self-driving-was-staged-engineer-testifies-2023-01-17/)


QuoteJan 17 (Reuters) - A 2016 video that Tesla (TSLA.O) used to promote its self-driving technology was staged to show capabilities like stopping at a red light and accelerating at a green light that the system did not have, according to testimony by a senior engineer.

The video, which remains archived on Tesla's website, was released in October 2016 and promoted on Twitter by Chief Executive Elon Musk as evidence that "Tesla drives itself."

But the Model X was not driving itself with technology Tesla had deployed, Ashok Elluswamy, director of Autopilot software at Tesla, said in the transcript of a July deposition taken as evidence in a lawsuit against Tesla for a 2018 fatal crash involving a former Apple (AAPL.O) engineer.

The previously unreported testimony by Elluswamy represents the first time a Tesla employee has confirmed and detailed how the video was produced.
Latest Updates

The video carries a tagline saying: "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself."

Elluswamy said Tesla's Autopilot team set out to engineer and record a "demonstration of the system's capabilities" at the request of Musk.

Elluswamy, Musk and Tesla did not respond to a request for comment. However, the company has warned drivers that they must keep their hands on the wheel and maintain control of their vehicles while using Autopilot.

The Tesla technology is designed to assist with steering, braking, speed and lane changes but its features "do not make the vehicle autonomous," the company says on its website.

To create the video, the Tesla used 3D mapping on a predetermined route from a house in Menlo Park, California, to Tesla's then-headquarters in Palo Alto, he said.

Drivers intervened to take control in test runs, he said. When trying to show the Model X could park itself with no driver, a test car crashed into a fence in Tesla's parking lot, he said.

"The intent of the video was not to accurately portray what was available for customers in 2016. It was to portray what was possible to build into the system," Elluswamy said, according to a transcript of his testimony seen by Reuters.

When Tesla released the video, Musk tweeted, "Tesla drives itself (no human input at all) thru urban streets to highway to streets, then finds a parking spot."

Tesla faces lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny over its driver assistance systems.

The U.S. Department of Justice began a criminal investigation into Tesla's claims that its electric vehicles can drive themselves in 2021, after a number of crashes, some of them fatal, involving Autopilot, Reuters has reported.

The New York Times reported in 2021 that Tesla engineers had created the 2016 video to promote Autopilot without disclosing that the route had been mapped in advance or that a car had crashed in trying to complete the shoot, citing anonymous sources.

When asked if the 2016 video showed the performance of the Tesla Autopilot system available in a production car at the time, Elluswamy said, "It does not."

Elluswamy was deposed in a lawsuit against Tesla over a 2018 crash in Mountain View, California, that killed Apple engineer Walter Huang.

Andrew McDevitt, the lawyer who represents Huang's wife and who questioned Elluswamy's in July, told Reuters it was "obviously misleading to feature that video without any disclaimer or asterisk."

The National Transportation Safety Board concluded in 2020 that Huang's fatal crash was likely caused by his distraction and the limitations of Autopilot. It said Tesla's "ineffective monitoring of driver engagement" had contributed to the crash.

Elluswamy said drivers could "fool the system," making a Tesla system believe that they were paying attention based on feedback from the steering wheel when they were not. But he said he saw no safety issue with Autopilot if drivers were paying attention.

Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Kevin Krolicki and Lisa Shumaker
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on January 18, 2023, 02:22:53 AM
1 like from: Elizabeth Holmes
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on January 24, 2023, 01:01:54 PM
Elon Musk: dead-beat renter.

QuoteTwitter faces lawsuits over unpaid rent for U.S. HQ, U.K. office  (https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/twitter-rent-lawsuits-1.6723946)
Crown Estate starts court proceedings against company in Britain

More landlords are taking Twitter to court over unpaid rent at the social media company's headquarters in San Francisco and its British offices — the latest legal headaches for billionaire owner Elon Musk, who has been trying to slash expenses.

Twitter is facing a lawsuit over allegations it failed to pay rent for its head office, according to California court documents. The owner of its premises in central London, meanwhile, said it's taking the company to court over rental debt.

[more details here (https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/twitter-rent-lawsuits-1.6723946)]
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on January 25, 2023, 05:22:47 PM
Tesla prices lowered.  Model 3 from 46,990 to 43,990.  Model Y from 65,990 to 52,990. :o
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on February 04, 2023, 03:58:36 PM
Twitter wants to charge businesses 1000$/month to keep their gold mark, +50$/month for all affiliated account.

I have no idea if businesses will stay there.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on February 04, 2023, 04:03:37 PM
Quote from: viper37 on February 04, 2023, 03:58:36 PMTwitter wants to charge businesses 1000$/month to keep their gold mark, +50$/month for all affiliated account.

I have no idea if businesses will stay there.

Big ones will, that's a drop in the ocean for them. For smaller ones it will remain to be seen.

FWIW, I always thought that that was an obvious avenue for more revenue for the company, to create some kind of "corporate account" system.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on February 04, 2023, 04:59:31 PM
Quote from: The Larch on February 04, 2023, 04:03:37 PM
Quote from: viper37 on February 04, 2023, 03:58:36 PMTwitter wants to charge businesses 1000$/month to keep their gold mark, +50$/month for all affiliated account.

I have no idea if businesses will stay there.

Big ones will, that's a drop in the ocean for them. For smaller ones it will remain to be seen.

FWIF, I always thought that that was an obvious avenue for more revenue for the company, to create some kind of "corporate account" system.
Yeah, I don't doubt Apple or Intel can pay that easily.

I just wonder about the smalller ones.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on February 04, 2023, 05:13:57 PM
Quote from: viper37 on February 04, 2023, 04:59:31 PM
Quote from: The Larch on February 04, 2023, 04:03:37 PM
Quote from: viper37 on February 04, 2023, 03:58:36 PMTwitter wants to charge businesses 1000$/month to keep their gold mark, +50$/month for all affiliated account.

I have no idea if businesses will stay there.

Big ones will, that's a drop in the ocean for them. For smaller ones it will remain to be seen.

FWIW, I always thought that that was an obvious avenue for more revenue for the company, to create some kind of "corporate account" system.
Yeah, I don't doubt Apple or Intel can pay that easily.

I just wonder about the smalller ones.

A sliding scale depending on company size/revenue would be the best solution. Having Apple and Mom & Pop shop down the corner pay the same is stupid.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on February 04, 2023, 06:35:22 PM
I wonder how many business accounts there at twitter?

According to this (https://www.businessdit.com/how-many-businesses-use-twitter/#:~:text=But%20how%20many%20businesses%20use,Bundesamt%2C%20and%20US%20Census%20Bureau.) there are 118 million business that use Twitter.

If they ALL pay Musk $1000/month that's $1,416,000,000,000 in additional yearly revenue. Jumping from a cost of $0 to $12,000 annually may be a rich for a number of those customers.

Still if they get 100,000 businesses to pay $1,000/month then that's a pretty nice monthly income stream. That'd add $1.2 billion annually which is a pretty good increase on the $4.4 billion they generate now.

It'd be interesting to see what the number of businesses are that use Twitter, and what their sizes are. As Viper says, $1000/month is nothing for major corporations, but it's going to be non-trivial for many other businesses.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on February 04, 2023, 06:47:53 PM
Does anyone know if Facebook charges businesses?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on February 04, 2023, 10:46:02 PM
Quote from: Jacob on February 04, 2023, 06:35:22 PMStill if they get 100,000 businesses to pay $1,000/month then that's a pretty nice monthly income stream. That'd add $1.2 billion annually which is a pretty good increase on the $4.4 billion they generate now.
I don't think they'll get more than a thousand or two businesses to pay that amount of money to be on Twitter.
That's still some good income, but not a quarter more.

Twitter and FB (and others) have a lot of value because they are free.  Now, you have to pay 12k$/year for the main account, 600$/year for any supplemental accounts, I think only the Fortune 1000 companies would be interested in keeping it as it is not much costs for them and they will be gaining/retaining customers through it.

It's not just Twitter that you have to factor in, but once they start paying for Twitter and it seems to work, others will follow.  They might not want to encourage that behaviour, even if they can afford it.

12k$ for Twitter, 12k$ for FB, 12k$ for Reddit, 12k$ for Instagram, it ends up being costly in the end.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on February 04, 2023, 10:46:40 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 04, 2023, 06:47:53 PMDoes anyone know if Facebook charges businesses?
No, they don't.  Their business model is 100% ad based for now*.  I am sure they have toyed with the idea though.



*Technically, Meta is about much more than Facebook and it's supposed to be much more than a social media.  It is investing more and more in AI, like many other tech companies.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on February 05, 2023, 03:12:49 AM
Quote from: Jacob on February 04, 2023, 06:35:22 PMI wonder how many business accounts there at twitter?

According to this (https://www.businessdit.com/how-many-businesses-use-twitter/#:~:text=But%20how%20many%20businesses%20use,Bundesamt%2C%20and%20US%20Census%20Bureau.) there are 118 million business that use Twitter.
Doubtful. The page tries to sell its services to these businesses, so inflating the figure might make the service seem more important. Other pages give figures if 300-350 million total active users for Twitter and I doubt that it is one third businesses. Also the German Statistics Office is given as a source and they certainly do not have figures on business Twitter usage...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on February 05, 2023, 09:26:56 AM
It will be interesting to see what Twitter determines a business is.  A lot of people I follow are academics who write books that they advertise through Twitter.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on February 05, 2023, 10:48:11 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 05, 2023, 09:26:56 AMIt will be interesting to see what Twitter determines a business is.  A lot of people I follow are academics who write books that they advertise through Twitter.


Also whether it applies to nonprofits or public administrations (yes, national governments can afford 12k/year for twitter, but small townships might not).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on February 05, 2023, 11:12:34 AM
Quote from: celedhring on February 05, 2023, 10:48:11 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 05, 2023, 09:26:56 AMIt will be interesting to see what Twitter determines a business is.  A lot of people I follow are academics who write books that they advertise through Twitter.


Also whether it applies to nonprofits or public administrations (yes, national governments can afford 12k/year for twitter, but small townships might not).

I would limit paying accounts to private companies only. The ones that can actually make money out of it. Not to public bodies, NGOs, etc. And maybe "corporate" paying accounts can get a bunch of sub-accounts as part of the package, for different departments, national branches, or whatever.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on February 05, 2023, 02:38:18 PM
I don't like this.
Say you run a decent sized company.

Fair enough to say OK, don't buy a twitter account then you just lose out on the advertising and customer engagement that any reputable company is expected to have there. But it's worse than this. Without you having a twitter account under your company's name it's easy for an immitator to come in and pose as your company, whether for hijinks, promotion of a rival, or outright criminality.

I think it needs a bit more to it. Severely limit use if you don't pay up, and give more features to paid up corporate accounts.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on February 05, 2023, 04:04:07 PM
It's Twitter. It's the gutter of the internet, run by a QAnon nut. Twitter accounts are already a laughing stock.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on February 05, 2023, 11:25:50 PM
You couldn't pay me $1000 a month to post on twitter.

But I think the company can still hold the twitter account, it just won't have that gold check bullshit thing.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on February 08, 2023, 02:18:50 AM
So, among those who apparently received a Twitter pardon is this lovely person: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Arps

He recently posted the street address of an opponent, saying they "can be contacted via mail or friendly 'police knock.'"

He was reported numerous times for doxxing, something that a few weeks ago was near and dear to Elon's heart. Twitter response: "The tweets don't violate Twitter policy, carry on." The tweet is still online.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on February 09, 2023, 02:29:51 AM
How long before twitter sees legal action I wonder.
Musk doesn't seem to get twitter didn't enforce its rules just for fun or to push an ideology.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on February 09, 2023, 02:47:05 AM
Quote from: Josquius on February 09, 2023, 02:29:51 AMHow long before twitter sees legal action I wonder.
Musk doesn't seem to get twitter didn't enforce its rules just for fun or to push an ideology.

Twitter enforced the rule it did because they make a judgement about the relative merits of censoring lies vs. free speech.  There is no law I can think of that applies, no law that requires social media sites to censor untruths.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on February 09, 2023, 03:48:55 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 09, 2023, 02:47:05 AM
Quote from: Josquius on February 09, 2023, 02:29:51 AMHow long before twitter sees legal action I wonder.
Musk doesn't seem to get twitter didn't enforce its rules just for fun or to push an ideology.

Twitter enforced the rule it did because they make a judgement about the relative merits of censoring lies vs. free speech.  There is no law I can think of that applies, no law that requires social media sites to censor untruths.

There's been loads of cases of people running into legal trouble for doxing or even hate speech on twitter
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on February 09, 2023, 03:52:01 AM
Quote from: Josquius on February 09, 2023, 03:48:55 AMThere's been loads of cases of people running into legal trouble for doxing or even hate speech on twitter

The Alex Jones case is the clearest example I can think of.

But we were talking about civil and/or criminal liability for the *platform,* weren't we?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on February 09, 2023, 03:55:28 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 09, 2023, 03:52:01 AM
Quote from: Josquius on February 09, 2023, 03:48:55 AMThere's been loads of cases of people running into legal trouble for doxing or even hate speech on twitter

The Alex Jones case is the clearest example I can think of.

But we were talking about civil and/or criminal liability for the *platform,* weren't we?

Yes.
Up to now twitter has been making serious efforts to enforce the law. Or at least giving the minimum appearance of doing so.
If twitter are publically saying breaking the law on their platform is fine... Well I'm no lawyer but there does seem to be a problem there.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on February 09, 2023, 03:59:55 AM
Quote from: Josquius on February 09, 2023, 03:55:28 AMYes.
Up to now twitter has been making serious efforts to enforce the law. Or at least giving the minimum appearance of doing so.
If twitter are publically saying breaking the law on their platform is fine... Well I'm no lawyer but there does seem to be a problem there.

Dude, that's what I just said.  I don't think Twitter under Jack Dorsey was complying with any law.  They were doing their own thing.  No Musk has bought it and he's doing a different thing.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on February 09, 2023, 06:15:06 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 09, 2023, 03:59:55 AM
Quote from: Josquius on February 09, 2023, 03:55:28 AMYes.
Up to now twitter has been making serious efforts to enforce the law. Or at least giving the minimum appearance of doing so.
If twitter are publically saying breaking the law on their platform is fine... Well I'm no lawyer but there does seem to be a problem there.

Dude, that's what I just said.  I don't think Twitter under Jack Dorsey was complying with any law.  They were doing their own thing.  No Musk has bought it and he's doing a different thing.

They weren't just doing their own thing before though. They were having a go at ensuring no laws were broken on the platform and managing to stay out of legal trouble themselves for it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on February 09, 2023, 03:26:58 PM
Quote from: Syt on February 08, 2023, 02:18:50 AMSo, among those who apparently received a Twitter pardon is this lovely person: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Arps

He recently posted the street address of an opponent, saying they "can be contacted via mail or friendly 'police knock.'"

He was reported numerous times for doxxing, something that a few weeks ago was near and dear to Elon's heart. Twitter response: "The tweets don't violate Twitter policy, carry on." The tweet is still online.
So, basically, Elon Musk is a douche?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on February 09, 2023, 05:33:26 PM
Quote from: Josquius on February 09, 2023, 06:15:06 AMThey weren't just doing their own thing before though. They were having a go at ensuring no laws were broken on the platform and managing to stay out of legal trouble themselves for it.

There is no law against saying Covid is fake or that drinking pool cleaner will cure you of this fake disease.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on February 09, 2023, 05:59:37 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 09, 2023, 05:33:26 PM
Quote from: Josquius on February 09, 2023, 06:15:06 AMThey weren't just doing their own thing before though. They were having a go at ensuring no laws were broken on the platform and managing to stay out of legal trouble themselves for it.

There is no law against saying Covid is fake or that drinking pool cleaner will cure you of this fake disease.
That isn't what we are talking about though. We are talking about sharing someone's address and hinting that it'd be good to commit violence against them.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on February 09, 2023, 06:10:09 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 09, 2023, 05:33:26 PMThere is no law against saying Covid is fake or that drinking pool cleaner will cure you of this fake disease.

Are there laws about doxxing people and accusing them of something, leading to their assassination shortly thereafter?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on February 09, 2023, 06:12:32 PM
Quote from: Josquius on February 09, 2023, 05:59:37 PMThat isn't what we are talking about though. We are talking about sharing someone's address and hinting that it'd be good to commit violence against them.

Gotcha. 

Does the new Elon Twitter allow that?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on February 09, 2023, 06:13:13 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 09, 2023, 06:12:32 PM
Quote from: Josquius on February 09, 2023, 05:59:37 PMThat isn't what we are talking about though. We are talking about sharing someone's address and hinting that it'd be good to commit violence against them.

Gotcha. 

Does the new Elon Twitter allow that?

Seems to.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on February 09, 2023, 06:15:49 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 09, 2023, 06:12:32 PM
Quote from: Josquius on February 09, 2023, 05:59:37 PMThat isn't what we are talking about though. We are talking about sharing someone's address and hinting that it'd be good to commit violence against them.

Gotcha. 

Does the new Elon Twitter allow that?

That's what they're being sued for allowing. So apparently, yes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on February 09, 2023, 06:22:32 PM
Quote from: Jacob on February 09, 2023, 06:10:09 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 09, 2023, 05:33:26 PMThere is no law against saying Covid is fake or that drinking pool cleaner will cure you of this fake disease.

Are there laws about doxxing people and accusing them of something, leading to their assassination shortly thereafter?

Good question.  Are there laws against doxxing?  Are there laws against accusing people of things?  Incitement to violence is certainly against the law in many/most/all jurisdictions, but that requires more than just accusing people of something.

I don't know for sure what the law says about that even in my own locality, let alone elsewhere.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on February 09, 2023, 06:23:08 PM
Elon Musk, Boss of the year.

QuoteElon Musk's reach on Twitter is dropping — he just fired a top engineer over it

For weeks now, Elon Musk has been preoccupied with worries about how many people are seeing his tweets. Last week, the Twitter CEO took his Twitter account private for a day to test whether that might boost the size of his audience. The move came after several prominent right-wing accounts that Musk interacts with complained that recent changes to Twitter had reduced their reach.

On Tuesday, Musk gathered a group of engineers and advisors into a room at Twitter's headquarters looking for answers. Why are his engagement numbers tanking?

"This is ridiculous," he said, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the meeting. "I have more than 100 million followers, and I'm only getting tens of thousands of impressions."

One of the company's two remaining principal engineers offered a possible explanation for Musk's declining reach: just under a year after the Tesla CEO made his surprise offer to buy Twitter for $44 billion, public interest in his antics is waning.

Employees showed Musk internal data regarding engagement with his account along with a Google Trends chart. Last April, they told him, Musk was at "peak" popularity in search rankings, indicated by a score of "100." Today, he's at a score of nine. Engineers had previously investigated whether Musk's reach had somehow been artificially restricted but found no evidence that the algorithm was biased against him.

Musk did not take the news well.

"You're fired, you're fired," Musk told the engineer. (Platformer is withholding the engineer's name in light of the harassment Musk has directed at former Twitter employees.)

Dissatisfied with the work of engineers so far, Musk has instructed employees to track how many times each of his tweets are recommended, according to one current worker.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on February 09, 2023, 06:36:57 PM
Not only is Musk a douche, he's also a prat.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on February 09, 2023, 06:39:37 PM
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.  I am waiting to hear how Musk killed his father and married his mother, not knowing who Musk actually is.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on February 09, 2023, 06:42:40 PM
Quote from: The Larch on February 09, 2023, 06:23:08 PMElon Musk, Boss of the year.

QuoteElon Musk's reach on Twitter is dropping — he just fired a top engineer over it

.....snip.....

Dissatisfied with the work of engineers so far, Musk has instructed employees to track how many times each of his tweets are recommended, according to one current worker.

So he shares Trump's obsession with ratings; I wonder what other characteristics they have in common?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on February 09, 2023, 06:46:20 PM
Is there a way to fast-track past the mad stage?  I'm all for prolonging the torture as a general concept, but in this case too many innocents are along for the ride.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on February 09, 2023, 06:51:22 PM
Quote from: DGuller on February 09, 2023, 06:46:20 PMIs there a way to fast-track past the mad stage?  I'm all for prolonging the torture as a general concept, but in this case too many innocents are along for the ride.

Straight to the bullet in the bunker.  Why wait?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tonitrus on February 09, 2023, 10:07:01 PM
Musk is probably more "isolated in a Vegas hotel" mad than "isolated in a Fuhrer bunker" mad.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on February 11, 2023, 05:54:36 AM
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1624097556119818240

(https://i.postimg.cc/vm8GFfr9/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on February 11, 2023, 05:37:15 PM
Kind of an ironic first post there. Who the hell is ria.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on February 15, 2023, 04:55:53 PM
It's getting super-annoying that Elon is now apparently super-boosting his own tweets so everyone can see them.

More so because his tweets are invariably so inane.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on February 15, 2023, 05:27:48 PM
Quote from: Barrister on February 15, 2023, 04:55:53 PMIt's getting super-annoying that Elon is now apparently super-boosting his own tweets so everyone can see them.

More so because his tweets are invariably so inane.

I guess he paid $44 billion to turn Twitter into his personal captive audience.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on February 16, 2023, 06:55:21 AM
So Elon is jealous that the president of the US gets more attention than him? That's a high hurdle...

QuoteElon Musk reportedly forced Twitter algorithm to boost his tweets after Super Bowl flop
A tweet from Joe Biden got triple the impressions than Musk's game time post, sending engineers scrambling to boost their boss

Twitter chief executive Elon Musk rallied a team of roughly 80 engineers to reconfigure the platform's algorithm so his tweets would be more widely viewed, tech news site Platformer has reported.

A disgruntled Musk called for an emergency effort after a tweet he sent during Sunday's Super Bowl game failed to achieve as much engagement as a tweet from Joe Biden, interviews and internal documents reviewed by Platformer have revealed.

The effort was sparked when a tweet from the president, who has 37m followers, generated nearly 29m impressions while a similar tweet from Musk – who has 128m followers – generated little more than 9.1m impressions.

A Twitter employee and cousin of Elon Musk, James Musk, posted urgently in the company Slack at 2.30am the following Monday morning, asking all employees who can code to participate. "Any people who can make dashboards and write software please can you help solve this problem," he wrote. "This is high urgency."

Engineers then deployed a new algorithm that artificially inflated Musk's tweets by a factor of 1,000, ensuring that more than 90% of Musk's 128.9m followers see them. Many who do not follow Musk are also being served his tweets in their feed through the "For you" tab of the app's home page, which curates tweets from a number of accounts, including those a user is not following.

Musk seemed to publicly confirm the move, in his own way, posting a meme about forcing followers to read his tweets. He also told followers to "stay tuned" while Twitter makes adjustments to the algorithm.

The decision to devote internal resources to promoting his own tweets comes amid ongoing reports about Musk's obsession with his own impressions on the platform. Last week, a report from Platformer also revealed Musk had fired a principal engineer at Twitter who told him views on his tweets had decreased organically, with interest in the erratic CEO waning. Users have complained since Twitter made its "For you" page the default feed on the platform in January that Musk's tweets were appearing more frequently.

Musk, who purchased Twitter in October 2022 for $44bn, has made a number of additional changes to the platform in the intervening months, allowing the return of previously banned accounts like that of Donald Trump, changing the process for Twitter verification, and revoking free access to the platform's API, or application programming interface.

Amid ongoing criticisms of his decisions as chief executive, Musk has promised to step down and find a replacement as soon as later this year. Current employees have described a harrowing environment at the company, which laid off nearly half its workforce in November 2022. At the time, Musk defended the cuts and other cost-cutting measures, stating the company was losing $4m per day.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on February 16, 2023, 01:34:33 PM
 :lmfao: He is the very definition of a narcissist.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on February 19, 2023, 07:55:08 PM
Meta wants to start charging verified accounts, just like Twitter.
12$/months.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/19/23606268/meta-instagram-facebook-test-paid-verification

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on February 19, 2023, 08:26:39 PM
It's a good idea. They are increasingly cut off from the data tit by legislation from all over the world. Especially the EU rules that has far reaching regulatory capture.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on February 19, 2023, 09:54:06 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on February 19, 2023, 08:26:39 PMIt's a good idea. They are increasingly cut off from the data tit by legislation from all over the world. Especially the EU rules that has far reaching regulatory capture.
Ish.

We've yet to really see the impact of that on Facebook. GDPR came into effect in 2018. There's been an investigation by the Irish regulator (Facebook's European regulator). Facebook made an utterly doomed argument about how they use data but the other European regulators have forced the Irish one to issue a decent fine and order Facebook to stop it - but it's on one specific point. The other European regulators also instructed the Irish regulator to look into Facebook's wider data practice; the Irish regulator has asserted that they have no basis for that investigation and are challenging the ability to be instructed in that way in the CJEU. That'll take at least another 18 months to 2 years. They should have an impact and in the long term they might, but Facebook have a very supportive regulator in their corner who is going to bat for them (and who also regulates Apple and Google, while Amazon are regulated by Luxembourg).

The bigger impact in terms of their ad revenue and use of data has been Apple's privacy rules (like the pop up about tracking across apps). My understanding is acceptance on that is about 20-30% while cookie banners on web (one part of European law) is over 70%. I think Facebook have called out the fact that their entire business model for people on iOS devices is fucked in their earnings call a while ago. Of course Apple's privacy rules mean Apple is creating a very nice walled garden where it takes a cut at every point.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on February 21, 2023, 12:39:00 AM
The Irish being the lackeys of American corporate interests is one of the more disappointing aspects of the EU. Although when it comes to taxation, the Dutch are apparently even worse.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on February 21, 2023, 09:21:37 AM
Quote from: Zanza on February 21, 2023, 12:39:00 AMThe Irish being the lackeys of American corporate interests is one of the more disappointing aspects of the EU. Although when it comes to taxation, the Dutch are apparently even worse.
I suppose the point is they're not American corporate interests, but Irish. Those companies employ many people, bring a lot of money and investment into Ireland and genuinely have big bases there (under EU law they need to - an address isn't enough to get regulated solely by that member state).

Agree on the Dutch and Luxembourgish in terms of tax but the Irish are still pretty bad. Irish GDP is so shaped by international companies transferring profits there that GDP isn't a reliable figure - whenever you talk about Ireland you normally use GNP - to the extent that it's now showing up in Eurostat statistics for the Eurozone - especially since the pandemic when Irish GDP has grown by 30% (but the Irish economy and well-being of the population hasn't):
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fny4iCtWAAEVIw6?format=png&name=small)

I think they probably need to start using GNP for Ireland or excluding them from the figures when it's becoming noticeable like that. Ireland should not be that visible on Eurozone stats.

To defend Ireland a bit though, in tech it's not just them. The French investigated Criteo which is a huge player in the adtech world - they are one of the companies that broadcast our personal data out into the world. They're a French company and a bit of a national champion for the tech sector. They were given some instructions on how to correct what they do and a very minimal fine. There's no doubt from anyone I've spoken to that if it was an American company the French regulator would've been pushing for many multiples of that fine. I think it's a wider problem of industries capturing regulators and, as I say, from an Irish perspective Facebook, Google etc are Irish national champions too.

I've been reading Empire of Pain and it's part of what makes me wonder about how we tolerate that base layer of corruption in our societies. It describes for example lawyers going from law firms to regulators to working for companies they previously regulated (normally after a year off in between) and vice versa. All of that is absolutely normal everywhere. Law firms, consultants and others will send people on secondment to regulators and/or clients where they'll get good contacts and legitimately better understand them; from the regulators' perspective they need to understand what's going on in the private sector. But ultimately I think the play there is basically corruption. It's BAU for many industries and professions and you almost don't notice until you see it laid out like in Empire of Pain and the consequences are the opioid epidemic.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on February 24, 2023, 01:38:15 PM
Elon now has opinions on history as well.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fpm2OI-WYAElTA5?format=jpg&name=small)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on February 24, 2023, 01:41:10 PM
I look forward to a historian over analysing and tearing that apart.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: frunk on February 24, 2023, 02:30:39 PM
What did Rome win?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on February 24, 2023, 02:35:42 PM
Quote from: frunk on February 24, 2023, 02:30:39 PMWhat did Rome win?

The match against RB Salzburg. 2-0
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on February 24, 2023, 02:41:28 PM
It's all well and good until German efficiency overwhelmed Roman engineering.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on February 24, 2023, 02:59:48 PM
Quote from: HVC on February 24, 2023, 02:41:28 PMIt's all well and good until German efficiency overwhelmed Roman engineering.

You know what really did the Roman Empire in? Tax dodging by the rich elites.  :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on February 24, 2023, 03:16:31 PM
Quote from: The Larch on February 24, 2023, 02:59:48 PM
Quote from: HVC on February 24, 2023, 02:41:28 PMIt's all well and good until German efficiency overwhelmed Roman engineering.

You know what really did the Roman Empire in? Tax dodging by the rich elites.  :P

 :D
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on February 24, 2023, 11:07:01 PM
QuoteThe rise of a city, which swelled into an empire, may deserve, as a singular prodigy, the reflection of a philosophic mind. But the decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate use of social media. Unconstrained tweeting ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of trolling; and as soon as time or accident had removed the supports of screen time, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long. The victorious legions, who, in distant wars, acquired the vices of mobile smartphones, first oppressed the dignity of felines, and afterwards violated the majesty of Godwin. The emperors, anxious for their personal safety and the public peace, were reduced to the base expedient of Covfefe; the vigor of content moderation was relaxed, and finally dissolved, by the partial institutions of the Edgelords; and the Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of incels.

Edward Gibbon
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on February 25, 2023, 01:43:50 AM
:lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on February 25, 2023, 03:06:13 AM
 :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on February 25, 2023, 02:53:56 PM
Very nice.  :)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on February 27, 2023, 12:10:18 PM
Brilliant JR - Post of the month!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on February 28, 2023, 07:29:32 AM
We know who to blame when Skynet ineviably arises from this.

QuoteFighting 'Woke AI,' Musk Recruits Team to Develop OpenAI Rival

Elon Musk has approached artificial intelligence researchers in recent weeks about forming a new research lab to develop an alternative to ChatGPT, the high-profile chatbot made by the startup OpenAI, according to two people with direct knowledge of the effort and a third person briefed on the conversations.

In recent months Musk has repeatedly criticized OpenAI for installing safeguards that prevent ChatGPT from producing text that might offend users. Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but has since cut ties with the startup, suggested last year that OpenAI's technology was an example of "training AI to be woke." His comments imply that a rival chatbot would have fewer restrictions on divisive subjects compared to ChatGPT and a related chatbot Microsoft recently launched.

To spearhead the effort, Musk has been recruiting Igor Babuschkin, a researcher who recently left Alphabet's DeepMind AI unit and specializes in the kind of machine-learning models that power chatbots like ChatGPT. In an interview, Babuschkin said building a chatbot with fewer content safeguards is not Musk's objective.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on February 28, 2023, 08:27:53 AM
Oh dear
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on February 28, 2023, 10:31:10 AM
Why, though? If we're looking for that kind of functionality, we can just read Musk's tweets.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on February 28, 2023, 10:32:19 AM
Quote from: Jacob on February 28, 2023, 10:31:10 AMWhy, though? If we're looking for that kind of functionality, we can just read Musk's tweets.

Neither artifical nor intelligent.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on February 28, 2023, 11:11:10 AM
That's what the internet needs: racist AI.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on March 07, 2023, 07:23:58 PM
Elon Musk presents his candidacy for Boss of the Year, 2023 edition, by firing and mocking a high ranking handicapped employee with a massive severance package.

QuoteWorker asks Elon Musk on Twitter: Have I been fired?

A Twitter employee has appealed to Elon Musk on the platform to ask whether he had been sacked.

In a tweet to the firm's chief executive, Halli Thorleifsson said: "Your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am employed or not".

Mr Musk responded by asking: "What work have you been doing?"

Mr Thorleifsson told the BBC that nine days after being frozen out of Twitter's accounts he did not know whether he had been fired or not.

After a series of follow up questions and answers with Mr Musk, that read like a live interview for his job, Mr Thorleifsson said he received an email confirming that he had been sacked.

Twitter did not immediately respond to the BBC's request for comment.

Mr Thorleifsson, 45, was a senior director in product design for Twitter. He told the BBC the ambiguity around his job was "strange" and "extremely stressful".

"I opened my computer on Sunday morning nine days ago and saw that the screen was grey and locked, indicating that I had been locked out of my Twitter accounts", he said.

"After a few days had passed I started reaching out to people, including Elon and the head of HR to ask about my situation.

"The head of HR has since twice emailed me and has not been able to answer whether or not I am an employee at Twitter."

Frustrated, he tweeted his top boss, Elon Musk.

QuoteHalli@iamharaldur

Dear @elonmusk  👋

9 days ago the access to my work computer was cut, along with about 200 other Twitter employees.

However your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am an employee or not. You've not answered my emails.

Maybe if enough people retweet you'll answer me here?

"Maybe if enough people retweet you'll answer me here", Mr Thorleifsson said.

Mr Musk responded:

QuoteElon Musk @elonmusk

What work have you been doing?

After several follow up questions Mr Thorleifsson supplied a list of things he had done at the company. The exchange ended with Mr Musk posting two laughing emojis.

Shortly after that exchange Mr Thorleifsson said that Twitter's Human Resources department had contacted him and said that he had been fired.

The exchange was widely shared on Twitter, with Mr Musk wading in with some replies.

He went on to further criticise Mr Thorleifsson saying: "The reality is that this guy (who is independently wealthy) did no actual work, claimed as his excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from typing, yet was simultaneously tweeting up a storm.

"Can't say I have a lot of respect for that."

The Iceland-based entrepreneur had sold his company, Ueno, a creative design agency, to Twitter in early 2021 - after founding the firm in Reykjavik in 2014.

As part of the acquisition he became a full-time employee at Twitter.

"I decided to sell for a few reasons but one of them is that I have muscular dystrophy and my body is slowly but surely failing me," he told the BBC.

"I have a few good work years left in me so this was a way to wrap up my company, and set up myself and my family for years when I won't be able to do as much."


Mr Thorleifsson is worried that Mr Musk will not honour the contract he signed with Twitter when he sold them his company.

"This is extremely stressful. This is my retirement fund, a way to take care of myself and my family as my disease progresses. Having the richest man in the world on the other end of this, potentially refusing to stand by contracts is not easy for me to accept," he said.

Last month, Elon Musk appeared to fire another 200 Twitter employees. It means that Twitter now has just over 2,000 workers - down from approximately 7,500 in October.

"Companies let people go, that's within their rights," Mr Thorleifsson said. "They usually tell people about it but that's seemingly the optional part at Twitter now".
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on March 07, 2023, 07:30:59 PM
It also seems that Musk not only thinks that rent contracts don't apply to him, but neither do Amazon's cloud services. Bezos disagreed with that.

QuoteTwitter refused to pay AWS bill, so Amazon refused to pay for ads
Musk's Twitter is still $70m behind on payments

Since Elon Musk acquired the company, Twitter has begun to not pay landlords, cleaners, and software companies for services rendered.

Now, The Information reports that the company has for months refused to pay its Amazon Web Services bills, despite using the cloud service for key aspects of the social media platform.

This lack of payment caused Amazon to threaten retaliation, with the corporation saying that it would not pay for the advertising it runs on Twitter - thought to be around $1 million in the first quarter for retail, and more when Amazon Studios is taken into account. This may have had some impact, with Twitter paying $10m in AWS costs a few weeks ago.

But The Information reports that there is at least $70 million still outstanding, and AWS is not willing to renegotiate the five-and-a-half year contract it signed with Twitter in 2020.

That contract required Twitter to pay $510m over that period. It was signed when Twitter was expecting to move its main timeline over to AWS, but that never occurred (instead it hosts Twitter Spaces and other services), meaning that Twitter is not fully making use of the contract.

Twitter uses Google Cloud to a greater degree, with its own five-year contract worth $1bn. While Twitter is also looking to reduce its Google Cloud costs, Twitter is up to date on payments - perhaps because it is a larger advertiser, and pays to license Twitter's data so that it shows up in Google Search.

Google has not agreed to any contract renegotiations.

At the same time, Musk has closed one of Twitter's three US data centers, cut back on server capacity, and fired IT and software workers that kept the service online. It has experienced a number of major outages since he took over.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on March 07, 2023, 08:28:04 PM
I'm starting to wonder if Musk is just an even luckier version of Trump.  There are probably hundreds of people out there just like them who have predictably blown up and no one who knows them suspects that any other outcome was even possible for them.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on March 08, 2023, 02:16:31 AM
So apparently Musk "apologized" to Haraldur Þorleifsson whom he "fired" and mocked. That may or may not be because Twitter bought Þorleifsson's company a year or two ago and apparently will have to pay him about $100 million or so if terminated early and without grounds.

https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/1633261069534724096/photo/2
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on March 08, 2023, 02:37:21 AM
Here's  Þorleifsson's response to Musk (https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1633082707835080705?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1633082707835080705%7Ctwgr%5E9bef55d5065344d09d3071095fd05dd7f6d04b53%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cbc.ca%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Fmusk-twitter-fired-worker-apology-1.6771404). It's a really enjoyable read:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on March 08, 2023, 03:54:56 AM
Quote from: Jacob on March 08, 2023, 02:16:31 AMSo apparently Musk "apologized" to Haraldur Þorleifsson whom he "fired" and mocked. That may or may not be because Twitter bought Þorleifsson's company a year or two ago and apparently will have to pay him about $100 million or so if terminated early and without grounds.

https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/1633261069534724096/photo/2

Yeah what a pitiful apology.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on March 08, 2023, 04:07:56 AM
Quote from: Jacob on March 08, 2023, 02:37:21 AMHere's  Þorleifsson's response to Musk (https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1633082707835080705?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1633082707835080705%7Ctwgr%5E9bef55d5065344d09d3071095fd05dd7f6d04b53%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cbc.ca%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Fmusk-twitter-fired-worker-apology-1.6771404). It's a really enjoyable read:

Has Musk inherited an emerald mine? I thought it was his dad's, but I haven't paid much attention.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on March 08, 2023, 04:19:37 AM
I notice for the first time "context" attached to musks tweet. Is that new?
Doubtless open for abuse but interesting.

Love the bit in the reply about his family. "I have two kids. I see them every day. I recommend that." :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on March 08, 2023, 04:48:20 AM
Not funny is the Muskites still sucking down Elon's shit in replies to those tweets.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on March 08, 2023, 05:50:09 AM
I think that exchange is a good example for the thread title. What a douche.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on March 16, 2023, 11:13:29 AM
So Twitter always seemed to work the same way - your feed would be filled with posts either from people you followed, or at least posts that people you follow liked, or from people who are followed by people you follow.  PLus ads of course, but those were labeled.

But now I get all kinds of posts from people I have no idea who they are or why they're showing up in my feed.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on March 16, 2023, 11:16:33 AM
That's because Twitter has ASCENDED by sheer Muskian will.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Habbaku on March 16, 2023, 11:42:53 AM
Quote from: Barrister on March 16, 2023, 11:13:29 AMSo Twitter always seemed to work the same way - your feed would be filled with posts either from people you followed, or at least posts that people you follow liked, or from people who are followed by people you follow.  PLus ads of course, but those were labeled.

But now I get all kinds of posts from people I have no idea who they are or why they're showing up in my feed.

Switch to your "Following" tab instead of "For You". The change was seemingly made at random and defaulted everyone to "For You".
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on March 16, 2023, 12:04:48 PM
Quote from: Habbaku on March 16, 2023, 11:42:53 AMSwitch to your "Following" tab instead of "For You". The change was seemingly made at random and defaulted everyone to "For You".
Yeah - that pre-dates Musk. But I think he's increased the rate it switches back to "For You" which is very annoying <_<
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on March 28, 2023, 01:45:40 AM
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FsSYeIVXwAAZly_?format=jpg&name=medium)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on March 28, 2023, 03:16:04 AM
Aka please please give me money.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on March 28, 2023, 12:05:11 PM
Twitter source code (https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/27/tech/twitter-source-code-leaked/index.html) was leaked online last year, after Musk first massive layouts.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on March 30, 2023, 02:20:29 PM
A bunch of newspapers are announcing that they won't be paying for the blue check since "verification no longer establishes authority or credibility."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on March 30, 2023, 02:26:09 PM
He took a struggling tech company and made it a failing tech company. I guess that's a skill.


He's also butt hurt over ChatGPT. As I understand it he left the company in a huff because they wouldn't let him run it a few years ago.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on April 01, 2023, 06:07:26 AM
https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/twitter-business-monthly-verified-status-fee-exempt-1235569966/

QuoteTwitter Will Exempt 10,000 Most-Followed Companies and Organizations From $1,000 Monthly Verified-Status Charge: Report

Elon Musk-owned Twitter says that as of Saturday, April 1, it will begin removing "legacy" verified badges from individuals and organizations approved under the company's previous criteria. Going forward, only paying customers will be granted the verified check-marks, which are now blue for individuals, gold for brands and companies, and gray for governmental organizations.

Twitter says it will charge businesses and organizations $1,000 per month (in the U.S.), including nonprofits and governments, to retain their verified status. In addition, the company will levy a $50 monthly charge for each affiliate subaccount (i.e., employees, brands or divisions).

But apparently not all organizations will have to pay Musk for the privilege. Twitter will waive the $1,000 monthly fee for its 500 largest advertising clients and for the 10,000 most-followed brands, companies and organizations that have been previously verified, the New York Times reported, citing an internal Twitter document.

The most-followed companies, brands and organizations on Twitter include @Twitter itself, as well as YouTube, NASA, CNN, ESPN, the New York Times, the NBA and the BBC's breaking news account. (Variety's Twitter account, with 2.9 million followers, currently ranks as the 2,739th most-followed account on the platform, per analytics firm SocialBlade.)

A request for comment sent to Twitter's PR account returned an automated reply with a poop emoji (a change Musk announced last week). Musk has previously blasted Twitter's previous system of verification as "corrupt and nonsensical."

SEE ALSO: Elon Musk, After Buying Twitter, Is Now Twitter's Most-Followed User

On Thursday, Musk quote-tweeted the Twitter @verified account's post about the Verified Organizations subscription plan, saying, "Important to establish whether someone actually belongs to an organization or not so as to avoid impersonation." According to the Twitter post, "We've already seen organizations, including sports teams, news organizations, financial firms, Fortune 500 companies and nonprofits join Verified Organizations and list their affiliated accounts publicly on their profiles."

After William Shatner complained about Twitter's plan to rescind legacy blue check-marks unless users pay for them, Musk responded, "It's more about treating everyone equally," Musk tweeted Sunday evening in replying to Shatner. "There shouldn't be a different standard for celebrities imo." Last fall, after Stephen King also griped about Twitter's switch to paid verification, Musk said, "We need to pay the bills somehow!"

The Times' report published Thursday focused on Musk's alleged attempt to meet with Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan to discuss the agency's investigation into Twitter's privacy and data-security practices. According to the report, Musk's request to meet with Khan "was rebuffed." The Times article noted that it's unusual for CEOs of companies being investigated by the FTC to meet with any of its commissioners.

Guess Elon blinked first. :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on April 04, 2023, 07:19:12 AM
Sooo.... Seems he missed April fools day and changed the twitter logo for.... Doge.
Appears on the loading screen and everything.
Hilarious :mellow:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on April 04, 2023, 08:25:30 PM
Only 116 000 users paid for the blue check mark (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-04/musk-s-month-pushing-twitter-blue-failed-to-win-many-subscribers?leadSource=reddit_wall)

Well, that's the result of the first month.  Not many enthusiasts.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on April 06, 2023, 01:18:42 PM
Elon is labeling NPR now as US state-affiliated media, like Russian or Chinese sites:

(https://i.postimg.cc/qMpZ4KdN/image.png)

https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/state-affiliated

QuoteLabels on government accounts provide additional context for accounts heavily engaged in geopolitics and diplomacy.

Labels on state-affiliated accounts provide additional context about accounts that are controlled by certain official representatives of governments, state-affiliated media entities and individuals associated with those entities.

The label appears on the profile page of the relevant Twitter account and on the Tweets sent by and shared from these accounts. Labels contain information about the country the account is affiliated with and whether it is operated by a government representative or state-affiliated media entity.

Additionally, these labels include a small icon of a flag to signal the account's status as a government account and of a podium for state-affiliated media.

We plan to expand labels to additional countries over time.

How government accounts are defined

Our focus is on senior officials and entities that are the official voice of the nation state abroad, specifically accounts of key government officials, including foreign ministers, institutional entities, official spokespeople, and key diplomatic leaders. Where accounts do not play a role as a geopolitical or official Government communication channel, we will not label the account.

Additionally, labels will distinguish between individual government accounts and institutional government accounts.

How state-affiliated media accounts are defined

State-affiliated media is defined as outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution. Accounts belonging to state-affiliated media entities, their editors-in-chief, and/or their prominent staff may be labeled.

State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy.*


Do these labels limit functionality?

In the case of state-affiliated media entities, Twitter will not recommend or amplify accounts or their Tweets with these labels to people. In limited circumstances where there is heightened risk for harm, including situations where governments block access to information on the internet in the context of an armed conflict, Twitter will also not recommend or amplify certain government accounts or their Tweets with these labels to people.

Our approach to state-affiliated media in Tweets

We will also add labels to Tweets that share links to state-affiliated media websites and will not recommend or amplify these Tweets to people.


*this page previously included the NPR in the noted exceptions

Various outlets tried to contact Twitter, but the press contact email is still set to auto-reply with a poop emoji.  :rolleyes:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on April 06, 2023, 01:51:24 PM
NPR isn't tied to the US Government  :huh:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 06, 2023, 01:52:26 PM
/CDM/ it's cute that you think facts matter /CDM/
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on April 06, 2023, 02:06:11 PM
Quote from: celedhring on April 06, 2023, 01:51:24 PMNPR isn't tied to the US Government  :huh:

Freedom of speech means freedom to lie damn you. Why are you so against freedom?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on April 06, 2023, 02:54:36 PM
Quote from: Syt on April 06, 2023, 01:18:42 PM*this page previously included the NPR in the noted exceptions

Various outlets tried to contact Twitter, but the press contact email is still set to auto-reply with a poop emoji.  :rolleyes:

Jeez. Is Musk going mad? Has he stopped caring? Does he think this is playing well somehow?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on April 06, 2023, 04:34:09 PM
Still think Musk had half a good idea on Twitter - but Substack had already got there first and have built/are building that product. New product by them:
QuoteHamish McKenzie
@hamishmckenzie
Today we're announcing Substack Notes.

Notes lets writers publish short-form posts and recommend almost anything: quotes, links, images, and comments.

It's coming soon and will look like this
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fs9PJoaXoAIKRfb?format=jpg&name=small)

Substack Notes may look like familiar social media feeds. But the biggest difference is one you can't see. It's based on subscriptions instead of ads.

It's social media with a heart transplant.

It's a subscription network.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fs9PXcqXwAARIAc?format=jpg&name=small)
While attention is the lifeblood of ad-based social media, a subscription network's lifeblood is the money that gets paid to writers and creators.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fs9Pg8qWAAIQ4ip?format=jpg&name=small)
A subscription network gives you more control.

Substack Notes will let you set the terms of engagement so that it's easy to keep trolls out and even easier to let valuable contributors in.
Notes will be launching soon to everyone. It'll be an early version, so we'll be looking for your feedback.

Let's build a new economic engine for culture together.
https://on.substack.com/p/introducing-notes

Edit: Also I've said how the thing that helps keep Twitter going is that it's best for watching events happen - it's still the best social media for finding people you fid interesting and getting their takes on things as they happen.

My suspicion is the next step for Substack will be talking to media companies - at the minute it's basicaly people's private income streams (like Patreon) but you can easily see how you tie this in with any news subscriptions you have. News publishers are all focused on their own newsletters but they're free and you could republish here, plus you are "subscribed" to whichever of their journalists you're interested in.

I work at a media company and I remember being on a call to discuss if we wanted to get involved in Twitter's subscription models - and the thing we couldn't work out was what the upside was for a publisher. I think I can see the shape of it here with Substack.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 06, 2023, 06:47:26 PM
That sounds good to me... though how close is substack to get into a position to replicate the crucial "news from the streets of popular uprising" or "holy shit, Russia is invading Ukraine - what is happening" role that Twitter has historically filled.?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on April 06, 2023, 07:14:04 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 06, 2023, 06:47:26 PMThat sounds good to me... though how close is substack to get into a position to replicate the crucial "news from the streets of popular uprising" or "holy shit, Russia is invading Ukraine - what is happening" role that Twitter has historically filled.?
It's not anywhere near there yet.

Their business model at the minute is paid for newsletters. So if you've signed for a few newsletters you'd get that writers' Notes too - but many writers a free newsletter that's, say, monthly. I imagine they'd generally roll in their Notes into the free version.

But the bit I think that's interesting and could be how Twitter replaces it is I can see the appeal for publishers to do deals with Substack - we're nowhere near there yet. Looking at those Substack examples - I could see almost specific news channels from a publisher, maybe you need a subscription or a registration, and it's almost a liveblog with notes from all of the journalists covering the story. Substack get a cut either maybe from a subscription or as a platform (a bit like YouTube) based on volume.

From a user perspective it'll depend how they do it but ideally you could have say uprising in Cairo (how I got into Twitter), you subscribe to the free bit of various journalists and writers on the Middle East and you could probably search by tag or put them into a specific channel on that topic. It may not happen and could go in a totally different direction. But I think there's something there and I think it's something news publishers could get comfortable with because any deal with Substack is basically to do with subscriptions and rights licensing which is almost every publisher's bread and butter.

Twitter might still be the place for chats among networks or broadcasting x article, or maybe x Substack channel (although I see that Twitter have today turned off Substack embeds :lol:).

But it feels to me like something that could work better (from a publisher's business perspective as much as anything else), than the Facebook/Google/Twitter. They use your content to get more data on a reader of your content often on their platform - and now they get a bigger cut of the ads revenue. Similarly Twitter wanted to work with publishers on their subscription model and I never understood what the supposed upside was - after becoming a very lucrative middle man in publishers' advertising they then wanted to get people to subscribe to them to access content instead of subscribing to the people producing it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on April 07, 2023, 07:18:28 AM
The problem is marketing. Substack isn't the household name twitter is.
Very likely twitter could just copy wholesale and get all the benefits from this invention.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on April 07, 2023, 07:30:13 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 07, 2023, 07:18:28 AMThe problem is marketing. Substack isn't the household name twitter is.
Very likely twitter could just copy wholesale and get all the benefits from this invention.

Yep.

But then I've always thought of substack as 'oh you want me to pay for some of your blog? pass.' -_-
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on April 07, 2023, 07:52:04 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 07, 2023, 07:18:28 AMThe problem is marketing. Substack isn't the household name twitter is.
For now. But it's only five years old

QuoteVery likely twitter could just copy wholesale and get all the benefits from this invention.
I don't think they can.

I'm sure they could technically and in some ways already have tried, but I think Musk's whole plans have demonstrated the challenge of moving Twitter to a subscription model. It's really difficult to shift behaviour for people used to getting something for free (see the media in general) and they're buit to be big which subscription revenues won't support.

But I think for news organisations Substack is a social media company that sits more comfortably with their business model so I think they'll look to do something with it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on April 07, 2023, 08:06:13 PM
So after turning off embeds, Twitter are now flagging Substack urls as unsafe (just tried and got the same message):
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FtJrl-RWwAAVzcz?format=jpg&name=small)

Such free speech.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on April 08, 2023, 06:17:59 AM
What's the floor on Elon's fan base? How many more people can he piss off? He's no Trump who can rely on 30% of Americans being there for him even if he eats a baby on live TV.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on April 08, 2023, 06:33:19 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on April 08, 2023, 06:17:59 AMWhat's the floor on Elon's fan base? How many more people can he piss off? He's no Trump who can rely on 30% of Americans being there for him even if he eats a baby on live TV.

Are you sure about that? I mean, impressionable submissive men on a worldwide scale must be a sizeable demographic.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on April 08, 2023, 09:15:43 AM
Quote from: Tamas on April 08, 2023, 06:33:19 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on April 08, 2023, 06:17:59 AMWhat's the floor on Elon's fan base? How many more people can he piss off? He's no Trump who can rely on 30% of Americans being there for him even if he eats a baby on live TV.

Are you sure about that? I mean, impressionable submissive men on a worldwide scale must be a sizeable demographic.

Basement incels are nowhere near the 30% or so of hardcore Trumpers.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on April 08, 2023, 09:48:07 AM
In any case, I read that Twitter has unblocked Kremlin accounts and they are back to among recommended official sources.

I know I am being racist, but are we really surprised that a guy from a rich white South African family is turning out to be a right wing twat?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on April 10, 2023, 01:19:25 AM
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FtVFn1SaQAASiiu?format=jpg&name=large)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on April 10, 2023, 02:06:43 AM
Spectacular billionaire on billionaire violence.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FtTF0GqWAAMEOQN?format=jpg&name=medium)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on April 10, 2023, 03:59:07 AM
Quote from: Syt on April 10, 2023, 01:19:25 AM(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FtVFn1SaQAASiiu?format=jpg&name=large)

I sometimes wonder if this guy is still 12 mentally.

Also, is he paying his rental bills again or is still delinquent on them?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on April 10, 2023, 05:06:37 AM
Is this another thing where a randomer said wouldn't it be cool if... and he went lol yeah?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 10, 2023, 05:14:55 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 10, 2023, 05:06:37 AMIs this another thing where a randomer said wouldn't it be cool if... and he went lol yeah?

It's consistent with naming his first three Tesla models S, E, 3.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on April 10, 2023, 07:18:23 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 10, 2023, 05:14:55 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 10, 2023, 05:06:37 AMIs this another thing where a randomer said wouldn't it be cool if... and he went lol yeah?

It's consistent with naming his first three Tesla models S, E, 3.
4 of them: S, E , 3, Y.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on April 10, 2023, 07:30:00 AM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on April 10, 2023, 07:18:23 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 10, 2023, 05:14:55 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 10, 2023, 05:06:37 AMIs this another thing where a randomer said wouldn't it be cool if... and he went lol yeah?

It's consistent with naming his first three Tesla models S, E, 3.
4 of them: S, E , 3, Y.

S, 3, X, Y
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on April 10, 2023, 08:13:24 AM
I've never paid enough attention to notice that.
Christ he's a child.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on April 10, 2023, 08:17:02 AM
Quote from: grumbler on April 10, 2023, 07:30:00 AM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on April 10, 2023, 07:18:23 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 10, 2023, 05:14:55 AM
Quote from: Josquius on April 10, 2023, 05:06:37 AMIs this another thing where a randomer said wouldn't it be cool if... and he went lol yeah?

It's consistent with naming his first three Tesla models S, E, 3.
4 of them: S, E , 3, Y.

S, 3, X, Y
Thx.
The hands type what they will when the eye isn't paying attention.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on April 10, 2023, 08:24:09 AM
Farewell 'puerile', you had a good run as a word, but it's time for your retirement as we're outsourcing your function to a new word, muskish*.



*placeholde, something along those lines
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on April 12, 2023, 08:52:48 AM
Had it not been for the latest Twitter move re substack, I never would have learned of substack notes.

Now that I have it, it's not clear why I need Twitter anymore. 

Thanks Elon
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on April 12, 2023, 08:59:12 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on April 12, 2023, 08:52:48 AMHad it not been for the latest Twitter move re substack, I never would have learned of substack notes.

Now that I have it, it's not clear why I need Twitter anymore. 

Thanks Elon

Also everyone is trying to get me to move to bluesky
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on April 12, 2023, 11:02:51 AM
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/12/1169269161/npr-leaves-twitter-government-funded-media-label

QuoteNPR quits Twitter after being falsely labeled as 'state-affiliated media'

NPR will no longer post fresh content to its 52 official Twitter feeds, becoming the first major news organization to go silent on the social media platform. In explaining its decision, NPR cited Twitter's decision to first label the network "state-affiliated media," the same term it uses for propaganda outlets in Russia, China and other autocratic countries.

The decision by Twitter last week took the public radio network off guard. When queried by NPR tech reporter Bobby Allyn, Twitter owner Elon Musk asked how NPR functioned. Musk allowed that he might have gotten it wrong.

Twitter then revised its label on NPR's account to "government-funded media." The news organization says that is inaccurate and misleading, given that NPR is a private, nonprofit company with editorial independence. It receives less than 1 percent of its $300 million annual budget from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

By going silent on Twitter, NPR's chief executive says the network is protecting its credibility and its ability to produce journalism without "a shadow of negativity."

"The downside, whatever the downside, doesn't change that fact," NPR CEO John Lansing said in an interview. "I would never have our content go anywhere that would risk our credibility."

In a BBC interview posted online Wednesday, Musk suggested he may further change the label to "publicly funded." His words did not sway NPR's decision makers. Even if Twitter were to drop the designation altogether, Lansing says the network will not immediately return to the platform.

"At this point I have lost my faith in the decision-making at Twitter," he says. "I would need some time to understand whether Twitter can be trusted again."

NPR is instituting a "two-week grace period" so the staff who run the Twitter accounts can revise their social-media strategies. Lansing says individual NPR journalists and staffers can decide for themselves whether to continue using Twitter.

In an email to staff explaining the decision, Lansing wrote, "It would be a disservice to the serious work you all do here to continue to share it on a platform that is associating the federal charter for public media with an abandoning of editorial independence or standards."

For years, many journalists considered Twitter critical to monitoring news developments, to connect with people at major events and with authoritative sources, and to share their coverage. Musk's often hastily announced policy changes have undermined that. Lansing says that degradation in the culture of Twitter — already often awash in abusive content — contributed to NPR's decision to pull back.

Musk proves conciliatory and erratic in BBC interview
PBS, which also receives money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the BBC, which is funded by a uniform license fee charged to British television viewers, are among those whose Twitter accounts were given the same designation.

In the new interview with the BBC's James Clayton, Musk almost appeared to be seeking a compromise with the journalist. He said Twitter would adjust its labels for the British public broadcaster to "publicly funded."

"We're trying to be accurate," Musk said. "I actually do have a lot of respect for the BBC." He said the interview offered him a chance to "get some feedback on what we should be doing different."

When questioned by Clayton, Musk replied that the "publicly funded" label would apply to NPR as well. The change was not made before NPR's decision on Wednesday morning, however.

The BBC exchange showed Musk as alternately conciliatory and erratic. He also said that he's sleeping on a couch at work, that he followed through on his promise to purchase Twitter only because a judge forced him to, and that he should stop tweeting after 3 a.m.

"The point is the independence," NPR leader says
Lansing says Musk is focusing attention on the wrong element of the equation.

"The whole point isn't whether or not we're government funded," Lansing says. "Even if we were government funded, which we're not, the point is the independence, because all journalism has revenue of some sort."

NPR's board is appointed without any government influence. And the network has at times tangled with both Democratic and Republican administrations. For example, NPR joined with other media organizations to press the Obama administration for access to closed hearings involving detainees held by U.S. authorities at Guantanamo Bay. And "All Things Considered" host Mary Louise Kelly stood her ground in questioning then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over then-President Donald Trump's actions in Ukraine despite being berated by Pompeo.

Most of NPR's funding comes from corporate and individual supporters and grants. It also receives significant programming fees from member stations. Those stations, in turn, receive about 13 percent of their funds from the CPB and other state and federal government sources.

It isn't clear that a withdrawal from Twitter will materially affect NPR's ability to reach an online audience. NPR's primary Twitter account has 8.8 million followers — more than a million more than follow the network on Facebook. Yet Facebook is a much bigger platform, and NPR's Facebook posts often are far more likely to spur engagement or click-throughs to NPR's own website. NPR Music has almost 10 times more followers on YouTube than it does on Twitter, and the video platform serves as one of the primary conduits for its popular Tiny Desk Series.

Musk uses Twitter to question the legitimacy of media outlets
NPR's decision follows a week of public acrimony, as Musk has used his platform to cast doubt on the legitimacy of major news organizations.

The billionaire, who bought Twitter in October, previously announced he would remove check marks from the accounts of legacy news organizations unless the outlets paid for them. The coveted marks once meant Twitter had verified the authenticity of an account belonging to a news organization, government or public figure. Now, they can be bought through a monthly subscription.

Musk also singled out The New York Times earlier this month, removing its check mark and calling its reporting "propaganda." Twitter's communications shop now simply responds to reporters' emails with poop emojis.

At least three public radio stations preceded NPR to the exits at Twitter: Member stations KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif., WESA in Pittsburgh and WEKU, which serves central and eastern Kentucky.

Fears that Twitter label could endanger journalists
Journalism and freedom-of-speech groups have condemned Twitter's labels, including PEN, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Committee to Protect Journalists.

"NPR receives public funding, but is not state-controlled, meaning Twitter's listing could pose risks for journalists reporting from areas where suggestions of government affiliation have negative connotations," CPJ's Carlos Martínez de la Serna said in a statement urging Twitter to revisit its decision.

Twitter's own guidelines previously said, "State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK or NPR in the US for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy."

That language has now been removed. In addition to NPR and the BBC, Twitter recently labeled the U.S. broadcaster Voice of America as government-funded media. Voice of America is part of the federal U.S. Agency for Global Media. But its editorial independence from government officials — at times hard won — is enshrined by law.

"The label 'government funded' is potentially misleading and could be construed as also 'government-controlled' – which VOA is most certainly not," VOA spokesperson Bridget Serchak said in a statement to NPR.

Serchak says VOA will continue to raise the distinction in talks with Twitter as the label "causes unwarranted and unjustified concern about the accuracy and objectivity of [its] news coverage."

At Elon Musk's Twitter, unpredictability is the norm
Like so many policy decisions at the social network of late, Musk applied the label to NPR's Twitter account abruptly. It's still not clear why he became so animated about the issue.

In his exchanges with NPR reporter Allyn, Musk said he was relying on a Wikipedia page dedicated to "publicly funded broadcasters" to determine which accounts should receive the label.

When pressed for how he justifies the disclaimer considering NPR receives meager funding from the government and has complete editorial independence, Musk veered into conspiratorial territory.

"If you really think that the government has no influence on the entity they're funding then you've been marinating in the Kool-Aid for too long," Musk wrote to Allyn.

Musk's push to label the network even ran afoul of the site's own rules. A former Twitter executive who was involved in crafting the guidelines told NPR that the deciding factor in whether to issue the designation was whether an outlet had editorial freedom. The labels, the former executive said, were intended to give users context that a tweet they are seeing may be propaganda.

The messy deliberations on display in Musk's email exchanges over labeling NPR's account are in line with his impulsive leadership style. His changes to the platform often are announced by tweet, with sudden reversals not uncommon, or promised changes never coming to fruition. Because Musk relishes troll-like behavior, there is always a possibility that his pronouncements turn out to be jokes. He has announced that the effective date for the change in the check mark verification system is April 20. The date is an inside joke among people who smoke or consume marijuana.

Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by Acting Chief Business Editor Emily Kopp and Managing Editor Vickie Walton-James. NPR's Bobby Allyn and Mary Yang contributed to this story. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on April 12, 2023, 11:11:40 AM
The BBC interview with Musk was a bit of a car crash. Apparently the poor journalist involved had been given 90 minutes to prep when the key to a good interview is being absolutely on top of the detail (why Andrew Neil is very good). Feels like a bit of ediitorial negligence and chances are they won't get a second go for a while.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 12, 2023, 11:17:25 AM
I mean this is a complicated issue of media literacy and media bias.

I think it's recognized that all media has some level of bias or not.  When it comes to newspapers it can be quite explicit - like when an editorial board issues an endorsement in an election.  Various news organizations do more or less to try and keep some degree of independence and impartiality in their news coverage.

NPR gets a really small amount of government financing - but CBC gets the majority of their financing from the government.  BBC gets the majority of their funding from the licence fee - which maybe makes it a bit more independent, but is also something the government of the day could  easily change.  Al Jazeera and RT are more opaque in their funding, but it is primarily from the governments of Qatar and Russia.

Nevertheless NPR, CBC and BBC are generally thought of as being reliable news sources.  To a slightly lesser sense so is Al Jazeera.  RT is generally garbage.

So how does a social media company go about trying to distinguish between all of them?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on April 12, 2023, 11:29:40 AM
Just on the BBC - the BBC is responsible for collecting the licence fee, not the government.

Also the government of the day could change it in theory (like anything else in Britain) through primary legislation - but excluding that fairly unlikely possibility they do have fixed funding settlements for ten year periods. So the government can't touch BBC funding again until 2027.

I think it'd be a fair label for, say, the BBC World Service which is part funded by the FCDO but is editorially independent. A lot of it is down to culture and how strong that editorial line is which is as you say very difficult to know.

The same could be said for a lot of private media - some companies have very strict and strong walls between editorial and commercial. Some are maybe a little bit more porous especially around sponsored content. Should we flag, say, the Telegraph who've done full page sponsored pieces for HSBC? Does that impact their China coverage?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 12, 2023, 11:36:58 AM
Yes, how do we distinguish between basic democratic functions and authoritarian forms that ape those functions and proclaim they're democratic? Truly a conundrum.

How do we tell the difference between Putin (who's democratically elected) and Biden (who's democratically elected)?

I don't think it's that difficult, unless you're committed to the story that independent media with journalistic standards are the enemy because you find it convenient to pretend they're being unfair to you.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 12, 2023, 11:39:30 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 12, 2023, 11:29:40 AMJust on the BBC - the BBC is responsible for collecting the licence fee, not the government.

Also the government of the day could change it in theory (like anything else in Britain) through primary legislation - but excluding that fairly unlikely possibility they do have fixed funding settlements for ten year periods. So the government can't touch BBC funding again until 2027.

I think it'd be a fair label for, say, the BBC World Service which is part funded by the FCDO but is editorially independent. A lot of it is down to culture and how strong that editorial line is which is as you say very difficult to know.

The same could be said for a lot of private media - some companies have very strict and strong walls between editorial and commercial. Some are maybe a little bit more porous especially around sponsored content. Should we flag, say, the Telegraph who've done full page sponsored pieces for HSBC? Does that impact their China coverage?

As you point out though the government can change anything by legislation, so it would not be difficult to change the BBC funding settlement either.

But really do you think that makes the BBC more independent than the CBC, which gets its own funding primarily out of a government budget line?

And I thought about bringing up Fox, which in the Dominion News lawsuit is coming across very poorly with business considerations driving a lot of their coverage about the 2020 election aftermath, and not so a commitment to the truth.

And I wonder if/when Twitter is going to go after the Washington Post, since it's owned by Musk's rival Jeff Bezos?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 12, 2023, 11:42:01 AM
Quote from: Jacob on April 12, 2023, 11:36:58 AMYes, how do we distinguish between basic democratic functions and authoritarian forms that ape those functions and proclaim they're democratic? Truly a conundrum.

How do we tell the difference between Putin (who's democratically elected) and Biden (who's democratically elected)?

I don't think it's that difficult, unless you're committed to the story that independent media with journalistic standards are the enemy because you find it convenient to pretend they're being unfair to you.

COme on it's not as easy as that.

How do you tell the difference with Bolsonaro in Brazil, who sounded very anti-democratic but left office peacefully?  Or AMLO in Mexico who just dismantled the independent election monitoring organization?

And even for Putin things seemed mostly democratic in Russia in 2000 - the country is in a far, far different place now compared to then.  So when exactly did Russia become an autocracy?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 12, 2023, 11:46:03 AM
Honestly, to draw parallels between outlets like NPR, BBC, CBC on one hand and the propaganda outlets of places like Russia and China - and saying they need to be similarly labelled - is disengenuous at best.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 12, 2023, 11:51:04 AM
Quote from: Barrister on April 12, 2023, 11:42:01 AM
Quote from: Jacob on April 12, 2023, 11:36:58 AMYes, how do we distinguish between basic democratic functions and authoritarian forms that ape those functions and proclaim they're democratic? Truly a conundrum.

How do we tell the difference between Putin (who's democratically elected) and Biden (who's democratically elected)?

I don't think it's that difficult, unless you're committed to the story that independent media with journalistic standards are the enemy because you find it convenient to pretend they're being unfair to you.

COme on it's not as easy as that.

How do you tell the difference with Bolsonaro in Brazil, who sounded very anti-democratic but left office peacefully?  Or AMLO in Mexico who just dismantled the independent election monitoring organization?

And even for Putin things seemed mostly democratic in Russia in 2000 - the country is in a far, far different place now compared to then.  So when exactly did Russia become an autocracy?

You're right, there definitely are points along the spectrum where it's hard to make the call. When exactly did (or does) Orban become an autocrat as opposed to just a slightly odious populist? That's potentially an interesting question, and the answers can be up for debate.

But to use that type of "shades of gray, it's difficult to say" argument to outlets like NPR (or BBC, or CBC) is IMO an attack on the press exactly calibrated to undermine the fourth estate's critical function in protecting democracy and our institutions.

Shades of grey notwithstanding, there's no doubt about Putin. Similarly, there's no doubt about NPR, BBC, or CBC.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on April 12, 2023, 11:51:24 AM
Quote from: Jacob on April 12, 2023, 11:46:03 AMHonestly, to draw parallels between outlets like NPR, BBC, CBC on one hand and the propaganda outlets of places like Russia and China - and saying they need to be similarly labelled - is disengenuous at best.

:yes:

And good on NPR for withdrawing from the platform over it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 12, 2023, 11:53:24 AM
Quote from: Jacob on April 12, 2023, 11:46:03 AMHonestly, to draw parallels between outlets like NPR, BBC, CBC on one hand and the propaganda outlets of places like Russia and China - and saying they need to be similarly labelled - is disengenuous at best.

I didn't say they should be treated the same. :mellow:

I just said this stuff is hard - and that Musk doesn't seem to realize it with his "shoot from the hip" strategy at Twitter.  I brought up Al Jazeera which seems to be pretty good - just don't expect it to criticize the Qatari government.  So how do you deal with that?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on April 12, 2023, 11:56:48 AM
Quote from: Barrister on April 12, 2023, 11:39:30 AMAs you point out though the government can change anything by legislation, so it would not be difficult to change the BBC funding settlement either.
Sure - but parliament's sovereign. And we have a political constitution, they could ban free speech tomorrow but it would be politically challenging.

Smilarly, politically it would be incredibly difficult for any government to change the BBC's funding tomorrow in the same it would be very difficult to abolish the NHS or legislate for the execution of Sir David Attenborough - all possible, but difficult and unlikely as they're beloved national institutions.

QuoteBut really do you think that makes the BBC more independent than the CBC, which gets its own funding primarily out of a government budget line?
I think that the BBC is responsible for collecting its own funding and has a fairly fixed, mult-year medium-term funding settlement strenghten its independence. I don't know about the CBC and can't compare.

QuoteAnd I thought about bringing up Fox, which in the Dominion News lawsuit is coming across very poorly with business considerations driving a lot of their coverage about the 2020 election aftermath, and not so a commitment to the truth.
Yeah I think that's interesting - I'd say anything Fox make admissions on in that case should be flagged because I think that's legitimate. If it's content they are not standing behind in court then I think you should flag it - just as you'd have corrections or, in Europe, right to be forgotten.

I think if we're flagging this sort of thing I think it is arguable that we should at least be flagging sponsored content.

QuoteAnd I wonder if/when Twitter is going to go after the Washington Post, since it's owned by Musk's rival Jeff Bezos?
It's inevitable.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 12, 2023, 11:57:37 AM
Quote from: Barrister on April 12, 2023, 11:53:24 AMI didn't say they should be treated the same. :mellow:

And I didn't say that you said they should :mellow:

QuoteI just said this stuff is hard - and that Musk doesn't seem to realize it with his "shoot from the hip" strategy at Twitter.  I brought up Al Jazeera which seems to be pretty good - just don't expect it to criticize the Qatari government.  So how do you deal with that?

We seem to agree that Musk is fucking up :cheers:

I dunno... how would you label Al Jazeera? And how come Musk thought Twitter should slap a label on NPR but not Al Jazeera?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on April 12, 2023, 11:58:00 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 12, 2023, 11:11:40 AMThe BBC interview with Musk was a bit of a car crash. Apparently the poor journalist involved had been given 90 minutes to prep when the key to a good interview is being absolutely on top of the detail (why Andrew Neil is very good). Feels like a bit of ediitorial negligence and chances are they won't get a second go for a while.

Bad means but okay end, why does he need more of a platform than he already has?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on April 12, 2023, 12:00:05 PM
Al Jazeera is the challenging one and challenging model - Al Jazeera English is great but state funded and now moving from London to Doha as its base. But my understanding is Al Jazeera in Arabic is very clearly pushing Qatar's agenda (just like Al Arabiya is Saudi's etc). I'm not sure what the right answer is on that to be honest.

It's certainly not Russia Today or Press TV, say.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on April 12, 2023, 12:02:57 PM
Quote from: garbon on April 12, 2023, 11:58:00 AMBad means but okay end, why does he need more of a platform than he already has?
Sorry - it was a car crash for the BBC. The journalist was clearly underprepared and when Musk challenged on some questions they weren't able to push back. It felt like they'd read a lot of articles about Musk but not actually anything underneath that.

It's BBC News. It's a news story being covered by most media outlets, the BBC is one of the players and they got an offer to interview the owner of the other. If you think it's a newsworthy interview then I think you do it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on April 12, 2023, 12:07:40 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 12, 2023, 12:02:57 PM
Quote from: garbon on April 12, 2023, 11:58:00 AMBad means but okay end, why does he need more of a platform than he already has?
Sorry - it was a car crash for the BBC. The journalist was clearly underprepared and when Musk challenged on some questions they weren't able to push back. It felt like they'd read a lot of articles about Musk but not actually anything underneath that.

It's BBC News. It's a news story being covered by most media outlets, the BBC is one of the players and they got an offer to interview the owner of the other. If you think it's a newsworthy interview then I think you do it.

That bold bit is what I'm talking about though.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 12, 2023, 12:14:06 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 12, 2023, 11:57:37 AM
Quote from: Barrister on April 12, 2023, 11:53:24 AMI just said this stuff is hard - and that Musk doesn't seem to realize it with his "shoot from the hip" strategy at Twitter.  I brought up Al Jazeera which seems to be pretty good - just don't expect it to criticize the Qatari government.  So how do you deal with that?

We seem to agree that Musk is fucking up :cheers:

I dunno... how would you label Al Jazeera? And how come Musk thought Twitter should slap a label on NPR but not Al Jazeera?

His mercurial management style has fucked this up from the beginning.

He should have set up some kind of system - any kind of system, for these decisions about what accounts to unban, how to label accounts, what to do with Blue Checks... but instead it's pretty clear he just makes these decisions on the fly.  He sees that NYT won't pay for Twitter Blue - so he takes away their blue checkmark.  He doesn't like an NPR article so he labels them as state media.

I wonder if this is the difference between running a tech company, and running a company in the "real world" like Tesla or Space X.  A rocket or an electric car take years to develop, design and build so any crazy ideas he comes up with can't be implemented for a long period of time so he has a chance to think better of it.  Whereas if he wants to unban Donalt Trump he can do so almost immediately.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on April 12, 2023, 12:54:06 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 12, 2023, 11:11:40 AMThe BBC interview with Musk was a bit of a car crash. Apparently the poor journalist involved had been given 90 minutes to prep when the key to a good interview is being absolutely on top of the detail (why Andrew Neil is very good). Feels like a bit of ediitorial negligence and chances are they won't get a second go for a while.

I mean that's good, the BBC would not want to make the darling of the Right sweat. Would be way too political.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on April 12, 2023, 01:01:09 PM
We can't have it both ways - the BBC are either editorially independent and shouldn't be labelled state media, or they're as robust as a wet paper bag and fuck up an interview because "the Right" likes Musk.

I feel like you need to pick one of them or it's just conspiracy talk at the level of the "tofu-eating wokerati" :P

Edit: You see similar stuff about the judiciary - when they rule against the government they're magnificent, independent lions under the throne who should be given wide ranging powers to enforce "norms" across politics. When they rule for them it's because they've folded to pressure. Again you can't have them both :lol: :bleeding:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on April 12, 2023, 01:15:40 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 12, 2023, 01:01:09 PMWe can't have it both ways - the BBC are either editorially independent and shouldn't be labelled state media, or they're as robust as a wet paper bag and fuck up an interview because "the Right" likes Musk.

I feel like you need to pick one of them or it's just conspiracy talk at the level of the "tofu-eating wokerati" :P

Edit: You see similar stuff about the judiciary - when they rule against the government they're magnificent, independent lions under the throne who should be given wide ranging powers to enforce "norms" across politics. When they rule for them it's because they've folded to pressure. Again you can't have them both :lol: :bleeding:

Can you have other choices between the extremes?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on April 12, 2023, 01:25:39 PM
Thinking about it Musk at twitter is proving a brilliant example of how the image of the comic book businessman single handedly making all the corporate decisions just doesn't work in reality.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on April 12, 2023, 04:13:47 PM
Quote from: Barrister on April 12, 2023, 12:14:06 PMI wonder if this is the difference between running a tech company, and running a company in the "real world" like Tesla or Space X.  A rocket or an electric car take years to develop, design and build so any crazy ideas he comes up with can't be implemented for a long period of time so he has a chance to think better of it.  Whereas if he wants to unban Donalt Trump he can do so almost immediately.

I think part of it is Musk just lacks respect for social media. Which...of all Musk's stances that's a pretty defensible one, who doesn't kinda hate social media. I think he just has a lot of respect for hardcore rocket and auto engineers, he has regular meetings with them etc and he isn't so stupid as to think he know the engineering they know. He knows enough to give big ideas, and he knows enough to let them handle the heavy lifting. And, as you say, he probably does inject dumb ideas into Tesla / SpaceX but they do have better filtering mechanisms--we've even heard reporting that there are upper level executives at those companies who mostly handle "filtering out bad Musk ideas" as their full time job.

Meanwhile with Twitter, he sees it as a thing he uses to spew out stupid memes when he's taking a shit or when he's bored in bed at 3am laying next to his replica firearms and case of caffeine free Diet Coke. However, a huge web application with hundreds of millions of users, complex algorithms, that must operate across national boundaries and follow fairly complex privacy and other regulations across myriad countries--actually ends up being genuinely quite complex. He doesn't really understand that, and he doesn't respect that, and the consequences are fairly obvious.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on April 12, 2023, 04:39:21 PM
I drink caffeine free diet coke.  :huh:

OK, caffeine free Pepsi Max, but it's kind of the same thing just tastes better.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on April 12, 2023, 04:48:34 PM
Quote from: Tamas on April 12, 2023, 04:39:21 PMcaffeine free Pepsi Max

Jesus Christ. Why do you do that to yourself?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on April 12, 2023, 04:59:03 PM
So brown water and aspartame? :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on April 12, 2023, 06:46:48 PM
Quote from: Tamas on April 12, 2023, 04:39:21 PMI drink caffeine free diet coke.  :huh:

OK, caffeine free Pepsi Max, but it's kind of the same thing just tastes better.

Sir, you're drinking water. Quit paying PepsiCo markup!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 12, 2023, 10:13:34 PM
Quote from: Barrister on April 12, 2023, 11:42:01 AMAnd even for Putin things seemed mostly democratic in Russia in 2000 - the country is in a far, far different place now compared to then.  So when exactly did Russia become an autocracy?
I now think that Russia never was democratic to any extent.  It wasn't even a flawed democracy, it was truly an autocracy all along.  Yeltsin was just a weak autocrat and so wasn't able to monopolize power, whereas Putin pretty quickly established himself to be undisputed boss.  The speed with which he did things like close down opposition media indicates that there never were democratic institutions in place to begin with.

Even if Russia was democratic for some period, it certainly wasn't "mostly democratic" in 2000.  During the last year or so of Yeltsin's presidency, the talk was of who would be appointed as Yeltsin's successor.  There was no talk of voters having a say in the matter.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on April 12, 2023, 11:13:54 PM
Russia was kind of moving towards a Democracy until 1993 when Yeltsin launched his coup. Who knows if it would have gotten there without that, but that was the end of optimism as far as post-Soviet Russia's near future.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on April 12, 2023, 11:58:11 PM
Quote from: Valmy on April 12, 2023, 11:13:54 PMRussia was kind of moving towards a Democracy until 1993 when Yeltsin launched his coup. Who knows if it would have gotten there without that, but that was the end of optimism as far as post-Soviet Russia's near future.
Yeah, the only debatable period is 1991-1993.  After Yeltsin's coup/self-coup, there was no more democracy.  Just like Hindenburg, Yeltsin was too feeble to seize power for himself, but he put everything in place for someone more ambitious to seize absolute power almost immediately.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on April 13, 2023, 12:36:23 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 12, 2023, 04:13:47 PM
Quote from: Barrister on April 12, 2023, 12:14:06 PMI wonder if this is the difference between running a tech company, and running a company in the "real world" like Tesla or Space X.  A rocket or an electric car take years to develop, design and build so any crazy ideas he comes up with can't be implemented for a long period of time so he has a chance to think better of it.  Whereas if he wants to unban Donalt Trump he can do so almost immediately.

I think part of it is Musk just lacks respect for social media. Which...of all Musk's stances that's a pretty defensible one, who doesn't kinda hate social media. I think he just has a lot of respect for hardcore rocket and auto engineers, he has regular meetings with them etc and he isn't so stupid as to think he know the engineering they know. He knows enough to give big ideas, and he knows enough to let them handle the heavy lifting. And, as you say, he probably does inject dumb ideas into Tesla / SpaceX but they do have better filtering mechanisms--we've even heard reporting that there are upper level executives at those companies who mostly handle "filtering out bad Musk ideas" as their full time job.

Meanwhile with Twitter, he sees it as a thing he uses to spew out stupid memes when he's taking a shit or when he's bored in bed at 3am laying next to his replica firearms and case of caffeine free Diet Coke. However, a huge web application with hundreds of millions of users, complex algorithms, that must operate across national boundaries and follow fairly complex privacy and other regulations across myriad countries--actually ends up being genuinely quite complex. He doesn't really understand that, and he doesn't respect that, and the consequences are fairly obvious.

Related, he likes to have a Big Vision for his companies (Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity, even The Boring Company) and how he's going to save mankind with them. That just isn't there for Twitter - he tried to push the world's agora thing when he took over, but that was dropped quickly in favor of memes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on April 13, 2023, 01:18:00 AM
(https://external-preview.redd.it/xzY_jkQVQh5GZZCBXR5wF86pmwJU4Kh8kztX5BQpcXs.png?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=2c227b25886d1b9c97e4c5cc6c6d228b21311f9d)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on April 13, 2023, 01:21:45 AM
(https://i.postimg.cc/bww8vDpC/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on April 13, 2023, 02:15:34 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 12, 2023, 06:46:48 PM
Quote from: Tamas on April 12, 2023, 04:39:21 PMI drink caffeine free diet coke.  :huh:

OK, caffeine free Pepsi Max, but it's kind of the same thing just tastes better.

Sir, you're drinking water. Quit paying PepsiCo markup!


It tastes far better than water and it is a way to come off of my addiction to it. :p used to drink regular Pepsi Max but wanted to reduce my caffeine intake.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on April 13, 2023, 02:19:13 AM
Quote from: Syt on April 13, 2023, 01:21:45 AM(https://i.postimg.cc/bww8vDpC/image.png)

I wonder where the manchild ends and the attention whore begins in him.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on April 13, 2023, 02:37:09 AM
This thread is really something.  Every time I look in here Elon Musk is being a Douche.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on April 13, 2023, 04:01:09 AM
QuoteTwitter, Inc. is now X Corp.

Twitter, Inc. is now called X Corp., according to a court filing in California.

Since Twitter is no longer a public company, it does not have to report updates like name changes to the SEC. But in any case, the new name was spotted in an April 4 document related to far-right activist Laura Loomer's lawsuit against Twitter and Facebook.

"Twitter, Inc. has been merged into X Corp. and no longer exists," the document states.

Elon Musk, who purchased Twitter for $44 billion last year, has aspired to build what he calls "X, the everything app." This proposed app might look like China's WeChat, which supports messaging, payments, ridesharing, food delivery and other services all in one app. Musk has applauded WeChat for its convenience and utility, yet its unique dominance could be impossible to replicate outside of China. The name also harks back to X.com, Musk's financial services startup that spun into PayPal.

This move could be seen as the next step toward Musk building his super app, but the mogul does not have a great track record with following through on his plans. Yet the name change is not unprecedented. As CEO of Tesla, Musk has shown that vertical integration is well-loved page in his playbook — just look how many subsidiaries the car company has.

For now, Twitter is riddled with enough bugs to keep its skeleton crew of engineers busy, while the revamped Twitter Blue subscription is not pulling in the revenue it needs. Even if Twitter is now part of the X Corp., the proposed X app seems very far off.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 13, 2023, 09:53:25 AM
But will you be able to play Xbox games on the app?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on April 13, 2023, 11:25:17 AM
Quote from: Jacob on April 13, 2023, 09:53:25 AMBut will you be able to play Xbox games on the app?

Or watch X-rated films  :shifty:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 13, 2023, 11:32:20 AM
Or use it for xray vision.

... but anyhow, it seems he's pretty close. He's got Twitter and Paypal. He'll just have to buy Uber to have the ordering/ going places piece.

What other leading app economy companies would he have to buy to get critical mass for the functionality he's looking for? I think Alphabet and Google may be a bit out of his range.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 13, 2023, 11:35:23 AM
Quote from: Jacob on April 13, 2023, 11:32:20 AMOr use it for xray vision.

... but anyhow, it seems he's pretty close. He's got Twitter and Paypal. He'll just have to buy Uber to have the ordering/ going places piece.

What other leading app economy companies would he have to buy to get critical mass for the functionality he's looking for? I think Alphabet and Google may be a bit out of his range.

He doesn't have Paypal.  Paypal was sold to EBay in 2002.  That's where he got his money to invest in SpaceX and Tesla.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 13, 2023, 01:44:40 PM
Seems a bit of a misstep in his quest. He'll have to outcompete both Uber and PayPal?

Or alternately convince them to collaborate based on his vision and leadership track record.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on April 13, 2023, 02:01:48 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 13, 2023, 01:44:40 PMSeems a bit of a misstep in his quest. He'll have to outcompete both Uber and PayPal?

Or alternately convince them to collaborate based on his vision and leadership track record.

How is PayPal managing to keep going these days anyway?
Given the ease of direct bank transfers in the 21st century so much of its previous necessity seems to have gone, and this is a field with a lot of stuff going on that looks destined to further eat into it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on April 13, 2023, 02:02:49 PM
Quote from: Josquius on April 13, 2023, 02:01:48 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 13, 2023, 01:44:40 PMSeems a bit of a misstep in his quest. He'll have to outcompete both Uber and PayPal?

Or alternately convince them to collaborate based on his vision and leadership track record.

How is PayPal managing to keep going these days anyway?
Given the ease of direct bank transfers in the 21st century so much of its previous necessity seems to have gone, and this is a field with a lot of stuff going on that looks destined to further eat into it.

It's still great to avoid paying huge comissions on international money transfers.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on April 13, 2023, 02:03:05 PM
Quote from: Josquius on April 13, 2023, 02:01:48 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 13, 2023, 01:44:40 PMSeems a bit of a misstep in his quest. He'll have to outcompete both Uber and PayPal?

Or alternately convince them to collaborate based on his vision and leadership track record.

How is PayPal managing to keep going these days anyway?
Given the ease of direct bank transfers in the 21st century so much of its previous necessity seems to have gone, and this is a field with a lot of stuff going on that looks destined to further eat into it.

Crime.

The USP of all these online payment systems (and cryptocurrencies) is crime.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tonitrus on April 13, 2023, 09:26:26 PM
Quote from: Hamilcar on April 13, 2023, 02:03:05 PM
Quote from: Josquius on April 13, 2023, 02:01:48 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 13, 2023, 01:44:40 PMSeems a bit of a misstep in his quest. He'll have to outcompete both Uber and PayPal?

Or alternately convince them to collaborate based on his vision and leadership track record.

How is PayPal managing to keep going these days anyway?
Given the ease of direct bank transfers in the 21st century so much of its previous necessity seems to have gone, and this is a field with a lot of stuff going on that looks destined to further eat into it.

Crime.

The USP of all these online payment systems (and cryptocurrencies) is crime.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on April 14, 2023, 02:55:33 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on April 13, 2023, 02:03:05 PM
Quote from: Josquius on April 13, 2023, 02:01:48 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 13, 2023, 01:44:40 PMSeems a bit of a misstep in his quest. He'll have to outcompete both Uber and PayPal?

Or alternately convince them to collaborate based on his vision and leadership track record.

How is PayPal managing to keep going these days anyway?
Given the ease of direct bank transfers in the 21st century so much of its previous necessity seems to have gone, and this is a field with a lot of stuff going on that looks destined to further eat into it.

Crime.

The USP of all these online payment systems (and cryptocurrencies) is crime.

Lol no. That's cryptos field now I am fairly certain.

PayPal is good for not having to provide your credit card details for every random website you order from. It's for security, not crime. Even for trustworthy sites I find it better to use PayPal instead of saving my card details with the site or my browser, or Hod forbid having to type it in every time.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on April 14, 2023, 03:41:36 AM
Quote from: Tamas on April 14, 2023, 02:55:33 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on April 13, 2023, 02:03:05 PM
Quote from: Josquius on April 13, 2023, 02:01:48 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 13, 2023, 01:44:40 PMSeems a bit of a misstep in his quest. He'll have to outcompete both Uber and PayPal?

Or alternately convince them to collaborate based on his vision and leadership track record.

How is PayPal managing to keep going these days anyway?
Given the ease of direct bank transfers in the 21st century so much of its previous necessity seems to have gone, and this is a field with a lot of stuff going on that looks destined to further eat into it.

Crime.

The USP of all these online payment systems (and cryptocurrencies) is crime.

Lol no. That's cryptos field now I am fairly certain.

PayPal is good for not having to provide your credit card details for every random website you order from. It's for security, not crime. Even for trustworthy sites I find it better to use PayPal instead of saving my card details with the site or my browser, or Hod forbid having to type it in every time.

Yeah, that's my use case too. I find myself using Paypal quite often for both safety and comfort.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on April 14, 2023, 03:56:13 AM
Quote from: celedhring on April 14, 2023, 03:41:36 AM
Quote from: Tamas on April 14, 2023, 02:55:33 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on April 13, 2023, 02:03:05 PM
Quote from: Josquius on April 13, 2023, 02:01:48 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 13, 2023, 01:44:40 PMSeems a bit of a misstep in his quest. He'll have to outcompete both Uber and PayPal?

Or alternately convince them to collaborate based on his vision and leadership track record.

How is PayPal managing to keep going these days anyway?
Given the ease of direct bank transfers in the 21st century so much of its previous necessity seems to have gone, and this is a field with a lot of stuff going on that looks destined to further eat into it.

Crime.

The USP of all these online payment systems (and cryptocurrencies) is crime.

Lol no. That's cryptos field now I am fairly certain.

PayPal is good for not having to provide your credit card details for every random website you order from. It's for security, not crime. Even for trustworthy sites I find it better to use PayPal instead of saving my card details with the site or my browser, or Hod forbid having to type it in every time.

Yeah, that's my use case too. I find myself using Paypal quite often for both safety and comfort.

Same. I also think added layer of protection for potential disputes as if they don't solve can always then tackle with my credit card company.

PayPal did help me when I paid an online merchant who never sent the items.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on April 14, 2023, 04:09:44 AM
Quote from: Tamas on April 14, 2023, 02:55:33 AMPayPal is good for not having to provide your credit card details for every random website you order from. It's for security, not crime. Even for trustworthy sites I find it better to use PayPal instead of saving my card details with the site or my browser, or Hod forbid having to type it in every time.

That, and I've been using it for subscriptions to some sites. I used to sub to NYT at some point, and the cancelation process at the time was quite opaque and wanted you to jump through a silly amount of hoops. If I run PayPal as payment method on those I can just cancel the auto-payment for the site I want to cancel.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on April 15, 2023, 06:58:47 AM
(https://preview.redd.it/lel4cis7tzta1.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=3de43bfb1e855f801abeb6bfd7bd854cfcaacf89)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Larch on April 15, 2023, 07:41:46 PM
Quote from: Syt on April 15, 2023, 06:58:47 AM(https://preview.redd.it/lel4cis7tzta1.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=3de43bfb1e855f801abeb6bfd7bd854cfcaacf89)

Aaah, Twitter shitheads, never change...

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FtuDHQwXgAMg39e?format=png&name=small)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on April 18, 2023, 02:26:00 AM
(https://preview.redd.it/89ypkwh29lua1.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=6459eea4af5176f508888bd98b5ba9f8430ae640)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on April 18, 2023, 03:02:52 AM
He is incredibly tiresome.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 18, 2023, 12:11:00 PM
The CBC has paused their activities on Twitter: https://www.cbc.ca/news/editorsblog/cbc-twitter-news-1.6813747
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 18, 2023, 12:38:08 PM
Musk is entirely tiresome.  Wholeheartedly agree.

But CBC is overly precious at times as well.  It is heavily funded by the government.  I agree it's an arms-length agency that reports to Parliament, but Parliament also appoints both the CBC's board of directors but also the CBC President.  Heck we've had two Governor Generals appointed out of CBC (Adrienne Clarkson and Michaelle Jean).

There's nothing to suggest that the PM is calling up the CBC to kill stories.  Everyone involved has more integrity than that.  But to think that the level of control the government has over the CBC doesn't influence what stories they cover, or to what degree, is I think naive.

I mean I don't really care whether the CBC's Twitter profile says "government funded" or not.  I mean I know its government funded.  Heck if you want to get technical a lot of Canadian media is government funded - most legacy newspapers are subsidized through the Canadian Periodical Fund.  But how is it an attack on anyone's editorial independence to point that out?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on April 18, 2023, 12:45:03 PM
But does the CBC insert "69 hur hur" stuff?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on April 18, 2023, 12:49:30 PM
BB is smarter than he plays on TV.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 18, 2023, 12:59:16 PM
Quote from: The Brain on April 18, 2023, 12:45:03 PMBut does the CBC insert "69 hur hur" stuff?

No they do not.  I mean that's the really tiresome part, isn't it.



By the way I see that our opposition leader Pierre Poilievre is posting replies to Musk and again calling for the CBC to be "defunded".  Pierre I really think that message is a net loser.  Enough people like the CBC, plus it does have a role in providing news and information to remote communities that nobody else can do (plus "defund" is terrible messaging) that he should reconsider.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on April 18, 2023, 01:16:43 PM
Quote from: Google translateSveriges Radio [Swedish state-funded radio] stops being active on Twitter. The reason stated is that fewer and fewer Swedes are on Twitter, according to Sveriges Radio's blog.

"The public has simply chosen other places to be. And therefore Sveriges Radio is now choosing to deactivate or delete the last remaining accounts".

SR also comments that the Ekot [news show] account has recently been labeled by Twitter as "Publicly funded media". Something which, according to the radio, is not an oddity, but is "a correct description of how Sveriges Radio is financed". The Ekot account will remain even if will not be active.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 18, 2023, 01:32:44 PM
Quote from: Barrister on April 18, 2023, 12:38:08 PMMusk is entirely tiresome.  Wholeheartedly agree.

But CBC is overly precious at times as well.  It is heavily funded by the government.  I agree it's an arms-length agency that reports to Parliament, but Parliament also appoints both the CBC's board of directors but also the CBC President.  Heck we've had two Governor Generals appointed out of CBC (Adrienne Clarkson and Michaelle Jean).

There's nothing to suggest that the PM is calling up the CBC to kill stories.  Everyone involved has more integrity than that.  But to think that the level of control the government has over the CBC doesn't influence what stories they cover, or to what degree, is I think naive.

I mean I don't really care whether the CBC's Twitter profile says "government funded" or not.  I mean I know its government funded.  Heck if you want to get technical a lot of Canadian media is government funded - most legacy newspapers are subsidized through the Canadian Periodical Fund.  But how is it an attack on anyone's editorial independence to point that out?

You are becoming one with PP.

How is it an attack you ask?  Well you yourself did the attacking in your post.  Naive to suggest that the CBC reporting is independent you say?  Stop with your right wing conspiracy bullshit please.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on April 18, 2023, 01:40:13 PM
The Federal government can't even pay it's employees. I don't think it can assert any kind of control over the CBC.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 18, 2023, 01:42:07 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on April 18, 2023, 01:40:13 PMThe Federal government can't even pay it's employees. I don't think it can assert any kind of control over the CBC.

 :D
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on April 18, 2023, 02:04:39 PM
BB I think the point is not that the banner is a lie, it's that it's applied the same way as RT. It's disingenuous and I'm pretty sure you know that.

Why wouldn't Musk's profile read Saudi/China funded nepo baby? It's not a lie either.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 18, 2023, 02:12:31 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on April 18, 2023, 02:04:39 PMBB I think the point is not that the banner is a lie, it's that it's applied the same way as RT. It's disingenuous and I'm pretty sure you know that.

Why wouldn't Musk's profile read Saudi/China funded nepo baby? It's not a lie either.

The pro-Musk spin would be that RT isn't labelled as "government funded media", but rather as "Russia state affiliated media". I don't think that makes it quite clear how much of a difference there is between CBC and RT, but Twitter itself does acknowledge there's a difference.

My complaint has always been this - there's some value to identifying media bias.  Which can certainly include state-funded, or state-directed media companies.

The problem though is it isn't Twitter making some good-faith attempt to ID such biases and distinctions, it's just Musk doing it all for the lulz.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 18, 2023, 03:20:13 PM
BB, I think you're right when you're saying that attacking the CBC is not a winner for PP. I think aligning with Musk to do it isn't going to be constructive either.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on April 18, 2023, 04:05:34 PM
Not to highjack the thread, but I'm not sure the brand PP is going for can get him to the 35-37% usually needed in our (stupid) FPTP system. I can see a combination of Trudeau fatigue, no other real options (outside of Qc) and the assorted deplorables being able to carry him over though. I want to believe Canada is different, but probably not.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 18, 2023, 05:52:56 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on April 18, 2023, 04:05:34 PMNot to highjack the thread, but I'm not sure the brand PP is going for can get him to the 35-37% usually needed in our (stupid) FPTP system. I can see a combination of Trudeau fatigue, no other real options (outside of Qc) and the assorted deplorables being able to carry him over though. I want to believe Canada is different, but probably not.

Yeah, the thing is it should be really easy for the Conservatives to win this time around.   But PP is sure making it harder than it needs to be.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 18, 2023, 09:26:00 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 18, 2023, 03:20:13 PMBB, I think you're right when you're saying that attacking the CBC is not a winner for PP. I think aligning with Musk to do it isn't going to be constructive either.

Clarification of my opinion:

-attacking the CBC?  No worse than politically neutral.

-"defund" the CBC?  Political loser.

Remember CBC's ratings are actually fairly insignificant.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 19, 2023, 10:57:33 AM
Gives a good sense of how out of touch the Conservative bubble is.  But we can't just blame PP for this, it has been a long proud tradition of first the Progressive Conversatives, then the Manning spin offs, and now the CPC to attack the CBC. 

For folks like BB, the behaviour has become normalized.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 19, 2023, 11:16:13 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 19, 2023, 10:57:33 AMGives a good sense of how out of touch the Conservative bubble is.  But we can't just blame PP for this, it has been a long proud tradition of first the Progressive Conversatives, then the Manning spin offs, and now the CPC to attack the CBC. 

For folks like BB, the behaviour has become normalized.

Intellectually curious people might wonder why criticism of the CBC on the right goes back at least 40 years, if not further.

Or you can just write us off as being in a bubble and move on.

Your call CC.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 19, 2023, 11:32:33 AM
Quote from: Barrister on April 19, 2023, 11:16:13 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 19, 2023, 10:57:33 AMGives a good sense of how out of touch the Conservative bubble is.  But we can't just blame PP for this, it has been a long proud tradition of first the Progressive Conversatives, then the Manning spin offs, and now the CPC to attack the CBC. 

For folks like BB, the behaviour has become normalized.

Intellectually curious people might wonder why criticism of the CBC on the right goes back at least 40 years, if not further.

Or you can just write us off as being in a bubble and move on.

Your call CC.

There is no mystery about why that is.  The right has always been conspiratorially minded when it comes to the CBC.  They just can't fathom, that critical reporting of all politicians is sort of what the CBC does.  Its just that the right thinks that means the CBC is taking directions from the left leaning political masters.  But for some reason the PPs of the world, and apparently you, ignore all the critical reporting the CBC does of the NDP and Liberals, not to mention how the CBC's reporting of the Greens debacle was withering.

The reason I say you are in a bubble, is you seem to have no conception of how the CBC is viewed by the very Canadians your party needs to attract in order to win outside the Conservative strongholds.

I have mentioned to you before how frustrating it is to see how damaging it is to Canadian politics to have no real competition for the Liberals.  And the Conservatives continue to disappoint.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 19, 2023, 12:07:43 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 19, 2023, 11:32:33 AM
Quote from: Barrister on April 19, 2023, 11:16:13 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 19, 2023, 10:57:33 AMGives a good sense of how out of touch the Conservative bubble is.  But we can't just blame PP for this, it has been a long proud tradition of first the Progressive Conversatives, then the Manning spin offs, and now the CPC to attack the CBC. 

For folks like BB, the behaviour has become normalized.

Intellectually curious people might wonder why criticism of the CBC on the right goes back at least 40 years, if not further.

Or you can just write us off as being in a bubble and move on.

Your call CC.

There is no mystery about why that is.  The right has always been conspiratorially minded when it comes to the CBC.  They just can't fathom, that critical reporting of all politicians is sort of what the CBC does.  Its just that the right thinks that means the CBC is taking directions from the left leaning political masters.  But for some reason the PPs of the world, and apparently you, ignore all the critical reporting the CBC does of the NDP and Liberals, not to mention how the CBC's reporting of the Greens debacle was withering.

The reason I say you are in a bubble, is you seem to have no conception of how the CBC is viewed by the very Canadians your party needs to attract in order to win outside the Conservative strongholds.

I have mentioned to you before how frustrating it is to see how damaging it is to Canadian politics to have no real competition for the Liberals.  And the Conservatives continue to disappoint.

And that's the call you made. :thumbsup:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on April 19, 2023, 12:16:05 PM
Quote from: Barrister on April 19, 2023, 11:16:13 AMIntellectually curious people might wonder why criticism of the CBC on the right goes back at least 40 years, if not further.

Or you can just write us off as being in a bubble and move on.

Your call CC.
By analogy with the BBC - there has been right-wing moaning about the BBC since, at the very least, the 60s. The worrying trend I think is the now quite loud left-wing and "centrist dad" criticism of the BBC. And ultimately while the BBC is criticised by the right it is also most used by the right as their main source of information (on TV) while the left is more likely to use social media - which reflects the age gap here, but I think that is probably a generation challenge for all "national" broadcasters.

In part I wonder if that "national" broadcaster model is sustainable. It's a product of the age of mass media and "the masses". That's not our world anymore. There is something to the criticism of the BBC that its funding is tied to TV and linear broadcasting when a significant group in the UK only watch TV online, at their choice, through devices. And there's always the tension between the Reithian ideals of what the BBC is for to "inform, educate and entertain" (in that order) v being paid for and for everyone.

It's tough. I've mentioned it before I think, but I always think about that "imagined communities" idea of how nations were formed in the 19th century by print capitalism creating a common imagined space and links between previously quite disparate communities. I think the national broadcastsers were the next step on that chain in the age of mass media (and a comparatively benign one). But I'm not sure how it holds up with the new imagined communities being created online.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on April 19, 2023, 01:43:28 PM
It all feeds into a diamond age kind of setup with the phyle you belong to being far more important than physical borders. :p

Also let's not pretend the BBC hasn't lurched right in recent years.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on April 19, 2023, 01:54:14 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 19, 2023, 11:32:33 AMThey just can't fathom, that critical reporting of all politicians is sort of what the CBC does.  Its just that the right thinks that means the CBC is taking directions from the left leaning political masters.  But for some reason the PPs of the world, and apparently you, ignore all the critical reporting the CBC does of the NDP and Liberals, not to mention how the CBC's reporting of the Greens debacle was withering.
There is much less criticizing of the Liberal party or the NDP than of the Conservatives or the Bloc at the Federal level.

They even got blamed for their lack of impartiality at the last electoral debate but they refused to apologize for it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 19, 2023, 07:01:30 PM
Quote from: Barrister on April 19, 2023, 11:16:13 AMIntellectually curious people might wonder why criticism of the CBC on the right goes back at least 40 years, if not further.

The explanation seems twofold:

1) Ideological opposition to the idea of publicly funded media, independent of the content of that media.

2) A preference for privately media with an explicit commitment to right-of-centre political positions and a desire to eliminate competition. With other privately owned media, this goal can typically be achieved by acquisitions over time, but the CBC is immune to being bought out by right-wing billionaires, and therefore it must be eliminated.

These two core principles then get leavened with some culture war stuff and the typical right-of-centre persecution complex.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 19, 2023, 07:26:33 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 19, 2023, 12:16:05 PM
Quote from: Barrister on April 19, 2023, 11:16:13 AMIntellectually curious people might wonder why criticism of the CBC on the right goes back at least 40 years, if not further.

Or you can just write us off as being in a bubble and move on.

Your call CC.
By analogy with the BBC - there has been right-wing moaning about the BBC since, at the very least, the 60s. The worrying trend I think is the now quite loud left-wing and "centrist dad" criticism of the BBC. And ultimately while the BBC is criticised by the right it is also most used by the right as their main source of information (on TV) while the left is more likely to use social media - which reflects the age gap here, but I think that is probably a generation challenge for all "national" broadcasters.

In part I wonder if that "national" broadcaster model is sustainable. It's a product of the age of mass media and "the masses". That's not our world anymore. There is something to the criticism of the BBC that its funding is tied to TV and linear broadcasting when a significant group in the UK only watch TV online, at their choice, through devices. And there's always the tension between the Reithian ideals of what the BBC is for to "inform, educate and entertain" (in that order) v being paid for and for everyone.

It's tough. I've mentioned it before I think, but I always think about that "imagined communities" idea of how nations were formed in the 19th century by print capitalism creating a common imagined space and links between previously quite disparate communities. I think the national broadcastsers were the next step on that chain in the age of mass media (and a comparatively benign one). But I'm not sure how it holds up with the new imagined communities being created online.

In a nation as sparsely populated as Canada the CBC still has an important place.  In a lot of communities across the country it is the main source of radio and TV news.  And yes people still listen to radio here.  And yes, right wing radio does not dominate here - the CBC does.  Which is why I suspect the Conservative hate it soooo much.

@BB two words for you, cognitive dissonance.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on April 19, 2023, 07:40:38 PM
Quote from: viper37 on April 19, 2023, 01:54:14 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 19, 2023, 11:32:33 AMThey just can't fathom, that critical reporting of all politicians is sort of what the CBC does.  Its just that the right thinks that means the CBC is taking directions from the left leaning political masters.  But for some reason the PPs of the world, and apparently you, ignore all the critical reporting the CBC does of the NDP and Liberals, not to mention how the CBC's reporting of the Greens debacle was withering.
There is much less criticizing of the Liberal party or the NDP than of the Conservatives or the Bloc at the Federal level.

They even got blamed for their lack of impartiality at the last electoral debate but they refused to apologize for it.

I am not aware of your second point, do you have a link?

I understand that your first point is an opinion widely held on the right.  But do you have anything to substantiate it?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on April 20, 2023, 09:39:57 AM
Not to interrupt the Canadian political thread (and I do enjoy the political ramblings of our client state to the North)  ;); but it looks like due to the fact Musk has recently massively increased charges to use the Twitter API a number of enterprise partners are deactivating links to the service. My understanding is most, maybe all? of the Twitter API access was previously free.

Musk saw this as untapped revenue.

That isn't entirely unreasonable--services like this are often straddling a fine line with these APIs. On the one hand, free API access gets your service linked to lots of other things, which can help it grow and maintain users. On the other hand, API use often leads to users who are gleaning stuff off the service but not really using the service itself (and importantly--this means they aren't seeing the service's impression ads.)

The line a lot of similar companies seem to set is that limited / small scale API use is often allowed free of charge, enterprise level use is often charged some fee. The amount of fees is going to vary a lot based on a number of factors, but it seems like as of right now, the enterprise API fees Musk has set for Twitter are high enough a lot of pretty big companies are just deciding to end integrating with Twitter over it.

I've heard stories of some large enterprises looking at $50k/mo API fees or so. Now, there's plenty of large organizations that pay big subscription fees of that size, and some much more--but when you go from free to imposing a fee, you're forcing a decision point for the enterprise. Previously this cost nothing, now it costs say, $600k/yr, that means at the last someone with budgetary approval has to agree it is worth continuing to use it. Considering Twitter has often been seen by advertisers and basically "everyone" as one of the "least valuable" social media platforms, it is no surprise that forcing this decision point is leading to some large enterprises to just wash their hands of Twitter.

Microsoft in one of its sales / marketing platforms recently did just that, they told customers they would no longer support the Twitter integration after a certain date.

In response, Musk has Tweeted that Microsoft was using its data "illegally" and now it is "lawsuit time."

I am genuinely confused if Musk thinks you can just sue companies for "deciding not to buy your product or service."

It reminds me that basically all of Musk's commercial success has not involved having to be friendly with enterprise customers. SpaceX customers are heavily tilted towards governments, Tesla is largely selling direct to consumers. Enterprise software sales is a pretty complex field and not easily navigated--there is a reason salesmen in that space can easily make $300-400k+ a year, and threatening to sue potential customers is probably not on any kind of shortlist of good ideas for how to make those kinds of deals.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 20, 2023, 10:01:46 AM
I wonder if Musk thinks he has a case or whether he thinks Microsoft is an easy target for a legal browbeating? Or, I guess, the third option is he just tweeted random shit without thinking it through.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on April 20, 2023, 10:04:37 AM
The theory of the hypothetical lawsuit is that ChatGPT allegedly used Twitter data to train its model.  not entirely clear how they get to MSFT, which is just an investor, but it may be based on the integration with Bing. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 20, 2023, 10:10:09 AM
Ah that makes some sense. There are probably some big legal pay days coming (for lawyers at least) regarding AI training on data sets.

If ChatGPT did use Twitter data for training, how much would the profitability of ChatGPT likely weigh on the outcome (as in, if ChatGPT hasn't made much money yet how much can Twitter get out of a lawsuit)? And, again, if ChatGPT did in fact use Twitter data to what degree could they say "okay, nevermind, discard ChatGPT, we're going to make a new ChatGPT using different data sets to lessen the repercussions?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on April 20, 2023, 10:26:41 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on April 20, 2023, 10:04:37 AMThe theory of the hypothetical lawsuit is that ChatGPT allegedly used Twitter data to train its model.  not entirely clear how they get to MSFT, which is just an investor, but it may be based on the integration with Bing. 
Working for a media company, I can only laugh and cry at a social media company wanting to be more in control of and get paid for other companies extracting commercial benefits out of your content <_<
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 20, 2023, 10:29:10 AM
"It's ours! We stole it fair and square!"
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on April 20, 2023, 10:50:14 AM
The real nightmare is that Europeans seem to have a right to force OpenAI et al. to remove their personal data from training under GDPR.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on April 20, 2023, 10:53:12 AM
Mind you also--the marketing software the Microsoft decided to cut Twitter API integration with AFAIK had nothing to do with ChatGPT. That software essentially integrated with Twitter's direct message API, to handle corporate Twitter accounts that receive DMs from customers etc. This is basically just Musk threatening to sue over an unrelated grievance because he is mad Microsoft isn't giving Twitter money.

Microsoft != ChatGPT, though--it is just an investor in the firm behind ChatGPT. Bing does use ChatGPT so maybe you could make some claim there--it sounds fairly specious though, AFAIK ChatGPT trained on information that was publicly shared on the internet.

I don't know how much Microsoft would be considered a "soft target" for a speculative grievance lawsuit--they appear to regularly litigate complex, sometimes decade-long cases dealing with vague areas of the law as it relates to software companies.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on April 20, 2023, 10:54:41 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on April 20, 2023, 10:50:14 AMThe real nightmare is that Europeans seem to have a right to force OpenAI et al. to remove their personal data from training under GDPR.

By nightmare you mean "this is super inconvenient for people training AI", right?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on April 20, 2023, 12:15:10 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 20, 2023, 10:54:41 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on April 20, 2023, 10:50:14 AMThe real nightmare is that Europeans seem to have a right to force OpenAI et al. to remove their personal data from training under GDPR.

By nightmare you mean "this is super inconvenient for people training AI", right?

Also for existing AI. A deletion request for a person's data from GPT4.... No idea how to do that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on April 20, 2023, 02:26:43 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 20, 2023, 10:10:09 AMAh that makes some sense. There are probably some big legal pay days coming (for lawyers at least) regarding AI training on data sets.

If ChatGPT did use Twitter data for training, how much would the profitability of ChatGPT likely weigh on the outcome (as in, if ChatGPT hasn't made much money yet how much can Twitter get out of a lawsuit)? And, again, if ChatGPT did in fact use Twitter data to what degree could they say "okay, nevermind, discard ChatGPT, we're going to make a new ChatGPT using different data sets to lessen the repercussions?

It's hard to speculate about what the precise legal basis of this lawsuit would be.  In theory you could postulate a copyright violation, and US copyright laws permit recovery of statutory damages per incident of infringement.  So, e.g., if ChatGPT used millions of records without permission, the damages exposures could be in the billions or even trillions of dollars.

Of course, the obvious problem is that twitter can't claim copyrights in the content of tweets made by others on the platform.  So I'm not exactly sure what they are up to.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on April 20, 2023, 03:04:43 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 20, 2023, 10:54:41 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on April 20, 2023, 10:50:14 AMThe real nightmare is that Europeans seem to have a right to force OpenAI et al. to remove their personal data from training under GDPR.

By nightmare you mean "this is super inconvenient for people training AI", right?
It depends. The right to be forgotten isn't absolute.

Also just worth flagging that GDPR rights aren't just for Europeans. It's not like, say, California privacy law which is about the rights of Californian residents. Data subjects can come from anywhere - if you sign up for, say, Spotify, because they are subject to GDPR all individuals whose data is used by them have the same rights.

I'm not 100% sure that every AI based in the US would necessarily be subject to GDPR - or perhaps if the tests of who's caught would necessarily make sense with AI. The Italian regulator had a few points on their decision for OpenAI to stop in Italy (reports are talks are going well and they'll probably back in the next few weeks) - some are fairly fundamental but the headline seemed to be the lack of an age gate.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on April 20, 2023, 03:27:01 PM
So, you made me ego-search myself on ChatGPT and I got:

QuoteI'm sorry, but I do not have any information about an individual named XXXXXXXXXXXX. It's possible that he is a private individual with no significant public presence or contributions, or that he may be a relatively unknown person in history. If you have any additional context or details about this person, I might be able to help you further.

Which is interesting, since there's stuff about me easily found online (imdb, linkedin, etc...).

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on April 20, 2023, 03:30:38 PM
Quote from: celedhring on April 20, 2023, 03:27:01 PMSo, you made me ego-search myself on ChatGPT and I got:

QuoteI'm sorry, but I do not have any information about an individual named XXXXXXXXXXXX. It's possible that he is a private individual with no significant public presence or contributions, or that he may be a relatively unknown person in history. If you have any additional context or details about this person, I might be able to help you further.

Which is interesting, since there's stuff about me easily found online (imdb, linkedin, etc...).



Maybe it was just being sassy and gave you the Mariah Carey treatment? :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on April 20, 2023, 03:35:55 PM
What if you ask who wrote something you wrote?

I do remember reading gpt is super English language  biased. Maybe it stretches to ignorance of non English media?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on April 20, 2023, 04:21:07 PM
Quote from: Josquius on April 20, 2023, 03:35:55 PMWhat if you ask who wrote something you wrote?

I do remember reading gpt is super English language  biased. Maybe it stretches to ignorance of non English media?

I tried the one English language show I wrote, which is on HBO, but it says it doesn't have any record of me working there - I'm listed on imdb, so I guess they didn't use that for training?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on April 20, 2023, 06:02:51 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 19, 2023, 07:40:38 PM
Quote from: viper37 on April 19, 2023, 01:54:14 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 19, 2023, 11:32:33 AMThey just can't fathom, that critical reporting of all politicians is sort of what the CBC does.  Its just that the right thinks that means the CBC is taking directions from the left leaning political masters.  But for some reason the PPs of the world, and apparently you, ignore all the critical reporting the CBC does of the NDP and Liberals, not to mention how the CBC's reporting of the Greens debacle was withering.
There is much less criticizing of the Liberal party or the NDP than of the Conservatives or the Bloc at the Federal level.

They even got blamed for their lack of impartiality at the last electoral debate but they refused to apologize for it.

I am not aware of your second point, do you have a link?

I understand that your first point is an opinion widely held on the right.  But do you have anything to substantiate it?
It does not seem to have been reported in English medias.
So here is the French link:
Original text (https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1939164/cbc-racisme-quebec-yves-francois-blanchet)

Translation (https://ici-radio--canada-ca.translate.goog/nouvelle/1939164/cbc-racisme-quebec-yves-francois-blanchet?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on April 20, 2023, 10:45:12 PM
In addition to his rocket misadventure Musky "lost" 13 billion after Tesla stock dropped 10%. Rough couple of days. Still has plenty, but for an ego like his it personably hurt at least a bit.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on April 21, 2023, 02:04:50 AM
(https://preview.redd.it/pab9xysmz6va1.png?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=cac52347bb21b003af36dd7326c35882635b0042)

(https://preview.redd.it/68bolp9k94va1.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=fab084875293784ab5b9e4ff78d2b5281bccfabe)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on April 21, 2023, 02:21:04 AM
I'm amazed what people put up with. If I were on Twitter I would GTFO.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on April 21, 2023, 02:23:20 AM
It's amazing how quickly Elon is discovering the original purpose of verification.  :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on April 21, 2023, 06:09:00 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 21, 2023, 02:21:04 AMI'm amazed what people put up with. If I were on Twitter I would GTFO.

Perhaps he used his gigantic brain and come up with the insight that Twitter is a de facto monopoly in its space.  No one really wants to leave.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on April 21, 2023, 06:51:33 AM
(https://i.redd.it/i0heieiww8va1.jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on April 21, 2023, 07:17:43 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 21, 2023, 06:09:00 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 21, 2023, 02:21:04 AMI'm amazed what people put up with. If I were on Twitter I would GTFO.

Perhaps he used his gigantic brain and come up with the insight that Twitter is a de facto monopoly in its space.  No one really wants to leave.

Sveriges Radio for instance thinks otherwise.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on April 21, 2023, 10:56:40 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on April 20, 2023, 12:15:10 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 20, 2023, 10:54:41 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on April 20, 2023, 10:50:14 AMThe real nightmare is that Europeans seem to have a right to force OpenAI et al. to remove their personal data from training under GDPR.

By nightmare you mean "this is super inconvenient for people training AI", right?

Also for existing AI. A deletion request for a person's data from GPT4.... No idea how to do that.

Ask ChatGPT how to do it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on April 21, 2023, 10:59:33 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 21, 2023, 07:17:43 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 21, 2023, 06:09:00 AM
Quote from: The Brain on April 21, 2023, 02:21:04 AMI'm amazed what people put up with. If I were on Twitter I would GTFO.

Perhaps he used his gigantic brain and come up with the insight that Twitter is a de facto monopoly in its space.  No one really wants to leave.

Sveriges Radio for instance thinks otherwise.

NPR and all of its reporters have also left.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on April 21, 2023, 11:02:28 AM
Quote from: grumbler on April 21, 2023, 10:56:40 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on April 20, 2023, 12:15:10 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 20, 2023, 10:54:41 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on April 20, 2023, 10:50:14 AMThe real nightmare is that Europeans seem to have a right to force OpenAI et al. to remove their personal data from training under GDPR.

By nightmare you mean "this is super inconvenient for people training AI", right?

Also for existing AI. A deletion request for a person's data from GPT4.... No idea how to do that.

Ask ChatGPT how to do it.

The whole "training data for AI" is a fascinating legal argument that doesn't have any obvious answers.

I mean a human can train themselves by reading lots and lots of books - or looking at lots and lots of pictures. And a human would obviously be heavily influenced by same.

AI generated text can sometimes come back with what is basically a complete copy of the data that was presented to them - but not usually.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on April 21, 2023, 11:09:50 AM
Quote from: grumbler on April 21, 2023, 10:56:40 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on April 20, 2023, 12:15:10 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 20, 2023, 10:54:41 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on April 20, 2023, 10:50:14 AMThe real nightmare is that Europeans seem to have a right to force OpenAI et al. to remove their personal data from training under GDPR.

By nightmare you mean "this is super inconvenient for people training AI", right?

Also for existing AI. A deletion request for a person's data from GPT4.... No idea how to do that.

Ask ChatGPT how to do it.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on April 23, 2023, 03:10:36 PM
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/apr/23/twitter-restores-blue-tick-free-of-charge-to-celebrities-in-u-turn

QuoteTwitter restores 'blue tick' free of charge to celebrities in U-turn

Decision to reinstate 'verified' status without distinguishing paid-for from free users prompts criticism for 'false advertising'
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on April 24, 2023, 02:14:30 AM
Quote from: garbon on April 23, 2023, 03:10:36 PMhttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/apr/23/twitter-restores-blue-tick-free-of-charge-to-celebrities-in-u-turn

QuoteTwitter restores 'blue tick' free of charge to celebrities in U-turn

Decision to reinstate 'verified' status without distinguishing paid-for from free users prompts criticism for 'false advertising'

Not surprised by the very stable genius.


(https://preview.redd.it/xrosy2o4sova1.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=9acb9964e21b29881aaf186c118ed878183ad23f)


(https://preview.redd.it/spz943o4sova1.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=5337daf620fdfa88c551af642815d86adef4e431)


(https://preview.redd.it/77z43n01glva1.jpg?width=320&crop=smart&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=f45c55f2e7b948257e27dc9433228bb134941ea3)


(https://preview.redd.it/9bz1go01glva1.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=c44921f18a0fef727e71cf10bcd299a6799d6f1c)


Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on April 24, 2023, 03:08:17 AM
(https://i.imgflip.com/7j9hy0.jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on April 27, 2023, 05:10:40 AM
https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/26/twitter-disinformation-dsa-risk/

QuoteEU warns Twitter over disinformation after Musk policy shifts found to boost Kremlin propaganda

Twitter was only confirmed yesterday as one of 19 major tech platforms subject to centralized oversight by the European Union's executive starting this fall, when so-called very large online platforms (VLOPs) are expected to be compliant with the Digital Services Act (DSA). But the Commission has not wasted any time warning the Elon Musk-owned social network that things aren't looking good for staying on the right side of the incoming law.

The DSA requires major platforms to take steps to mitigate systemic risks like disinformation, while breaches of the regime can attract penalties of up to 6% of global annual turnover. On Twitter's 2022 revenue, such a fine could sum to over a couple of hundred million dollars — with the caveat that the platform's revenue may not hold up this year, given Musk's erratic antics scaring away advertisers and alienating plenty of users.

In a pair of tweets sent out today, Vera Jourova, the EU's values and transparency VP, warned of "yet another negative sign" by Twitter — accusing the platform under Musk of "not making digital information space any safer and free from the Kremlin #disinformation & malicious influence".

Her tweets cite an AP report on research by Reset, a London-based non-profit that tracks the spread of propaganda by authoritarian regimes, which found that recent policy changes at Twitter have significantly amplified state-backed disinformation on the platform — namely Musk's decision to remove state-backed labels from accounts operated by authoritarian governments in Russia, China and Iran and also to lift restrictions on algorithmic amplification of their content.

Per Reset's research, Kremlin propaganda saw a visibility boost of around a third. AP's report also cites earlier research by the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, which found that Musk's decision to remove the state-affiliated labels appears to have reversed a decline in followers for many of the accounts.

"To me this is a signal that #Twitter is falling short of its commitments to the anti-disinformation Code," Jourova went on. "This is a paramount test to show they are serious about respecting the Code and ultimately compliance with the #DigitalServicesAct."

The bloc backed restrictions on two Russian state-affiliated news channels (RT and Sputnik) in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year. The step included not only prohibitions on traditional broadcast media from screening the channels but a legal requirement that online platforms avoid distributing their content too.

At the time of writing Twitter users trying to access the two prohibited channels from inside the European Economic Area or the U.K. (which also imposed limits) are met with a notification that the account is "withheld" across 28 countries.

However users can circumvent the ban by, for example, using a VPN and changing their location to a country where the accounts are not withheld. And if they do that they will find that, as a result of Musk's changes rowing back on prior anti-disinformation policies, these accounts are longer labeled as state-affiliated nor are they algorithmically de-amplified.

Jourova's comment vis-a-vis "respecting the Code" is a reference to the EU's Code of Practice on Online Disinformation — which Twitter voluntarily signed up to back in September 2018, when Musk was just a high profile Twitter user, not its erratic billionaire owner.

As we reported at the time, the initial EU Code was a weak bite at tackling what was then still sometimes being referred to as 'fake news'. But the EU went on to present a beefed up version of the Code last summer. And while the mechanism remains voluntary (i.e. self regulation, rather than legally binding rules), the bloc's lawmakers have signalled that the Code's commitments will count towards future compliance with the DSA.

Ergo, on the flip side, not meeting the commitments to combat disinformation should count as a black mark against DSA compliance for any signed up VLOPs — which are, under the DSA, required to proactively assess systemic risks like disinformation and put in place effective mitigation measures while also taking steps to avoid harming freedom of expression.

The Commission will be technically empowered to enforce against DSA breaches by VLOPs from late August/September — when a four-month implementation period expires for the first wave of larger platforms. So Twitter still has a few months to get its house in order. (Or, more realistically, pick up the smithereens left by Musk's wrecking ball and try to put a coherent content moderation policy approach back together.)

Although there's actually a longer lead in for the Code commitments to bite as the mechanism can't be officially linked to the Commission's enforcement framework for the DSA until after a European Board for Digital Services has been set up — which is not expected until the deadline for the general entry into application of all DSA provisions (in February next year).

This means Musk probably has until early 2024 (at least) to play regional disinformation chaos agent — before any hard DSA-based reckoning lands over his love of 'democratizing' authoritarian propaganda.

That said, it's interesting to see the EU getting in so early with public warnings to Musk on disinformation. Which may be a sign the Commission feels its facing some risk here too. Not least the risk that Twitter's presence as a continued signatory to its anti-disinformation Code while its owner is actively ripping up anti-disinformation policies — and has himself been accused of spreading Kremlin propaganda — is, to put it diplomatically, pretty damn awkward.

The Code being self-regulation also ties the EU's hands in the sense that they can't prescribe who joins it nor boot existing signatories out for making a mockery of provisions like Commitment 18 — to "minimize the risks of viral propagation of misinformation or disinformation by adopting safe design practices as they develop their systems, policies, and features" — something Twitter was still technically signed up to at the last check.

Yet, again, it looks hard to square an on-paper claim by Twitter that it's committed to shrinking the risks of viral disinformation with policy decisions by Musk U-turn on promoting state-affiliated propaganda channels; tearing up rules on COVID-19 misinformation; or simply blowing up the legacy verification system and replacing it with what looks like an intentionally confusing mess whereby scammers and spammers are encouraged to pay $8 to get their content automatically amplified over non-paying users.

Given the lag between the EU's disinformation Code getting hard linked to the DSA as a key mitigation measure — as expected — and the delicate dance ahead of the Commission to enforce rules in an area as tricky and slippery as (subjective and often politically charged) disinformation the bloc appears to have decided it can at least make some noise decrying Musk's blatantly bad faith approach in public in the meanwhile.


I'm sure when pressed to comply he will take a measured response, like blocking all EU IP addresses on the platform. :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josephus on April 27, 2023, 06:08:35 AM
He's gonna be on Bill Maher tomorrow.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on May 03, 2023, 06:31:35 AM
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/02/1173422311/elon-musk-npr-twitter-reassign

QuoteElon Musk threatens to re-assign @NPR on Twitter to 'another company'

Elon Musk has threatened to reassign NPR's Twitter account to "another company."

In a series of emails sent to this reporter, Musk said he would transfer the network's main account on Twitter, under the @NPR handle, to another organization or person. The idea shocked even longtime observers of Musk's spur-of-the-moment and erratic leadership style.

Handing over established accounts to third parties poses a serious risk of impersonation and could imperil a company's reputation, said social media experts.

"If this is a sign of things to come on Twitter, we might soon see even more of a rapid retreat by media organizations and other brands that don't think it's worth the risk," said Emily Bell, a professor at Columbia Journalism School who studies social media. "It's really an extraordinary threat to make."

Last month, NPR effectively quit Twitter after Musk applied a label to the news organization's account that falsely suggested it was state-controlled. Other public media organizations, including PBS and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, followed suit and stopped tweeting following similar labeling.

Musk has since removed the labels, but the outlets originally targeted have not resumed public activity on Twitter.

In an unprompted Tuesday email, Musk wrote: "So is NPR going to start posting on Twitter again, or should we reassign @NPR to another company?"

Under Twitter's terms of service, an account's inactivity is based on logging in, not tweeting. Those rules state that an account must be logged into at least every 30 days, and that "prolonged inactivity" can result in it being permanently removed.

Musk did not answer when asked whether he planned to change the platform's definition of inactivity and he declined to say what prompted his new questions about NPR's lack of participation on Twitter.

"Our policy is to recycle handles that are definitively dormant," Musk wrote in another email. "Same policy applies to all accounts. No special treatment for NPR."


The threat of retaliation is the latest volley in a months-long conflict between Musk and established media organizations since the billionaire purchased Twitter in October.

Musk has long attacked the media and attempted to undercut the credibility of journalists. The Twitter CEO has suspended reporters who have published or promoted stories critical of him. Musk has stripped away, and at times reissued, "verified" blue check marks to news organizations and individual journalists.

By recently making "verified" blue checks available for purchase, Musk has created a turbulent social media landscape, blurring the lines for users between what is real and what is fake on one of the most influential social networks.

His remark on Tuesday that he may transfer NPR's primary Twitter account with nearly 9 million followers to another entity is typical of how Musk has run the social media site.

As is often the case with Musk, it is not clear whether he will follow through on the threat.

One former Twitter executive was taken aback by the remark, telling NPR that such a threat should be alarming to any business operating on the site, since it indicates that acquiescing to Musk's every whim may be necessary in order to avoid being impersonated.

For most of its 17-year history, Twitter has had rules that maintained a certain level of order and offered both individuals and organization some control over their presence on the platform.

NPR CEO John Lansing has previously said he lost faith with "decision-making at Twitter," and that more time is needed in order to determine if Twitter can be trusted again.

A spokeswoman for NPR declined to comment further.

Musk, whose statements to reporters are regularly laced with jokes, insults or attempts at trolling, responded sarcastically when asked who would potentially take over NPR's Twitter account.

"National Pumpkin Radio," Musk wrote, adding a fire emoji and a laughing emoji to describe the content of the fictional gourd-themed broadcaster. "NPR isn't tagged as government-funded anymore, so what's the beef?"

Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Tech Reporter Bobby Allyn and edited by Business Editor Lisa Lambert. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on May 03, 2023, 09:49:54 AM
The beef is that engaging with mercurial bullies on their terms is a waste of time. Applying more mercurial bullying is not going to persuade folks otherwise.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on May 03, 2023, 12:12:32 PM
Translation: Musk confesses to the willfulness element of a prospective trademark infringement claim.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on May 04, 2023, 12:14:02 AM
So apparently Musk sent another email (at 2:19 am) after NPR published the article. No text, just the subject line "You suck."

Someone at NPR printed and framed the email.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on May 04, 2023, 12:23:32 AM
Such a child. Yet he still has so many fan boys fawning over him.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on May 04, 2023, 12:54:09 AM
Quote from: Syt on May 03, 2023, 06:31:35 AMUnder NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.

I found this interesting.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on May 04, 2023, 03:28:25 AM
Quote from: HVC on May 04, 2023, 12:23:32 AMSuch a child. Yet he still has so many fan boys fawning over him.

Maybe because they would like to act the same childish way but the world and their own timidity are forcing them to behave.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on May 04, 2023, 09:44:50 AM
Quote from: Tamas on May 04, 2023, 03:28:25 AM
Quote from: HVC on May 04, 2023, 12:23:32 AMSuch a child. Yet he still has so many fan boys fawning over him.

Maybe because they would like to act the same childish way but the world and their own timidity are forcing them to behave.

I think you're right that they'd like to be able to act similarly. I'd expect that they wish they had the insulation against consequence that comes with being a billionaire. It makes sense to be more timid in your petulance when you may actually have to pay a price for it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PDH on May 04, 2023, 09:47:40 AM
Quote from: Jacob on May 04, 2023, 09:44:50 AMI think you're right that they'd like to be able to act similarly. I'd expect that they wish they had the insulation against consequence that comes with being a billionaire. It makes sense to be more timid in your petulance when you may actually have to pay a price for it.

In their dreams, all men are douches
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on May 04, 2023, 09:50:29 AM
It was not so long ago one of our regulars argued that despite all Musk's flaws, the world would be better off with 50 more Musks.  That particular person probably regrets making that argument so stridently.  But the Musk fan club would still make the same argument.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on May 04, 2023, 10:05:32 AM
Musk making an ass of himself on twitter is not an edifying spectacle but it's not clear there is much broader societal harm.

On the flip side, there a case to be made that because of Musk, the timeline to transition to electric cars has been materially accelerated by the demonstration case provided through Tesla and the kick in the ass given to Detroit, Wolfburg, etc.

Then there is the benefits of SpaceX in terms of strengthening US based launch capabilities (previously a Russian near monopoly) and lowering of launch costs.  And the value of his provision of satellite communication services to Ukraine in its most desperate hours.

Bottom line, Musk is no Rupert Murdoch where the world would be a better place if his entire life's work were wiped out.

50 Musks would probably be too much to handle.  Another 3 or 4 might be worth putting up with.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on May 04, 2023, 10:08:48 AM
I'm no Musk fan, but that seems a fair assessment.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on May 04, 2023, 10:13:15 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 04, 2023, 09:50:29 AMIt was not so long ago one of our regulars argued that despite all Musk's flaws, the world would be better off with 50 more Musks.  That particular person probably regrets making that argument so stridently.  But the Musk fan club would still make the same argument.

I didn't make the argument, but it's at least a debatable point.

For as much of a disaster as his ownership of Twitter has been, how much does that set against the innovations of Tesla and Space X?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on May 04, 2023, 10:23:52 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 04, 2023, 09:50:29 AMIt was not so long ago one of our regulars argued that despite all Musk's flaws, the world would be better off with 50 more Musks.  That particular person probably regrets making that argument so stridently.  But the Musk fan club would still make the same argument.

Musk was useful as a hype man, a front man, a guy to generate investment and who generally left the work to the pros.

But his twitter adventure has put that role in jeopardy I think. Now I think both Tesla and SpaceX might be better off without him.  But neither would be where they are today without him.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on May 04, 2023, 10:45:57 AM
Eh, I think Musk has fucked up real bad at Twitter, but I actually start from the premise that I don't think Twitter was a great thing to begin with. A convenient way for me to keep up with sports teams I follow? Yes. Somewhat convenient way to consume tidbits of news? Yes. But on the news front, it has to be weighed against the fact that it is an incredible driver of fake and deceptive "news", and the format of the Tweet has arguably dumbed down discourse for people who engage in them. Twitter had a very mixed bag reputation prior to Musk--I will note that it actually for many years barely took action against groups like ISIS recruiting and propagandizing on Twitter.

Musk shitting up Twitter is generally bad for passionate Twitter users and for Musk's co-investors (and possibly his lenders down the line), but IMO doesn't mean that much.

Something frequently forgotten about Twitter is it was a true also-ran social network, massively exaggerated in importance by journalists because they really like Twitter. But like NPR said--they get like 1% of traffic from Twitter versus some huge number from Facebook. Despite having a "boomer" reputation, Facebook is really the 800 pound gorilla social media network. And the next after that is arguably Instagram--which is also owned by Facebook. And after that maybeit's Twitter, if you are concerned only with the English language Internet. But outside of that I'd argue the huge Chinese networks are probably more important, and for non-English speakers services like WeChat and Telegram seem much more important than Twitter.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on May 04, 2023, 10:58:48 AM
I also think it's really hard to evaluate the importance of Tesla + SpaceX as it pertains to Musk. All billionaire executives promote a sort of hagiography where they are the indispensable man. I am familiar with vanishingly few whose narratives really match that. Sometimes the history needs time to be better understood--so it can be useful to look at longer ago cases.

Bill Gates made one of the great fortunes of the 20th century, largely tied to an operating system that went hand in hand with the mass adoption of personal computing in the late 1980s into the 1990s. One could argue Gates was a pioneer who pushed computing forward in a meaningful way.

Except actual reading of the history shows there were a half dozen or more competitors in the space, some who actually got to market before Microsoft--some of whom actually had better products by almost all accounts. Gates's Mom (Gates came from a wealthy family, just like Musk) served on a charitable board with the CEO of IBM, which shocker got Gates and Paul Allen an in with IBM which got them the first contract for DOS. DOS was largely stolen from a small Seattle software firm and repackaged as a Microsoft product (the infamous movie Pirates of Silicon Valley tells a somewhat true but heavily laden with Hollywood "interpretation" story that Gates and Microsoft stole a lot of ideas for Windows first GUI from Apple and then by their marriage to IBM rushed it to market before Apple could, stealing the market--but there is a similar story involving Microsoft's pre-GUI OS, MS-DOS, which was very literally stolen from a small Seattle software firm, and then packaged for IBM.)

It is undeniable that without Gates's actions, Bill Gates would not be a mega billionaire, and Microsoft would not be one of the world's most valuable companies. But it does not seem at all likely that computing would not have developed exactly as it has developed--Gates secured himself the money and position, but IMO didn't really innovate anything, not even the business side ofit.

I would argue there's a lot of similarities to the Microsoft story and the Tesla story and Musk, except it appears Musk's largest skill was getting a lot of government funding and being able to raise more venture capital than his competitors--remember Musk took over Tesla, an extant small EV firm--there were dozens like it. I'm not really sure how much credit Musk gets for technical innovation when it appears he was just the first to suck in a lot of VC money.

SpaceX was born out of him wanting to launch some rockets with his PayPal money in the early 00s, and finding the existing launch industry really shitty. He hired a lot of people that knew what they were doing--and while some of what SpaceX has done with reusability appears to have been proposed at least 15 years prior in ULA reports (but never adopted), the ULA crowd largely never went down that path before because they had a nice revenue capture with the structure of their government contracts and actually had no real incentives to save on costs. Musk did personally disrupt this industry by going into what was largely seen as an industry dominated by a couple aerospace firms who had ironclad government connections, and no huge profit margins on the horizon for anyone else.

To me the biggest negative against SpaceX is Musk appears to genuinely want to invest most of the company's money into long range (Mars) human missions, which IMO is just a massive, massive waste of humanity's time, energy, and resources.

Cheaper satellite launches and LEO stuff is great, humans have no meaningful reason to be sent to Mars anytime in the coming decades, and attempts to do so are egregiously wasteful--and arguably in a damaging way. There's only so many top minds designing and developing rockets, and the more of them being wasted on Mars human missions, the less of them out there doing other, more important things.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on May 04, 2023, 11:33:02 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on May 04, 2023, 10:58:48 AMI also think it's really hard to evaluate the importance of Tesla + SpaceX as it pertains to Musk. All billionaire executives promote a sort of hagiography where they are the indispensable man. I am familiar with vanishingly few whose narratives really match that. Sometimes the history needs time to be better understood--so it can be useful to look at longer ago cases.

So I don't think I have any great thesis or argument to make, so I'm just going to fire off a few observations.

I don't disagree with anything you say about Bill Gates, but it's worth noting that unlike Musk (or Steve Jobs, I'll get to him) Bill Gates was actually a programmer and did write lots of the early code for Microsoft's projects.  He was an actual "doer", and not just a hype or pitch man.

Steve Jobs is also someone who comes up in these kidns of conversations.  He wasn't an engineer - it was early partner Steve Wozniak who did much of the designing of the Apple I and Apple II.  And it's well noted in history that Jobs wholescale lifted the idea of a GUI from Xerox.

Jobs is fundamentally linked though to two related inventions - the mouse-driven GUI and then the finger-driven touch screen.  People seemed quite content to use keyboards on both computers and phones up until Jobs popularized using a mouse or finger.  It seems up for debate whether those technologies would have developed and become as ubiquitous as they are without Jobs - even though he did nothing to actually invent those technologies.

So Musk - yes he's not a tech guy - he brings no technical knowledge to the table.  And both electric cars and rockets had been around for decades before he came along.  But both technologies seemed pretty stagnant until Space X and Tesla came along.  His two companies massively disrupted both areas.

SO I also think it's fair to speculate whether or not technology would have developed the way it has without Musk.

And while Otto criticizes the idea of going to Mars - remember that Starship has been selected to be part of the Artemis project to return humans to the moon.  Having that kind of heavy duty lift capability will be incredibly useful even if we never use it to go to Mars.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on May 04, 2023, 02:09:34 PM
Quote from: Barrister on May 04, 2023, 10:13:15 AMFor as much of a disaster as his ownership of Twitter has been, how much does that set against the innovations of Tesla and Space X?

Good question.  Arguably, his destruction of Twitter will do mankind more good than his work at Tesla or SpaceX.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on May 04, 2023, 03:20:30 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on May 04, 2023, 10:58:48 AMI would argue there's a lot of similarities to the Microsoft story and the Tesla story and Musk, except it appears Musk's largest skill was getting a lot of government funding and being able to raise more venture capital than his competitors--remember Musk took over Tesla, an extant small EV firm--there were dozens like it. I'm not really sure how much credit Musk gets for technical innovation when it appears he was just the first to suck in a lot of VC money.

My 2 cents is that contribution was huge.
There had always been tons of small firms dicking around with electric cars but none of them got anywhere.  Musk's contribution was to recognize that the technology and cost curve had reached the point to make it viable and commercializable, to mobilize the massive amounts of risk capital to bring it to scale, and to deploy the force of his personality behind a strong marketing concept.  IMO that is a huge contribution.

SpaceX is similar - it's all fine and dandy to say anyone could have done it given the technical possibilities, but the reality was no one did and no one was doing it until Musk came in, mobilized the capital, and make it into a viable business. 

The bird with an HQ and a bunch of production lines is worth more than 1000 birds with great ideas but nothing else.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on May 04, 2023, 03:27:23 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on May 04, 2023, 10:05:32 AMMusk making an ass of himself on twitter is not an edifying spectacle but it's not clear there is much broader societal harm.

On the flip side, there a case to be made that because of Musk, the timeline to transition to electric cars has been materially accelerated by the demonstration case provided through Tesla and the kick in the ass given to Detroit, Wolfburg, etc.

Then there is the benefits of SpaceX in terms of strengthening US based launch capabilities (previously a Russian near monopoly) and lowering of launch costs.  And the value of his provision of satellite communication services to Ukraine in its most desperate hours.

Bottom line, Musk is no Rupert Murdoch where the world would be a better place if his entire life's work were wiped out.

50 Musks would probably be too much to handle.  Another 3 or 4 might be worth putting up with.

I don't really want to go back around the argument to point out, he was not actually the doer, but more the one who was really good at taking the credit.  We need more doers, not more Musks.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on May 04, 2023, 03:28:19 PM
Quote from: grumbler on May 04, 2023, 02:09:34 PM
Quote from: Barrister on May 04, 2023, 10:13:15 AMFor as much of a disaster as his ownership of Twitter has been, how much does that set against the innovations of Tesla and Space X?

Good question.  Arguably, his destruction of Twitter will do mankind more good than his work at Tesla or SpaceX.

Truer words were never spoken.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on May 04, 2023, 04:25:22 PM
Blaming twitter for all the stupid people using it is like blaming the printing press for Mein Kampf.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on May 04, 2023, 04:37:22 PM
Quote from: Tamas on May 04, 2023, 04:25:22 PMBlaming twitter for all the stupid people using it is like blaming the printing press for Mein Kampf.



The printing press didn't enforce artificial restrictions on what you could do with it and use algorithms to make you angry.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on May 04, 2023, 05:15:30 PM
Quote from: grumbler on May 04, 2023, 02:09:34 PM
Quote from: Barrister on May 04, 2023, 10:13:15 AMFor as much of a disaster as his ownership of Twitter has been, how much does that set against the innovations of Tesla and Space X?

Good question.  Arguably, his destruction of Twitter will do mankind more good than his work at Tesla or SpaceX.

 :D
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on May 09, 2023, 09:33:11 PM
Tucker Carlson to save twitter by moving his show there.  Like rancid peanut butter and mouldy jelly. two horrible tastes that taste horribly together.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on May 09, 2023, 09:54:29 PM
I think dismissing Musk's accomplishments is a bit of motivated reasoning, and I don't recall many people doing that until he started his sharp turn to the right.  We don't dismiss the importance of a general just because the soldiers do all the fighting, and it seems extra silly to me to dismiss the importance of the person in charge of a couple of highly successful engineering companies because it's the engineers who do all the engineering.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on May 10, 2023, 01:17:23 AM
Quote from: DGuller on May 09, 2023, 09:54:29 PMI think dismissing Musk's accomplishments is a bit of motivated reasoning, and I don't recall many people doing that until he started his sharp turn to the right.  We don't dismiss the importance of a general just because the soldiers do all the fighting, and it seems extra silly to me to dismiss the importance of the person in charge of a couple of highly successful engineering companies because it's the engineers who do all the engineering.

I recall there used to be more CEO cocksucking in general.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on May 10, 2023, 04:26:29 AM
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65536392

QuoteTucker Carlson: Former Fox anchor to launch new show on Twitter

Ousted Fox News host Tucker Carlson has announced he is launching a new show on Twitter.

The announcement came in a video on the social media site two weeks after his sudden exit from Fox News.

Carlson said: "You can't have a free society if people aren't allowed to say what they think is true."

Elon Musk said Twitter had not signed a deal with the host, who would be subject to the same rules as other "content creators".

On Tuesday, Carlson said he would be bringing a "new version" of his show to Twitter soon in a message captioned "we're back".

"Twitter has long served as the place where our national conversation incubates and develops," he says in the video.

"Twitter is not a partisan site, everybody's allowed here, and we think that's a good thing."

In April, Fox News announced in a brief statement that the network and Carlson had "agreed to part ways".

His last TV programme for the network had aired just days prior.

The 53-year-old was not just a popular presenter on Fox News - with more than three million viewers tuning in on an average night - but also a hugely influential one.

His shows frequently set the agenda for conservatives and, by extension, the Republican party.

Mr Musk retweeted Carlson's video on Tuesday evening, along with a statement saying: "On this platform, unlike the one-way street of broadcast, people are able to interact, critique and refute whatever is said.

"I also want to be clear that we have not signed a deal of any kind whatsoever. Tucker is subject to the same rules & rewards of all content creators."

The ex-Fox News host's comments follow his first public remarks in late April after he was forced out of the network.

In those remarks, he lashed out at "liars trying to silence" honest people.

He ended his comments saying: "Where can you still find Americans saying true things? There aren't many places left, but there are some."

The sudden announcement of Carlson's departure came shortly after Fox News paid $787m (£631m) to settle a defamation suit brought by voting machine company Dominion.

In the suit, Dominion argued its business was harmed by Fox spreading false claims that its machines had been rigged against former President Donald Trump. The case prompted disclosures of text messages that publicly aired Carlson's private views about Mr Trump and his colleagues at Fox.

The Wall Street Journal - owned by News Corp, which also owns Fox News - reported last month that his contract was worth about $20m a year.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on May 10, 2023, 04:35:16 AM
 :glare:  :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on May 10, 2023, 04:51:38 AM
 :blush:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on May 10, 2023, 09:43:46 AM
It's nice that Tucker is beginning to be concerned with people saying true things. We can only hope that decides to do so himself.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on May 10, 2023, 11:51:05 AM
Quote from: Tamas on May 04, 2023, 04:25:22 PMBlaming twitter for all the stupid people using it is like blaming the printing press for Mein Kampf.

To be clear I blame the format and features of Twitter for creating the discourse that resulted. Though that is based on my time there from 2010 to 2014. It seemed to me that the format prevented any actual discussion of anything and generally tended to radicalize people and make them more stupid over time. And Twitter's features eagerly dished endorphin rushes to reward that kind of behavior.

Now granted all that might be different now, almost ten years later, but it was fucking true at the time I was there and I saw it.

I do not think any of those observations are equivalent to the printing press. Especially since my criticisms of Twitter were very specific to Twitter, not all social media. Maybe if there was a specific type of printing press that resulted in specific negative behaviors that resulted in Mein Kampf that might be a fair comparison.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on May 10, 2023, 01:17:27 PM
OK that's fair Valmy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on May 10, 2023, 01:41:52 PM
Quote from: Syt on May 10, 2023, 04:26:29 AM
QuoteTucker Carlson: Former Fox anchor to launch new show on Twitter
Carlson said: "You can't have a free society if people aren't allowed to say what they think is true."

Yes Tucker, that is so.

However, a free society can do just fine without people who say what they think is false (but pretend as if it's true) because they think that saying false things will help boost their company's stock price.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on May 10, 2023, 01:43:25 PM
Quote from: Jacob on May 10, 2023, 09:43:46 AMIt's nice that Tucker is beginning to be concerned with people saying true things. We can only hope that decides to do so himself.

He's only purporting to be concerned with people saying things they *think* to be true.

Still if he holds to that, it would be real progress; his prior target was people who don't think at all.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on May 10, 2023, 02:59:25 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on May 10, 2023, 01:43:25 PM
Quote from: Jacob on May 10, 2023, 09:43:46 AMIt's nice that Tucker is beginning to be concerned with people saying true things. We can only hope that decides to do so himself.

He's only purporting to be concerned with people saying things they *think* to be true.

Still if he holds to that, it would be real progress; his prior target was people who don't think at all.

So I always used to have a soft spot in my heart for Tucker.  I remember watching him on CNN's Crossfire way back in the day.

Canada doesn't get Fox News (or at least not easily) so I've never watched his show, but I'm certainly aware of the racist shit he said on it.  It made me think less of him, but I chalked it up to "well I guess he's just saying what he thinks he needs to say".

But after the text messages from the Dominion law suit discovery - he really is just a racist piece of shit, isn't he.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on May 10, 2023, 09:51:49 PM
If you really want to get pissed off, see what he has to say about Ukraine.  His show is straight Russian propaganda, clips get played straight on Russian state TV.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on May 13, 2023, 03:07:46 PM
(https://i.redd.it/2z4g4y2tomza1.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on May 13, 2023, 03:13:28 PM
Not exactly a denial there Elon  :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on May 13, 2023, 03:13:39 PM
Oh turns out Musk is a pussy who backs down in front of bullies rather than sticking to the principles of free speech he normally brays about at great volume?

What an utterly shocking surprise.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on May 13, 2023, 03:34:36 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 13, 2023, 03:13:28 PMNot exactly a denial there Elon  :hmm:

It's not only an admission, but a truly damning one.

Because my answer would clearly be that it's better for twitter to be banned entirely than to have it available only for government sources with opposition sources throttled.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on May 13, 2023, 03:37:06 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on May 13, 2023, 03:34:36 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 13, 2023, 03:13:28 PMNot exactly a denial there Elon  :hmm:

It's not only an admission, but a truly damning one.

Because my answer would clearly be that it's better for twitter to be banned entirely than to have it available only for government sources with opposition sources throttled.

Where's the profit in that? Shareholder value!

Especially important when musk is the shareholder :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on May 13, 2023, 03:59:21 PM
Just more proof that the whole "free speech" thing is pure hypocrisy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on May 14, 2023, 05:09:51 PM
Musk seems to assume that Erdogan is going to win so there is no future risk of helping him take down his opponents.

Of course is Erdogan does end up being out of office by whatever means and the opposition takes over then suddenly his decision to take a side in Turkish politics would backfire. We'll see whose brain fell out of their head.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on May 14, 2023, 08:42:05 PM
Quote from: Hamilcar on May 13, 2023, 03:59:21 PMJust more proof that the whole "free speech" thing is pure hypocrisy.

Not that we needed any more proof.

I haven't seen him try to practice his "free speech" con in a while (nopt that I'm looking) so I was wondering if even he realizes how lacking that con was.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on May 15, 2023, 09:51:47 PM
Elon is going all in on anti-Semitic Soros hate.

https://twitter.com/josephpolitano/status/1658303338553696257?s=61&t=cBoSWWDwmbHHrcVUYZ2drw
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on May 15, 2023, 09:57:26 PM
For most others I'd assume antisemitism, but for Elmo it could very well be deep seated jealous of Soros
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on May 15, 2023, 09:59:31 PM
Quote from: HVC on May 15, 2023, 09:57:26 PMFor most others I'd assume antisemitism, but for Elmo it could very well be deep seated jealous of Soros

So where does he hate Gates? Bezos?

Soros hate has a 100% overlap with antisemitism.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on May 15, 2023, 10:06:48 PM
Not sure about bezos, but he has gone after gates too.

*edit* this is the same guy that called a rescuer a pedo because he was outshined.  He has some issues beyond just being a dick.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on May 15, 2023, 10:16:21 PM
I reported the tweet for antisemitism. Not holding my breath
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on May 15, 2023, 10:18:12 PM
Quote from: Hamilcar on May 15, 2023, 10:16:21 PMI reported the tweet for antisemitism. Not holding my breath

You're going to get banned for disparaging the leader :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on May 15, 2023, 10:56:53 PM
I think Soros villanization has transcended antisemitism.  The original conspiracy theory was a dog whistle, but now it's just one of many idiocies that susceptible minds accept without question or awareness.  I remember some years ago at my extended family gathering how some of my Trumpist Jewish relatives were quoting some Soros conspiracy theories; they weren't self-hating Jews, they were just brainwashed zombie Jews.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on May 15, 2023, 11:02:46 PM
Soros dropped his Tesla stock earlier this year.

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/soros-fund-management-cut-tesla-stake-added-netflix-1st-quarter-2023-05-12/
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on May 16, 2023, 03:08:34 AM
Quote from: DGuller on May 15, 2023, 10:56:53 PMI think Soros villanization has transcended antisemitism.  The original conspiracy theory was a dog whistle, but now it's just one of many idiocies that susceptible minds accept without question or awareness.  I remember some years ago at my extended family gathering how some of my Trumpist Jewish relatives were quoting some Soros conspiracy theories; they weren't self-hating Jews, they were just brainwashed zombie Jews.

Definitely. But then thats a tonne of modern anti semitism really. The real anti semites lie at the core of it but they're clever enough to know just screaming death to the Jews isn't going to work so they mask it in such a way that a lot of people will lap it up not realising what it is.
They're really big on purposfully muddying the waters with valid Israel criticism for instance.
Its dying down now but a big one in recent years has been screeching about metropolitan liberal elites...

edit- and is if on cue here's another one that has been popular with idiots in recent times...
https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/tory-mp-condemned-for-using-cultural-marxism-slur-in-conference-speech/
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on May 16, 2023, 03:39:22 AM
Oh yes. For about a decade the Hungarian parlance was "international finance circles" (as in, groups). It was a very wink-wink term and neatly channeled anti-globalism feelings into antisemitism.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on May 16, 2023, 05:03:51 AM
Well, the whole "jews secretly run the world" thing was the first version of anti-globalism.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on May 16, 2023, 10:58:50 AM
Soros, compared to the big dogs, isn't even all that rich. If some middling billionaire can control the world we might as well just crown Bezos global emperor now.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on May 16, 2023, 11:25:26 AM
The complaint about Soros is that he's spent some money on supporting liberal democratic institutions in places across the world, is that right?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on May 16, 2023, 11:35:49 AM
Quote from: Jacob on May 16, 2023, 11:25:26 AMThe complaint about Soros is that he's spent some money on supporting liberal democratic institutions in places across the world, is that right?

His financing of NGOs doing that is the basis for the conspiracy theories I think, yes. Which to be fair is understandable from the point of the dictators of the world - the guy IS using his money and influence to thwart their goals.

Although he also financed the young Orban, so he can make mistakes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on May 16, 2023, 12:04:36 PM
Quote from: Jacob on May 16, 2023, 11:25:26 AMThe complaint about Soros is that he's spent some money on supporting liberal democratic institutions in places across the world, is that right?

Yeah but if his amount of money being given to a few causes can control the world then the world is incredibly vulnerable to every rich person on the planet.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on May 16, 2023, 12:05:34 PM
Quote from: Tamas on May 16, 2023, 11:35:49 AMAlthough he also financed the young Orban, so he can make mistakes.

Well that is gratitude for you.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on May 16, 2023, 12:59:50 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 16, 2023, 12:04:36 PMYeah but if his amount of money being given to a few causes can control the world then the world is incredibly vulnerable to every rich person on the planet.

Well yeah... but Soros (I think but am not sure, which is why I'm asking) is attempting to support democratic institutions and governance and a general liberal world order which isn't that common. Aren't most billionaires who give money either doing more apolitical stuff (like fighting malaria), being more targetted (buying politicians for specific influence reasons), or supporting reactionary agendas?

I mean, I'm running mostly on vague impressions here, but I thought Soros was putting effort into supporting civil society and democracy on a more principled level which I understand to be fairly rare?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on May 16, 2023, 01:03:36 PM
Sure but if it is possible for one billionaire, not a particularly exceptional one among many, to be this shadowy force controlling the world simply by giving what I assume is a small percentage of his fortune to a few NGOs as the conspiracy theories allege...then surely the only logical conclusion is all billionaires should be destroyed.

Warren Buffet could easily be a world wide puppet master just by sending out a rounding error of his fortune if this conspiracy theory is to be believed. Has Elon thought this through? Because he should have his fortunate confiscated if he is correct in his claim in order to save the world from what could be done with hit. He is basically claiming he has a civil nuclear weapon and only though his personal goodwill has decided not to use it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on May 16, 2023, 02:00:45 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 16, 2023, 01:03:36 PMSure but if it is possible for one billionaire, not a particularly exceptional one among many, to be this shadowy force controlling the world simply by giving what I assume is a small percentage of his fortune to a few NGOs as the conspiracy theories allege...then surely the only logical conclusion is all billionaires should be destroyed.

Warren Buffet could easily be a world wide puppet master just by sending out a rounding error of his fortune if this conspiracy theory is to be believed. Has Elon thought this through? Because he should have his fortunate confiscated if he is correct in his claim in order to save the world from what could be done with hit. He is basically claiming he has a civil nuclear weapon and only though his personal goodwill has decided not to use it.

Well the explanation is (perhaps it was Orban himself explaining) that Soros is the frontman of a "group of people".
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on May 16, 2023, 02:03:06 PM
Quote from: Tamas on May 16, 2023, 02:00:45 PMWell the explanation is (perhaps it was Orban himself explaining) that Soros is the frontman of a "group of people".

Damn. Foiled by unfalsifiable claims once again.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on May 16, 2023, 02:08:41 PM
Quote from: Tamas on May 16, 2023, 02:00:45 PMWell the explanation is (perhaps it was Orban himself explaining) that Soros is the frontman of a "group of people".

G-Damn last name palindrome people.  Those guys are truly evil.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on May 16, 2023, 02:35:56 PM
Quote from: Tamas on May 16, 2023, 02:00:45 PM
Quote from: Valmy on May 16, 2023, 01:03:36 PMSure but if it is possible for one billionaire, not a particularly exceptional one among many, to be this shadowy force controlling the world simply by giving what I assume is a small percentage of his fortune to a few NGOs as the conspiracy theories allege...then surely the only logical conclusion is all billionaires should be destroyed.

Warren Buffet could easily be a world wide puppet master just by sending out a rounding error of his fortune if this conspiracy theory is to be believed. Has Elon thought this through? Because he should have his fortunate confiscated if he is correct in his claim in order to save the world from what could be done with hit. He is basically claiming he has a civil nuclear weapon and only though his personal goodwill has decided not to use it.

Well the explanation is (perhaps it was Orban himself explaining) that Soros is the frontman of a "group of people".

:yes:
Bill Gates, The Clintons (why they're still so hated is bizzare), Epstein, Barney the dinosaur, so on.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on May 17, 2023, 12:55:12 AM
So in an interview with CNBC Musk says
- working from home is mandatory in his companies because it's more productive, but it's also morally wrong because service workers have to show up in person
- there's no proof that the Texas shooter was a white supremacist; asked about the shooter's social media accounts full of posts to that effect, he said that they were found by Bellingcat who's known to do psyops and therefore probably fabricated
- he doesn't believe Biden stole the election but that there was fraud
- he will keep saying what he wants even if it costs him money
- his comments about Soros were not anti-semitic, and if anything he's pro-semitic, also: FREE SPEECH
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on May 17, 2023, 12:59:51 AM
50 more just like him. That's the ticket.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on May 17, 2023, 07:59:35 PM
Quote from: Syt on May 17, 2023, 12:55:12 AM- there's no proof that the Texas shooter was a white supremacist; asked about the shooter's social media accounts full of posts to that effect, he said that they were found by Bellingcat who's known to do psyops and therefore probably fabricated

What would he consider proof?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on May 18, 2023, 02:36:43 AM
Quote from: Syt on May 17, 2023, 12:55:12 AMSo in an interview with CNBC Musk says
- working from home is mandatory in his companies because it's more productive, but it's also morally wrong because service workers have to show up in person
- there's no proof that the Texas shooter was a white supremacist; asked about the shooter's social media accounts full of posts to that effect, he said that they were found by Bellingcat who's known to do psyops and therefore probably fabricated
- he doesn't believe Biden stole the election but that there was fraud
- he will keep saying what he wants even if it costs him money
- his comments about Soros were not anti-semitic, and if anything he's pro-semitic, also: FREE SPEECH

Nobody other than NFT scams will ever advertise on the bird app ever again.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on May 18, 2023, 07:47:46 AM
Quote- he will keep saying what he wants even if it costs him money

Which is why Tesla and SpaceX will probably eventually have to remove him as CEO. His whole public role as CEO is to say things that make Tesla and SpaceX money, not cost them.

Of course removing him has a large cost as well, eventually that might be less than the cost of keeping him on.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on May 24, 2023, 07:33:13 PM
Under Elon Musk, Twitter has approved 83% of censorship requests by authoritarian governments (https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-05-24/under-elon-musk-twitter-has-approved-83-of-censorship-requests-by-authoritarian-governments.html)

It's nice to have numbers.

He's fighting the good fights, not letting those woke win the battle for censorship!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PJL on May 25, 2023, 03:45:32 AM
Those figures are bad but were they much better before Elon took over? Tech companies generally haven't had a great record in resisting censorship requests from authoritarian regimes in the past.

Edit - actually read the article and yes it is significantly worse under Elon.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on May 25, 2023, 03:58:54 AM
The article says it was 50% before.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on May 25, 2023, 07:31:03 AM
Quote from: PJL on May 25, 2023, 03:45:32 AMThose figures are bad but were they much better before Elon took over? Tech companies generally haven't had a great record in resisting censorship requests from authoritarian regimes in the past.

Edit - actually read the article and yes it is significantly worse under Elon.

Elon is particularly vulnerable to this kind of corrupt bargain because of his other business interests. The regimes can hit him by attacking Tesla and SpaceX if he doesn't do what they want with Twitter, old Twitter didn't have that problem to this extent.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on May 25, 2023, 07:34:17 AM
Yes. Massive investments/supply chains in China and partnering with Saudi investors/funds - I think as much as anything else that was reason to worry about him buying a social media company.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on May 25, 2023, 05:50:18 PM
Tesla Whistleblower dumps 100gb of reports to German news site (https://jalopnik.com/whistleblower-drops-100-gigabytes-of-tesla-secrets-to-g-1850476542)

Elon is going to cover this extensively on Twitter, the free speech platform. ;)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on May 26, 2023, 02:39:04 AM
https://www.politico.eu/article/twitter-to-pull-back-from-europes-disinformation-crusadwe/

QuoteTwitter to pull back from Europe's disinformation crusade
EU commissioner Thierry Breton has said he would personally hold site owner Elon Musk to account for complying with the bloc's content rules.

Twitter is on the verge of withdrawing from one of the Europe Union's efforts to stamp out disinformation.

In the coming days, the social networking giant, which is owned by Elon Musk, is expected to end its participation in the bloc's code of practice of disinformation, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter, who were granted anonymity to speak to discuss internal discussions between the company and the European Commission.

The code of practice is a voluntary rulebook that was revamped last year and includes obligations for companies like Twitter, Meta and Alphabet to track political advertising, stop the monetization of disinformation, and provide greater access to these platforms to outsiders. While not mandatory, companies' participation in the code was designed to help offset some of these firms' obligations within the separate, and mandatory, Digital Services Act — new social media rules that include fines of up to 6 percent of a company's annual revenue.

A Commission spokesman said that as the code of practice was voluntary, it was up to individual companies to determine if they would participate. So far, the spokesman added, Twitter had not complied with its obligations under the code.

An email sent to Twitter for comment was returned with a poop emoji.

Twitter is expected to officially withdraw as a so-called co-signatory of the code of practice sometime next week after Musk officially signs off, according to one of the individuals who spoke to POLITICO. Ever since the billionaire fired half of Twitter's employees last fall, the company has drastically pulled back its participation in Europe's online content rulebook, and

was the only tech giant that failed to meet its transparency obligations under quarterly reports mandated under the code of practice.

Thierry Breton, Europe's internal markets commissioner, has publicly stated he would personally hold Musk to account for complying with the bloc's content rules, though Twitter's decision to withdraw from the code of practice on disinformation directly goes against that pledge.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on May 26, 2023, 12:27:28 PM
Makes sense. I expect Musk's play is to become the market leader in monetizing disinformation and serving the needs of the enemies of the West and democracy in the Western social media space. It could potentially be a good revenue stream.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on May 26, 2023, 12:42:57 PM
That 44 billion US$  isn't gonna pay for itself.  He's got to do something.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on May 27, 2023, 12:33:54 PM
Quote from: celedhring on May 26, 2023, 02:39:04 AMhttps://www.politico.eu/article/twitter-to-pull-back-from-europes-disinformation-crusadwe/
Although I'd note that tech lawyers and civil liberties groups about some of these laws (which the code of practice supports). It's true of the Digital Services Act and the UK's Online Harms Bill, which is worse because it's becoming a real christmas tree piece of legislation.

These are laws that are aiming to target real problems online like disinformation (though I'm less sure on that), content promoting self harm or eating disorders etc. There's good stuff in them about enhancing transparency and rights of users.

But there are really worrying things in these laws. To an extent they outsource the quasi-regulatory duties to large platforms like Twitter, Meta and Google - as Thierry Breton noted the law will still apply to Twitter, which it will. The corollary of that is that European law on those issues will be primarily enforced by teams run by Elon Musk. It is particularly concerning around, in the terms of the UK law, content that is "harmful but legal" where the platforms are required to take action against content based on the "harm" it has rather than its legality.

In the EU context there is a legal right for national judicial or administrative authorities (so basically any government agency) to issue mandatory takedown orders directly to the platforms. This is a power that doesn't require a judicial order or anything like that as power isn't limited to the courts instead you have a very broad set of state actors who can make the determination that content is unlawful and order removed from platforms (largely through geo-blocking, though there are powers for EU wide or worldwide orders).

A similarly broad range of state entities can order platforms to unmask their users or disclose their data to that agency. The recitals of the law (which are persuasive, but not law) say obviously this needs to be done in line with GDPR etc - I'd just point out that GDPR doesn't apply to law enforcement agencies or national security/intelligence agencies (this leads to the common irony that, in some ways, Europeans' data is vastly more protected if it's transferred outside of Europe :lol:). Again there is no requirement for a court order, however there is a right to appeal.

There's also issues around trusted flaggers - again there's not really any checks and balances or udicial oversight. Some platforms have these types of systems in place already. But trusted flaggers at a European level include Europol (recently discovered to have been holding "billions of points of information" about EU residents unlawfully) and at a national level can include law enforcement or even for profit companies.

The example always given in the EU is Hungary or Poland and sligthly generic rule of law issues. But I think a better one would maybe be France - Macron has already tried to criminalise filming policy acting in the course of their duties, largely in response to people filming police violence against protesters. You add those powers up and you could easily see states trying to scrub the internet of films of police violence or misconduct and using their powers to identify the source, or, from a Polish example, targeting abortion providers - both of which have been accused by states in the past of constituting "disinformation". And obviously one of the issues with the way the law works is if failure can get a fine of 6% of turnover and some of the tasks are quasi-regulatory on platforms, my suspicion is they'll take a very risk-averse approach to avoid fines that may not be in the public interest - obviously it also makes it difficult to challenge the use of similar legislation by, say, Turkey or India (or social media companies complying with them).

There's a real challenge with these laws because they're normally presented as solutions to various issues online and often have quite a lot of support from specific in those sectors - for example disinformation, cyber-bullying, eating disorders etc. They are also often framed in this way of good European regulation v bad American (or Musky) platforms (needless to say that's the preferred framing for European/UK lawmakers - digital wild west v ordered regulation). But in my experience when you speak to specialists in the area whether tech lawyers or tech journalists or civil liberties groups (especially those focused on privacy and online rights) find them very concerning.

Edit: It's not to say that we shouldn't regulate or that it's just all too hard - but I think in the EU and the UK the focus has been on laws that I think get the balance wrong. In part it's just challenging, you have experts worrying about the impact of disinformation on our democracies or the parents of children who killed themselves after cyber-bullying, or spending lots of time looking at self-harm videos - and in political and press terms those are very persuasive arguments around problems that need fixing. As ever worrying about state over-reach or the impact on other forms of speech of such broadly drawn laws is less popular and resonates less with the public and politicians. As I say you even see this within newsrooms of single papers where the home affairs or political correspondents paint it as trying to fix real problems v corporate lobbying and American social media companies; but you read tech reporters from the same newsroom and they'll be raising exactly the concerns I've just flagged.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on May 30, 2023, 12:34:30 AM
(https://i.redd.it/qhqdkd1wwu2b1.jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on May 30, 2023, 12:45:06 AM
I'm starting to think he's been replaced by a beta version of a ChatGPT competitor.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on June 10, 2023, 05:45:28 AM
Hooray, Twitter is saved! :w00t:

(https://i.redd.it/s0cre9cj945b1.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on June 10, 2023, 08:07:09 AM
Twitter creators are a thing?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on June 10, 2023, 10:25:39 PM
More of Twitter not paying its bills.  This time, not paying Google cloud services for security.
Twitter is refusing to pay its Google Cloud bills (https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-is-refusing-pay-its-google-cloud-bills-platformer-2023-06-10/)


QuoteJune 10 (Reuters) - Twitter has refused to pay its Google Cloud bills (GOOGL.O) as its contract comes up for renewal this month, which could result in the social media company's trust and safety teams being crippled, Platformer reported on Saturday.
Before Elon Musk's takeover of the social media platform last year, Twitter signed a multi-year contract with Google related to fighting spam and protecting accounts, among other things, the report said.

[...]
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on June 10, 2023, 11:51:23 PM
Quote from: Josquius on June 10, 2023, 08:07:09 AMTwitter creators are a thing?

Well, I guess it's a scheme to pay Tucker Carlson for putting his content on Twitter. :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on June 22, 2023, 09:44:52 PM
So, looks like Elon and Zuckerberg are game for a cage match. Strange times.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on June 23, 2023, 04:26:43 AM
My money is on Zuck.  :ph34r:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on June 23, 2023, 04:54:58 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on June 23, 2023, 04:26:43 AMMy money is on Zuck.  :ph34r:

100%
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on June 23, 2023, 05:35:19 AM
Really odd framing in the Guardian of new EU law that will impact Twitter: "Platform agrees to comply with tough EU disinformation rules".

They're not medieval barons who agree to comply with laws or not. It's the law, they're subject to it. Can't help but feel the whole tech sector could do with a salutary smack of state power (as has happened with previous sectors like oil and gas, railways etc) <_<
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on June 23, 2023, 05:40:00 AM
 Not even a contest that Zuckerberg would win.  Man I'd love to see it happen.

QuoteThey're not medieval barons who agree to comply with laws or not. It's the law, they're subject to it. Can't help but feel the whole tech sector could do with a salutary smack of state power (as has happened with previous sectors like oil and gas, railways etc) <_<
The move of so much of the economy online is another area where the age of nationalism is waning. Even an EU level isn't big enough to properly govern an internet giant. They could always totally block it of course... but that isn't happening and would carry a lot of risks.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on June 23, 2023, 05:54:09 AM
Quote from: Josquius on June 23, 2023, 05:40:00 AMThe move of so much of the economy online is another area where the age of nationalism is waning. Even an EU level isn't big enough to properly govern an internet giant. They could always totally block it of course... but that isn't happening and would carry a lot of risks.
I totally disagree. They're paper tigers.

There are some things that I think they would not accept and would just move out of a market - I think compromising end to end encryption for example is something WhatsApp have said would make them pull out of the UK and I think that's probably true.

But the UK regulator wrote a code of conduct (not even an act of parliament) and after years of warning that it would make operating in the UK impossible, that they couldn't comply, every single big platform changed all of their policies on how they manage children's data. Often they applied the changes globally. Although they never acknowledged it was because of that code, they just all happened to change their policies in the week before it took effect :lol:

Similarly with Australia's mandatory barganing with media organisations. Facebook and Google threatened to pull out and turn off the internet in Australia. I think they had one week of reduced service to show what was coming. The law passed. They all complied and 9 figure sums are now being paid to Australian media companies for the re-use of their content. I think the exact same rulebook is being run in Canada right now.

It's a complicated area and there are lots of competing interests, but they're no more all globally powerful than the oil majors were, before their humbling. It just requires the state to actually act and not indulge in this pathetic learned helplessness in front of tech bros <_<
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on June 23, 2023, 09:45:49 AM
Quote from: HVC on June 22, 2023, 09:44:52 PMSo, looks like Elon and Zuckerberg are game for a cage match. Strange times.

Literally? Or metaphorically?

What's happening?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on June 23, 2023, 09:47:53 AM
Quote from: Jacob on June 23, 2023, 09:45:49 AM
Quote from: HVC on June 22, 2023, 09:44:52 PMSo, looks like Elon and Zuckerberg are game for a cage match. Strange times.

Literally? Or metaphorically?

What's happening?

if they wimp out and fight in the metaverse I will be very disappointed
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on June 23, 2023, 09:54:48 AM
Quote from: Jacob on June 23, 2023, 09:45:49 AM
Quote from: HVC on June 22, 2023, 09:44:52 PMSo, looks like Elon and Zuckerberg are game for a cage match. Strange times.

Literally? Or metaphorically?

What's happening?

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/22/elon-musk-and-mark-zuckerberg-had-beef-before-cage-match-challenge.html

Meta is supposedly working on a competitor to Twitter; Musk said something along the lines of social media public being completely under Zuckerberg's thumb. To which Zuckerberg responded that at least things would be sane. After which Musk issued the challenge. Zuckerberg has recently been into jiu-jitsu and winning tournaments, while Musk ... well.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on June 23, 2023, 10:32:43 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on June 23, 2023, 05:35:19 AMReally odd framing in the Guardian of new EU law that will impact Twitter: "Platform agrees to comply with tough EU disinformation rules".

They're not medieval barons who agree to comply with laws or not. It's the law, they're subject to it. Can't help but feel the whole tech sector could do with a salutary smack of state power (as has happened with previous sectors like oil and gas, railways etc) <_<
They can definitely choose to not comply, by exiting the markets subject to the rules.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on June 23, 2023, 11:43:39 AM
Quote from: DGuller on June 23, 2023, 10:32:43 AMThey can definitely choose to not comply, by exiting the markets subject to the rules.

Of course. That is a thing they can choose to do.

It'll mean foregoing some revenue and, more importantly I think, it'll mean letting go of non-trivial pieces of their portfolio that supports their market positions.

I mean, say Google and Facebook both exit Europe. That'll leave a gap for sure. It wouldn't be super shocking if companies like Microsoft or Amazon step in to fill the gap (depending on what areas are left open, of course) either directly, or simply by purchasing whatever start-ups fill up the room left by the exits.

Challenging Google and FB in their remaining non-European markets is likely going to be significantly easier if you're expanding from a dominant European position rather than trying to bootstrap as a competitor in markets where Google and FB dominate (which includes Europe as long as Google and FB do not exit the markets), which is a threat to those companies.

... and if then US regulators decide that the EU standards are worth emulating, that's not going to make things any better for the companies that are not complying.

In any case, I suspect Sheilbh meant "cannot simply choose to not comply while continuing to operate." They can, as you say, stop their operations - but the question is whether that's a good actual move on their side (as opposed to as a threat).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on June 23, 2023, 11:50:47 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on June 23, 2023, 05:35:19 AM"Platform agrees to comply with tough EU disinformation rules".

that's going to go off the rails fast
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on June 23, 2023, 12:14:47 PM
Quote from: Jacob on June 23, 2023, 11:43:39 AMIn any case, I suspect Sheilbh meant "cannot simply choose to not comply while continuing to operate." They can, as you say, stop their operations - but the question is whether that's a good actual move on their side (as opposed to as a threat).
Exactly. There is no element of choice about it.

I'd add EU (and UK - and Californian) tech law often has an extra-territorial element. So it's ore obvious if you're operating in a jurisdiction, but those laws bite if you are monitoring (tracking online/collecting data of) European/UK/Californian residents wherever you are based. Obviously it's practically more difficult for regulators to enforce, but it's not as simple as turning off google.fr.

QuoteIt'll mean foregoing some revenue and, more importantly I think, it'll mean letting go of non-trivial pieces of their portfolio that supports their market positions.
Well also possibly importantly the data of all of those residents which we don't really know what they do with - and from the disclosure in the ongoing case against Facebook in California, it's not clear that they really know where all that data is going and what's being done to it.

I think there is something to the hoary old line that if you're not paying for a product, you are the product - and definitely in the case of the tech companies.

QuoteI mean, say Google and Facebook both exit Europe. That'll leave a gap for sure. It wouldn't be super shocking if companies like Microsoft or Amazon step in to fill the gap (depending on what areas are left open, of course) either directly, or simply by purchasing whatever start-ups fill up the room left by the exits.
Also I think there's evidence of regulators - especially in competition - starting to really coordinate and hunt as a pack. It's possibly particularly important in the US as the US is obviously central but also it's a judicial procedure which can be uncertain, while in Europe it's administrative.

But for example the UK decision on Microsoft and Activision which there were reports they were just going to ignore then got cited in arguments by the FTC (I think) in seeking emergency injunctive powers to stop any moves towards a merger. Similarly just last week the EU competition chief has announced thhat they will require Google to divest itself of part of its ad business (which it absolutely needs to from a competition perspective - speaking from a publisher's perspective :ph34r:) - I think that mirrors the ask of the FTC (possibly) and a collection of state AGs in the US courts and is again being picked up in their filings.

As I say I think there's an element of learned helplessness in the face of big tech that we rapidly need to snap out of - and some are.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on June 23, 2023, 01:05:11 PM
(https://i.redd.it/aeagwoa8tr7b1.jpg)

 :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on June 23, 2023, 01:51:23 PM
 :hmm: That does seem rather statistically unlikely.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on June 23, 2023, 05:24:43 PM
They lost more than they gained and it works on simple arithmetic?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on June 30, 2023, 02:25:02 PM
I mentioned the worry about states like Hungary using these digital regulations, but thought France may be a bigger, quicker risk - and it's already happened.

With the current unrest France has now summoned the platforms to remind them of their legal responsibility to respond to "immediately" state requests including to "remove content inciting hatred and violence" and to "identify infringing users".

This unrest is directed at the state and particularly the police, and was provoked by the shooting of a 17 year old boy (of Algerian descent from a banlieue) who'd been pulled over for a traffic stop. The CRS have been ordered in.

Meanwhile the French police union has issued a statement describing their situation as being "faced with wild hordes", that it isn't enough to call for calm - it and "republican order" must be imposed. It ends "today the police are in combat because we are at war. Tomorrow we will be in resistance and the Government will have to realise this."

Again fully get the need to regulate the platforms and the primacy of democratic states over large multi-nationals, but I'm still a little worried about exactly what authorities can use these laws and to what ends.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 01, 2023, 10:14:05 AM
So it seems you can't browse Twitter any more without having an account "temporarily":

(https://i.redd.it/fb4hsofnn79b1.jpg)

And I've seen on Reddit that apparently there's now a "Scroll limit", i.e. how often/quickly you can load more Tweets by scrolling down in your feed.

(https://i.redd.it/hipiiaddoc9b1.jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 01, 2023, 10:22:19 AM
That I can actually believe.

I mean, I can also believe alternate explanations - but wanting to stop ChatGPT et. al. to build from Twitter data makes sense to me.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on July 01, 2023, 12:30:09 PM
Yeah I can believe it.

Publisher sites in the UK have seen a huge increase in the number of crawlers across their sites. It's not always clear who but I think the assumption is that a lot of it are companies building up their language models for AI.

Obviously there are lots of IP issues which is generally an isue at the minute.

It would surprise me if Twitter isn't affected by that as well. Having said that, given the nature of Twitter's business and social media in general, I'm not sure this is a solution that's going to help them.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 01, 2023, 12:49:13 PM
Yeah exactly.

What I'd try for if I controlled Twitter would be to build partnerships with some companies and explicitly allow them to use my data, while making a statement that Twitter is not granting any permissions to anyone else (though it's of course unclear whether Twitter can withhold permissions until it's legislated or litigated).

There may, of course, be plenty of reasons why that strategy is unfeasible but playing the "I'm taking my ball and going home" card doesn't seem super congruent with Twitter's business model as I understand it. That said, it seems that Musk's vision of Twitter is more closed and controlled that the previous iteration so maybe it's not that off.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on July 01, 2023, 12:56:10 PM
Yeah.

My understanding is that the IP position is really unclear until, as you say, someone litigates or legislates. The AI companies in the US think they're in a far stronger position based on "fair use" but I've no idea how strong that is.

Also from a media perspective, I'm not sure that you'd want to keep embedding tweets in articles/liveblogs now if it's actually just presenting readers with a sign up page.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on July 01, 2023, 01:00:27 PM
If this sticks then all the people whose careers are built entirely on Twitter are screwed.

Sorry Fabrizio Romano  :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 01, 2023, 01:31:13 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 01, 2023, 12:56:10 PMMy understanding is that the IP position is really unclear until, as you say, someone litigates or legislates. The AI companies in the US think they're in a far stronger position based on "fair use" but I've no idea how strong that is.

I wonder if that's Twitter's play then - to require sign up to access and then have a term of service prohibiting crawling/ using in AI training? Does fair use trump terms of service?

QuoteAlso from a media perspective, I'm not sure that you'd want to keep embedding tweets in articles/liveblogs now if it's actually just presenting readers with a sign up page.

Definitely.

Certainly seems like there's room for some challengers in the Twitter space at the moment.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on July 01, 2023, 01:43:00 PM
I'm perfectly fine with measures that make access to twitter more difficult.  Access causes more problems than it solves.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on July 01, 2023, 01:55:40 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 01, 2023, 01:31:13 PMI wonder if that's Twitter's play then - to require sign up to access and then have a term of service prohibiting crawling/ using in AI training? Does fair use trump terms of service?
Maybe - although all websites even without sign up will have T&Cs which normally include restrictions on using copyrighted material. I think it's more about putting the website itself behind a sign-up/sign on gate which would make it more difficult for bots to access for AI training.

Basically a tecnical rather than a legal solution.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on July 01, 2023, 01:57:06 PM
My access to Ukraine war news and footage would drop very very significabtly without twitter
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on July 01, 2023, 02:01:18 PM
Quote from: Tamas on July 01, 2023, 01:57:06 PMMy access to Ukraine war news and footage would drop very very significabtly without twitter
Yeah - same.

It's the thing that annoys me about all of this. I joined Twitter because of the Arab Spring - and obviously you need to curate who you follow - but it is still one of the best ways to access information about news as it's happening (especially as many journalists are tweet first rather than just posting links to their articles). It is, I think, still a very valuable information space.

Although, as I say, you need to curate/manage it - I always think unless you are prominent with 10,000s of followers (or accidentally go viral) - if you're seeing lots of far-right/conspiracy/hateful content you're basically just telling on yourself.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on July 01, 2023, 02:47:52 PM
Users who are not paying for Blue are now limited to reading 600 tweets per day. I've deleted the app.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 01, 2023, 02:49:43 PM
Quote from: Hamilcar on July 01, 2023, 02:47:52 PMUsers who are not paying for Blue are now limited to reading 600 tweets per day.

:lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on July 01, 2023, 02:51:38 PM
It's pure product suicide. Does Elon hate Twitter this much?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on July 01, 2023, 02:53:52 PM
I'm sure there's a BingTM alternative :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on July 01, 2023, 02:57:03 PM
I can't wait for a stable, moderated version from Microsoft, Meta or Google.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on July 01, 2023, 02:58:04 PM
So apparently the problem is that Elon decide to just not pay his GCP bill.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 01, 2023, 03:00:18 PM
Saw this comment. Tech talkers, does this make sense? :unsure:

QuoteWhen Elon Musk announced the price changes for Twitter APIs, people predicted that this exact situation would happen.

Free Twitter APIs were introduced to reduce scraping. People want to know what's going on twitter no matter what and they will scrape the site if they have to. If you give them free APIs, you can reduce the network traffic, lighten the load, and you have better control of everything.

So he put prices that made the APIs unusable. People went back to scraping. Load is higher and extreme measures have to be taken. Exactly as predicted.

Does scraping vs. using API really make so much of a difference?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on July 01, 2023, 03:04:00 PM
Quote from: Syt on July 01, 2023, 03:00:18 PMSaw this comment. Tech talkers, does this make sense? :unsure:

QuoteWhen Elon Musk announced the price changes for Twitter APIs, people predicted that this exact situation would happen.

Free Twitter APIs were introduced to reduce scraping. People want to know what's going on twitter no matter what and they will scrape the site if they have to. If you give them free APIs, you can reduce the network traffic, lighten the load, and you have better control of everything.

So he put prices that made the APIs unusable. People went back to scraping. Load is higher and extreme measures have to be taken. Exactly as predicted.

Does scraping vs. using API really make so much of a difference?

No he literally refused to pay is Google Cloud Platform Bill and Google throttled/cut him off. He is BSing.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on July 01, 2023, 03:05:45 PM
I guess? Loading every element of pages vs just some data trimmed of everything superfluous.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on July 01, 2023, 03:06:30 PM
Could Google throw up a "Twitter hasn't paid its bills" page, because that would be hilarious.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 01, 2023, 03:17:33 PM
Quote from: Hamilcar on July 01, 2023, 02:47:52 PMUsers who are not paying for Blue are now limited to reading 600 tweets per day. I've deleted the app.

For real?  :wacko:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on July 01, 2023, 03:19:47 PM
Quote from: Syt on July 01, 2023, 03:00:18 PMDoes scraping vs. using API really make so much of a difference?
It depends. Again it's not a social media platform but from a media publishing perspective - scraping v API has a technical impact (and cost). Also bluntly you don't really know what companies that are scraping your site are necessarily doing (you can't identify all of them) or how they're using that data. An API would massively help mitigate it.

The industry is quite keen to move to that model but it would kill off some businesses ("ad safety" vendors especially) and also basically restrict and introduce a cost to other companies who can currently do what they want for free (Oracle, Google etc). But that's because the people actually hosting the site are bearing the cost.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 01, 2023, 03:22:41 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 01, 2023, 03:17:33 PMFor real?  :wacko:

(https://i.redd.it/uze4b5vczd9b1.jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 01, 2023, 03:23:01 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 01, 2023, 03:19:47 PM
Quote from: Syt on July 01, 2023, 03:00:18 PMDoes scraping vs. using API really make so much of a difference?
It depends. Again it's not a social media platform but from a media publishing perspective - scraping v API has a technical impact (and cost). Also bluntly you don't really know what companies that are scraping your site are necessarily doing (you can't identify all of them) or how they're using that data. An API would massively help mitigate it.

The industry is quite keen to move to that model but it would kill off some businesses ("ad safety" vendors especially) and also basically restrict and introduce a cost to other companies who can currently do what they want for free (Oracle, Google etc). But that's because the people actually hosting the site are bearing the cost.

Thanks for the explanation. :)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 01, 2023, 03:28:55 PM
https://sfba.social/@sysop408/110639435788921057

QuoteThis is hilarious. It appears that Twitter is DDOSing itself.

The Twitter home feed's been down for most of this morning. Even though nothing loads, the Twitter website never stops trying and trying.

In the first video, notice the error message that I'm being rate limited. Then notice the jiggling scrollbar on the right.

The second video shows why it's jiggling. Twitter is firing off about 10 requests a second to itself to try and fetch content that never arrives because Elon's latest genius innovation is to block people from being able to read Twitter without logging in.

This likely created some hellish conditions that the engineers never envisioned and so we get this comedy of errors resulting in the most epic of self-owns, the self-DDOS.

Unbelievable. It's amateur hour.

#TwitterDown #MastodonMigration #DDOS #TwitterFail #SelfDDOS

QuoteLest anyone doubt that Twitter was idiotic enough to release code that would cause a race condition and result in its own users executing a DDOS attack on it, here's the network console readout from Firefox showing all the network requests blasting away.

Of course I immediately closed out my connection because I'm a good person. Oh, but it's the weekend and Evil Sheldon is in control so I kept the party going for a while since Twitter insisted on it.

#TwitterDown #Twitter #MastodonMigration #DDOS #TwitterFail #SelfDDOS

(images at link)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on July 01, 2023, 05:58:21 PM
Quote from: Syt on July 01, 2023, 03:22:41 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 01, 2023, 03:17:33 PMFor real?  :wacko:

(https://i.redd.it/uze4b5vczd9b1.jpg)

Relax. Soon afterward he announced he's raising the limit to 800.

I'm not joking.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on July 01, 2023, 10:00:29 PM
It seems like at least some of the problem is related to Musk deciding to not honor the $1bn cloud hosting contract Twitter signed with Google. There was apparently a deadline of 6/30 to get all their cloud stuff off of Google Cloud--the reporting is not entirely clear if that is a Google imposed deadline (I doubt that), or just Musk's internal deadline because he wants to get off that platform since the status of the contract is disputed.

They apparently have some technology they use to automoderate some "bad stuff" (including child porn) that was one of the things they were running on Google Cloud, and some observers are saying that it is clearly no longer functioning correctly.

I don't know what else they were running on Google cloud, but the order by Musk to migrate everything off of it was not even a month ago, and that seems like a really big undertaking if they had a lot of stuff on there. Since the contract Musk is refusing to honor was $1bn, that's a pretty big cloud contract so my assumption is they have a ton of core Twitter systems running on it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on July 02, 2023, 02:25:50 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 01, 2023, 12:56:10 PMYeah.

My understanding is that the IP position is really unclear until, as you say, someone litigates or legislates. The AI companies in the US think they're in a far stronger position based on "fair use" but I've no idea how strong that is.

Also from a media perspective, I'm not sure that you'd want to keep embedding tweets in articles/liveblogs now if it's actually just presenting readers with a sign up page.

I saw on buzzfeed embedded tweets still load, it is just that you can't actually go to Twitter to see the tweet. So if it was a quote tweet of a video, you can't watch the video it quoted.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Legbiter on July 02, 2023, 08:50:13 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 01, 2023, 02:01:18 PMIt's the thing that annoys me about all of this. I joined Twitter because of the Arab Spring - and obviously you need to curate who you follow - but it is still one of the best ways to access information about news as it's happening (especially as many journalists are tweet first rather than just posting links to their articles). It is, I think, still a very valuable information space.

Yeah I follow some really great genetics, history and Ukraine accounts on there. I notice I'm seeing the media headlines 3 to 7 days in advance.

I religiously block loud, annoying shit accounts. Also blocking certain words is a really effective timeline sanitizer.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on July 02, 2023, 05:31:03 PM
So I dunno, but I think for me Mastodon is much better than Twitter. First off the bat--I have never been someone who uses Twitter for the communication aspect. My grand total number of Tweets is zero, as are my Tweet replies.

I essentially used it as a quasi-replacement for my old RSS feed readers and exclusively followed information sources I was interested in.

When things started to get shitty on Twitter, I rolled an account on the Vivaldi instance of Mastodon, and started following news accounts. Pretty quickly I had around one hundred. I also found a lot of "individuals" I followed for certain news were also either on there directly, or on there via "proxy." While I don't know all the details, prominent people on other social networks it appears individuals are "mirroring" them onto Mastodon. It looks like this is through a service calling itself a "Twitter to ActivityPub" bridge.

It essentially just reads Tweets of people and reposts them, it has a certain list of people it mirrors, but seems to have all of the high follower accounts.

The developer of that project was well aware Twitter was never going to keep their API open and free, so it was never built using that--he apparently has a cloud of various Twitter accounts that are all used to actually login to the page and read the actually Tweets (obviously using code and screen scraping, no one is manually doing this), and even during this weekend's general Twitter problem he has been able to keep it running since he is using actual logged in, verified accounts.

The nice thing about Mastodon is it basically has no algorithm at all. My feed is the people I have chosen to follow and nothing else. No one is trying to make me see new stuff, no one is trying to sell me anything etc. No one who pays Eon Musk $8/mo gets priority in my feed or anything like that.

Now, where Mastodon is pretty awful is it is a little unintuitive to get an account going, which is going to block 95% of users. It also doesn't have a good "social graph" if you're a "creator."

The people who are going to hate Mastodon are the people who Tweet a lot, reply a lot, and get dopamine hits off of getting likes and ReTweets, and people who currently have tons of Twitter followers and value "engagement" with their followers.

But for someone just looking to passively consume information, I haven't missed Twitter one bit.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on July 02, 2023, 05:43:38 PM
No algorithm sounds nice.
The whole bunch of seperate networks thing less so.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on July 03, 2023, 01:32:06 AM
When I briefly looked into Mastodon and saw that there were a whole bunch of different networks, I rolled my eyes and stopped looking further.  How can you build a network without understanding the network effect?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on July 03, 2023, 08:05:51 AM
So one of life's consolations is Trump will die within a few years and we're get to live the rest of our lives without his inane utterances distrubing the peace.

Onthe other hand, given Musk's age and the age profile here, he'll outlive a lot of Languishites, so perhaps half of use will have to put up with his bullshit for the rest of our lives. :(
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on July 04, 2023, 04:26:34 AM
I looked at mastodon. Seems nice enough. But dead.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on July 04, 2023, 06:00:16 AM
What Mastodon needs is a giant company to make a server. Like an ISP or maybe something like ESPN/Sky Sports.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on July 04, 2023, 07:06:32 AM
Instagram launching Threads which seem to be their Twitter replacement app (and also accidentally triggering a generation of middle-aged Brits :console:).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on July 04, 2023, 08:45:15 AM
Threads seems the most likely one-to-one replacement. I'm hopeful. I'm done with Twitter.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 04, 2023, 09:02:07 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 04, 2023, 07:06:32 AMInstagram launching Threads which seem to be their Twitter replacement app (and also accidentally triggering a generation of middle-aged Brits :console:).

(https://coldwar.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/threads-cover-rt-1.jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Richard Hakluyt on July 04, 2023, 09:09:05 AM
Time for an 80s style joke :

Person 1 : They nuked Sheffield.

Person 2 : Really? How could they tell?


Northern cities were at their nadir round about 1984; I remember passing through Manchester then (a city I didn't know back then) and it really resembled a disused car park.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on July 04, 2023, 10:04:17 AM
:lol: Yeah I think that's very deliberate. Nuclear devastation destroying our cities and society: we're already there.

I mean the writer wrote Kes and was a long time collaborator with Loach. Although my favourite Threads trivia is that the director would later go on to direct The Bodyguard :huh:

Separately and just on the AI angle Google have just updated their public terms that basically says if you publish anything on the internet that's open, they will use it to train their AI models. They've amended the section that referred to using it for the language models and Google Translate to also include their AI models, Bard and Cloud AI.

There's a technical side and an IP side (and a wider rights side in relation to individuals putting data on social media) - not sure Musk's "solution" will work, but I'm not sure there's not a real issue there.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on July 04, 2023, 11:23:47 AM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on July 04, 2023, 09:09:05 AMTime for an 80s style joke :

Person 1 : They nuked Sheffield.

Person 2 : Really? How could they tell?


Northern cities were at their nadir round about 1984; I remember passing through Manchester then (a city I didn't know back then) and it really resembled a disused car park.


I went to Manchester just before covid.
It's pretty much the same. Just with more glass.  :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on July 04, 2023, 11:39:13 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 04, 2023, 10:04:17 AM:lol: Yeah I think that's very deliberate. Nuclear devastation destroying our cities and society: we're already there.

I mean the writer wrote Kes and was a long time collaborator with Loach. Although my favourite Threads trivia is that the director would later go on to direct The Bodyguard :huh:

Separately and just on the AI angle Google have just updated their public terms that basically says if you publish anything on the internet that's open, they will use it to train their AI models. They've amended the section that referred to using it for the language models and Google Translate to also include their AI models, Bard and Cloud AI.

There's a technical side and an IP side (and a wider rights side in relation to individuals putting data on social media) - not sure Musk's "solution" will work, but I'm not sure there's not a real issue there.

I wonder what the AIs are 'learning' from Languish? :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on July 04, 2023, 01:26:23 PM
Killing tweetdeck is a deal breaker. This is how I've always use twitter. I am not learning a new way.  Hopefully Threads will have the same functionality.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Legbiter on July 04, 2023, 02:03:41 PM
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on July 04, 2023, 09:09:05 AMTime for an 80s style joke :

Person 1 : They nuked Sheffield.

Person 2 : Really? How could they tell?


Northern cities were at their nadir round about 1984; I remember passing through Manchester then (a city I didn't know back then) and it really resembled a disused car park.


Speaking of Threads I only saw it first a few years ago on Youtube of all places. I still have the sex-for-rats barter scene seared into my brain.  :yucky: 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on July 04, 2023, 05:17:41 PM
Quote from: DGuller on July 03, 2023, 01:32:06 AMWhen I briefly looked into Mastodon and saw that there were a whole bunch of different networks, I rolled my eyes and stopped looking further.  How can you build a network without understanding the network effect?

It ends up that really isn't relevant if you're just looking to follow a bunch of news sources. Something like 85% of Mastodon servers are federated with each other, and most of that 15% are all people in instances that are very deliberately curated spaces where their users expect not to be linked with a lot of other instances.

As best I can tell no one involved in the Fediverse (best thought of as a buzz word name for the open source AcitivityPub Protocol) is actively very interested in building a big social network. Mastodon has no shareholders, and no one makes money off of more people coming to the platform, so the sort of incentives a regular network cares about just don't exist for the open source developers or the instance operators. In fact--the opposite may actually be true, right now if you're running a big instance you probably are considering shutting down sign ups, most of the instances actually cost their hobbyist admins out of pocket money to run. This is because all the big instances are just funded by donations, and unfortunately the userbase isn't very generous with donating.

It is honestly better compared to a technology like IRC than a corporate owned "platform" like Facebook or Twitter.

IRC was largely used by enthusiasts, was largely not something that became a major profit driver for anyone, and was essentially just a useful communication protocol for the people who wanted to use it. Due to the nature of IRC it would have been difficult to monetize it, which is why all the people who went on to monetize internet chat deliberately chose to use private chat protocols they controlled.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 06, 2023, 10:26:05 AM
Well, Threads has launched with huge sign up numbers ... except in the EU because the whole data privacy that has been a headache for Meta previously still needs sorting out. :D
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on July 06, 2023, 10:39:43 AM
Hard to say how big Threads gets--the fact that multiple big players are gunning for Twitter users certainly doesn't help Musk with all the other negatives swirling around Twitter.

You can definitely tell Meta is a little more in tune with how social networks work--Threads was clearly designed around the understanding that the celebrity / influencer users who basically create the lion's share of the "content" people consume are extremely valuable, and the "social graph" is very valuable to them. Threads is designed to let those people "port" their social graph over to Threads.

Now on a societal level is it a net good for Zuckerberg to own the next Twitter? No--in fact for various reasons privacy advocates, media supporters etc should be very leery of anything Zuck touches. But most people aren't picking social media based on how they think the platform will affect society. And in truth picking between Musk and Zuck is basically a classic "pick your poison" situation.

I don't fully think Twitter as it existed before Musk ever gets replaced, feels more likely to me that no direct analogue really develops, for a number of reasons. Twitter itself likely is in a decline that won't be reversed, but it has a few hundred million users so the tail end on that decline will be long.

However the financial realities of them owing $1bn/yr in debt payments and losing 50% of their revenue (which was not enough to keep them in the green before they had those debt payments) suggests a reckoning may come sooner or later. Musk has the personal wealth to simply bail Twitter out if he wants, but it is unclear if he wants to do so if it comes to it, he has been fighting pretty hard to avoid paying any of Twitter's bills, which suggests he has some level of fiscal hesitance at just rolling money into the company.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on July 06, 2023, 10:45:53 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on July 06, 2023, 10:39:43 AMHard to say how big Threads gets--the fact that multiple big players are gunning for Twitter users certainly doesn't help Musk with all the other negatives swirling around Twitter.

You can definitely tell Meta is a little more in tune with how social networks work--Threads was clearly designed around the understanding that the celebrity / influencer users who basically create the lion's share of the "content" people consume are extremely valuable, and the "social graph" is very valuable to them. Threads is designed to let those people "port" their social graph over to Threads.

Now on a societal level is it a net good for Zuckerberg to own the next Twitter? No--in fact for various reasons privacy advocates, media supporters etc should be very leery of anything Zuck touches. But most people aren't picking social media based on how they think the platform will affect society. And in truth picking between Musk and Zuck is basically a classic "pick your poison" situation.

I don't fully think Twitter as it existed before Musk ever gets replaced, feels more likely to me that no direct analogue really develops, for a number of reasons. Twitter itself likely is in a decline that won't be reversed, but it has a few hundred million users so the tail end on that decline will be long.

However the financial realities of them owing $1bn/yr in debt payments and losing 50% of their revenue (which was not enough to keep them in the green before they had those debt payments) suggests a reckoning may come sooner or later. Musk has the personal wealth to simply bail Twitter out if he wants, but it is unclear if he wants to do so if it comes to it, he has been fighting pretty hard to avoid paying any of Twitter's bills, which suggests he has some level of fiscal hesitance at just rolling money into the company.

The thing about Twitter is the network effect.  People use Twitter not because it's the best technical platform - they use it because other people they are interested in also use it.

Which is why I won't be using Threads any time soon - I'm a content consumer, not creator, so I'd need to see Threads having just as much content as Twitter.

Musk has the wealth to support Twitter, but not the cashflow.  I doubt very much he's willing to just keep selling Tesla stock in order to roll it into Twitter.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on July 06, 2023, 10:48:11 AM
Well that is where Threads is pretty ingenious. Thread is built off of Instagram, which is full of content creators--in fact Instagram is about 2.5x larger than Twitter, and Meta made sure to do a roll out the red carpets move so almost all the major "high profile" (aka blue check) accounts on Instagram already had accounts before Threads even went public.

One of the big things I noticed on Threads is basically every single major news outlet in America and Britain, and all the sports outlets, had presences before it went live. Largely because all of those entities already had Instagram presences and Threads just let them migrate over.

It's a real risk to Twitter as I see it.

Threads has apparently hit 30 million accounts already.

That's pretty scary if you're Twitter, most of these accounts are going to be North American, where Twitter only had around 65 million accounts (back before Musk, when they reported user data.)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 06, 2023, 11:45:13 AM
(https://i.redd.it/d03cjhpu6dab1.jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on July 06, 2023, 12:48:16 PM
Quote from: Barrister on July 06, 2023, 10:45:53 AMWhich is why I won't be using Threads any time soon - I'm a content consumer, not creator, so I'd need to see Threads having just as much content as Twitter.

It does look like every content creator is already there tho.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on July 06, 2023, 12:55:03 PM
It is kind of funny because there is little doubt in my mind Facebook has done more to allow the spread of virulent extremist ideologies on the right than any other platform. Not necessarily because they have the worst moderation (although their moderation was and has been pretty terrible), but I think mostly because Facebook is just so huge--and its user base in terms of very active users tilts much older than other social platforms so it has a lot of older white folks on it, who make up most of those embracing these sort of ideologies.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 06, 2023, 03:02:10 PM
(https://i.redd.it/8m9cscx76eab1.jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on July 06, 2023, 03:10:00 PM
Threads isn't even available on the Web?  Seriously?  :wacko:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on July 06, 2023, 03:11:48 PM
So no one can hire people twitter fired?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 06, 2023, 03:17:26 PM
Preservation letters (which this is) have become a routine litigation tactic.  It puts the party receiving the letter to a considerable expense and administrative burden.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on July 06, 2023, 03:19:56 PM
Elon threatening to sue a rival platform because he drove away his own customers to it is immense bozo energy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on July 06, 2023, 03:27:28 PM
Quote from: DGuller on July 06, 2023, 03:10:00 PMThreads isn't even available on the Web?  Seriously?  :wacko:

Yeah but no one really cares about that tbh. It's 2023, everyone uses their phone for this stuff.

The biggest deal breaker is you can't curate your own feed via lists, at least not yet. You also can't view your feed chronologically.

These are supposedly in the works but who knows if that is true or not.

Anyway, I've actually been using it and after a couple days of liking and following people who I would normally read on Twitter, Threads' algorithm has mainly worked out the kind of stuff I use social media for. It's okay so far.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 06, 2023, 03:27:49 PM
Quote from: FunkMonk on July 06, 2023, 03:19:56 PMElon threatening to sue a rival platform because he drove away his own customers to it is immense bozo energy.

Yes and it might be the only hope he has to recoup at least a part of the investment he made. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on July 06, 2023, 03:28:36 PM
Quote from: FunkMonk on July 06, 2023, 03:27:28 PMYeah but no one really cares about that tbh. It's 2023, everyone uses their phone for this stuff.
Not everyone, I don't.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on July 06, 2023, 03:32:53 PM
How dare you poach staff I fired en masse!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on July 06, 2023, 03:39:25 PM
Quote from: DGuller on July 06, 2023, 03:28:36 PM
Quote from: FunkMonk on July 06, 2023, 03:27:28 PMYeah but no one really cares about that tbh. It's 2023, everyone uses their phone for this stuff.
Not everyone, I don't.

Sir you're so far out of the demographic the social media titans are searching for you might as well be living on Easter Island.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on July 06, 2023, 03:40:33 PM
Quote from: FunkMonk on July 06, 2023, 03:27:28 PM
Quote from: DGuller on July 06, 2023, 03:10:00 PMThreads isn't even available on the Web?  Seriously?  :wacko:

Yeah but no one really cares about that tbh. It's 2023, everyone uses their phone for this stuff.

The biggest deal breaker is you can't curate your own feed via lists, at least not yet. You also can't view your feed chronologically.

These are supposedly in the works but who knows if that is true or not.

Anyway, I've actually been using it and after a couple days of liking and following people who I would normally read on Twitter, Threads' algorithm has mainly worked out the kind of stuff I use social media for. It's okay so far.

My guess is they are genuinely working on it--but I also think they were happy to launch without it "by design." They didn't want new users opening an empty feed, so they wanted to have a big faucet running of "popular" posters so people felt they had something to engage with, find new accounts to follow etc.

My guess is they may even have the feed filtering stuff already ready to go and are waiting for a certain threshold of user mass before turning it on.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 06, 2023, 10:31:58 PM
I assume Elon's lawyers would prefer he hadn't tweeted this last year?

(https://preview.redd.it/ih72loh06fab1.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=78de434ca7b28d95a3f85b76dad21780901e33d8)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 07, 2023, 08:23:28 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on July 06, 2023, 12:55:03 PMIt is kind of funny because there is little doubt in my mind Facebook has done more to allow the spread of virulent extremist ideologies on the right than any other platform. Not necessarily because they have the worst moderation (although their moderation was and has been pretty terrible), but I think mostly because Facebook is just so huge--and its user base in terms of very active users tilts much older than other social platforms so it has a lot of older white folks on it, who make up most of those embracing these sort of ideologies.

Overcoming the inertia of leaving an established platform with an established user base is a challenge. I'm not following Twitch much anymore, but I keep seeing news that they're making things worse for streamers, but there's no *real* alternative to them (maybe YouTube, but I think they're still nowhere near Twitch's market share for live gaming streams?), and the ... (trying to word this neutral) ... "changes" at Twitter has a lot of people ready to jump ship if there's an option that provides reasonable continuity for the users.

I guess this comic sums it up. :P

(https://i.redd.it/awwwthquviab1.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on July 07, 2023, 08:25:09 AM
Keep thinking I should sign up there just to secure a user name...but facebook.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on July 07, 2023, 08:58:01 AM
Yeah.

Purely from a data and ethics perspective I think Facebook are vastly worse than Twitter. Though obvs I still use WhatsApp and Instagram.

I see lots of people pointing out that Insta and Twitter people are different and I think there is something to that. I always remember a Buzzfeed article on it about politicians (back from when Ed Miliband was leader) that basically on 90% of social media (especially Twitter) literally anything a politician said would be met with a torrent of abuse in the replies and quotes - the exception was Insta where the likes rolled in and people who left comments were basically being positive and nice :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on July 07, 2023, 09:37:31 AM
I largely think Twitter's goose is cooked.

Mind you Jack Dorsey Twitter was not really profitable. Musk Twitter is definitely going to be a lower userbase version of the platform--lots of people have already left, Musk won't share numbers but insiders have leaked some of it, and it is unlikely it is going to grow again. Remember, Dorsey Twitter was no longer really growing much either, its growth curve had long been stagnant.

I think the "style" of Twitter has more limited appeal to a lot of people than the mega platforms, always had.

Threads feels a lot more like Instagram--fun celeb posts, sports, local news. Twitter has always been rough and political, and note that Instagram has like 2.5x the users of Twitter, the simple reality is more people are looking for a simple fun experience than they "whatever" Twitter is.

When I see a lot of my local news outlets, literally every national media outlet, all the big sports outlets--including many of the major sports media figures, major pop stars, major celeb influencers, major athletes, etc on Threads day 1 and Threads is already at 60m--the platform has all the stuff it needs right now to be a viable alternative to Twitter.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on July 07, 2023, 12:01:32 PM
Beyond Musk's typical mismanagement, his current stuff at Twitter is actually breaking the core "network effect" of Twitter as a platform. It is making it harder for Twitter users to communicate with each other, harder for certain institutional uses of Twitter (which drive overall Twitter engagement) and it has also eviscerated a traditional strength of Twitter--being a service one can use to "link" information to people off platform. This has always been a good thing for Twitter because it gets more eyeballs on their feed.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/07/twitter-national-weather-service-safety

QuoteNew Twitter rules restrict US weather service, raising safety fears

Limits on number of tweets users can see have prevented National Weather Service from receiving key reports

Twitter's new volume limits on viewing posts suddenly left several National Weather Service (NWS) offices across the US unable to receive tweets from storm spotters who help with tracking extreme weather, including during storms this week – prompting safety warnings.

NWS Boulder in Colorado announced on 4 July that due to Twitter's limits, implemented as part of Elon Musk's abrupt changes to the platform's usability late last month, "we are unable to access most tweets at this time. Send reports to our other social media accounts or direct through our email/phone lines." The story was first reported by the Denver Post.

"If you are a storm spotter, head to weather.gov/bou/spotters for additional info," the office said, adding shortly afterwards: "While we have found some workarounds to view specific tweets, we are not able to efficiently sift through this during active severe weather events. Thank you for your understanding. Automated watches and warnings will still disseminate as normal, but no other tweets are planned."

The NWS office in Wakefield, Virginia, announced similar impacts, local media reported, saying: "Due to new limits on the number of tweets an account can view per day, we may be unable to see tweeted reports of severe weather and associated damage. Please contact our office directly at 757-899-2415 with any reports."

The Wilmington, North Carolina, office tweeted the same message and directed users to submit their severe weather alerts to a Google Form instead.

In response to a user saying, "Someone said if you access twitter through their website instead of the app that the limits don't apply. I'm assuming it's worth a try," the Wakefield office replied: "Unfortunately, it doesn't matter on our end. We still have significant problems using Twitter on both a mobile device and a PC."

Musk imposed a viewing limit on the majority of users who use the service, restricting unverified accounts to viewing 600 tweets a day. A day later, the limit increased to 1,000.

In a statement to the Guardian on Thursday, the national office of the NWS said: "Twitter's new post-viewing limits serve as a reminder for people to have multiple ways of receiving weather information and alerts. Our use of Twitter is impacted by the new changes. However, Twitter is supplemental to other ways we receive storm reports and disseminate watches and warnings, not an official channel."

The tweets by NWS offices triggered backlash against Musk and Twitter, the platform he took ownership of last year, with some saying the change was potentially life-threatening.

"This is dangerous, @elonmusk. Thousands of people in Colorado depend on information from the National Weather Service in times of severe weather (as is currently happening) to stay safe. There must be another way to fix whatever you deemed to be wrong at Twitter," one TV news producer in Denver wrote.

An Appalachian user wrote: "As a storm chaser I have communicated with federal agencies as well as news companies in both the US and Canada through the years, and Twitter is by far the easiest way to do this. Twitter is a major tool in helping warn the public of dangerous weather conditions and a collapse or severe degradation of the website is going to ultimately end up with somebody being killed."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 07, 2023, 12:48:29 PM
It's truly a wonder to behold.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 07, 2023, 01:29:15 PM
[Redacted]
Please don't post personal information about other users in a publicly accessible forum if they haven't shared that information first - Jacob
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 07, 2023, 11:41:55 PM
https://www.reuters.com/legal/elon-musk-sues-wachtell-law-firm-recoup-fees-twitter-buyout-2023-07-07/

QuoteElon Musk sues Wachtell law firm to recoup fees from Twitter buyout

July 7 (Reuters) - Elon Musk has sued the elite law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to recover most of a $90 million fee it received from Twitter for defeating his bid to walk away from his $44 billion buyout of the social media company.

The complaint by Musk's X Corp, which owns Twitter, was filed on Wednesday in the California Superior Court in San Francisco.

Musk accused Wachtell of exploiting Twitter by accepting, in the final days before the Oct. 27, 2022, buyout closed, huge "success" fees doled out by departing Twitter executives who were grateful that Musk would be forced to close.

The world's richest person, who also runs Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) and SpaceX, called the $90 million payout "unconscionable," given that Wachtell had billed less than one-third that sum for its few months of work on the Delaware lawsuit.

"Wachtell arranged to effectively line its pockets with funds from the company cash register while the keys were being handed over" to Musk, the complaint said
.

Musk wants to recoup "excess" fees that Wachtell charged under an agreement signed on the day of closing by one of its partners and Twitter's chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde.

The complaint also quoted former Twitter director Martha Lane Fox who, upon learning how much lawyers would be paid, emailed general counsel Sean Edgett: "O My Freaking God."

Wachtell did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Gadde, Fox and Edgett are not parties to the lawsuit.

Twitter has been involved in a slew of actual or threatened litigation since Musk's buyout.

These include many lawsuits by landlords, vendors and consultants accusing Musk of stiffing them on bills, and a threatened lawsuit by Twitter against Mark Zuckerberg's Meta Platforms (META.O) over the latter's new Threads app.

Wachtell is no stranger to lawsuits by billionaires over buyouts, having spent years litigating with Carl Icahn over his 2012 hostile takeover of CVR Energy (CVI.N).

In 2018, a judge dismissed a malpractice claim by Icahn, who found himself on the hook to pay banks that helped defend CVR against the takeover higher fees than if the merger failed.

The case is X Corp v Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, California Superior Court, County of San Francisco, No. CGC-23-607461.


(https://i.redd.it/bt2zwn46elab1.jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on July 08, 2023, 02:50:24 AM
Jesus Christ Elon
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 08, 2023, 05:26:12 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 08, 2023, 02:50:24 AMJesus Christ Elon

Rumour is that is the way Twitter employees must now address him.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on July 08, 2023, 10:19:59 AM
By the way that law firm has been sued by another famous billionaire investor mad they bested him--Carl Icahn. After many years of litigation Carl didn't get a dime. I suspect they aren't too worried about litigation.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on July 08, 2023, 10:30:17 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 08, 2023, 05:26:12 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 08, 2023, 02:50:24 AMJesus Christ Elon

Rumour is that is the way Twitter employees must now address him.

:pinch:  Low blow.




Well done!  :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on July 08, 2023, 10:30:55 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on July 08, 2023, 10:19:59 AMBy the way that law firm has been sued by another famous billionaire investor mad they bested him--Carl Icahn. After many years of litigation Carl didn't get a dime. I suspect they aren't too worried about litigation.

They must have a good lawyer.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on July 08, 2023, 11:52:12 AM
OK, so I don't think anyone can accuse me of being a Musk fanboi.

And I'm definitely not saying Musk/Twitter is going to win.

But I can see a certain merit to the lawsuit.    I mean it's one thing to bill with a "heavy pen", where you're quite liberal with what time you bill (and a NY white shoe firm like Wachtell has to bill at an astronomical rate).  But you can't necessarily just hand out an arbitrary bill with a "success fee".

Now that being said it all depends on the retainer letter, and I'd like to think that a firm like Wachtell would have covered themselves in that respect.  But I'm not 100% sure of that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 08, 2023, 03:23:11 PM
Quote from: Barrister on July 08, 2023, 11:52:12 AMOK, so I don't think anyone can accuse me of being a Musk fanboi.

And I'm definitely not saying Musk/Twitter is going to win.

But I can see a certain merit to the lawsuit.    I mean it's one thing to bill with a "heavy pen", where you're quite liberal with what time you bill (and a NY white shoe firm like Wachtell has to bill at an astronomical rate).  But you can't necessarily just hand out an arbitrary bill with a "success fee".

Now that being said it all depends on the retainer letter, and I'd like to think that a firm like Wachtell would have covered themselves in that respect.  But I'm not 100% sure of that.


Premiums for success are pretty much a standard form term in retainer agreements these days for any kind of commercial litigation. I'd be surprised if this law firm didn't have it in their retainer agreement.

It's a joke of a lawsuit, because Elon is mixing up the identity of who the proper plaintive is. If the people who benefitted from forcing Elon musk to buy the shares, we're worried about the terms of the retainer agreement then they would have a valid complaint.

But even then the bill wouldn't be settled through litigation. It would be settled through court registrars hearing.

Mask essentially suing, because the law firm did too good of a job for their then clients.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on July 08, 2023, 03:37:31 PM
Also it just feels incredibly difficult to argue that the board of a multi billion company able to afford Wachtell were somehow bamboozled by them into overpaying. They're a sophisticated commercial party - I'd expect any court to give this pretty short shrift unless there's, say, fraud.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on July 08, 2023, 04:59:19 PM
I don't know any of the legalese involved, I defaulted to assuming Musk's suit was without merit based on:

1. He apparently has decided meritless lawsuits are a major recreational hobby the last year
2. This firm is so prestigious and powerful I was very skeptical they didn't have their bases covered
3. I assume getting a mosquito to give back the blood it has sucked is easier than getting a white shoe law firm to disgorge itself of its fees.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 10, 2023, 03:51:23 AM
(https://i.redd.it/xed6a4lny1bb1.jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on July 10, 2023, 04:00:49 AM
Musk was not the best hill for Berkut to die on.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on July 10, 2023, 04:15:14 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 10, 2023, 04:00:49 AMMusk was not the best hill for Berkut to die on.

Threads not the same without someone championing Elmo


As for the dick measuring contest, Zucks  been with his wife for 20 years, and musk can't hold onto a woman. Make of that what you will
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on July 10, 2023, 04:17:01 AM
Also, the plane tracking guy joined threads. So that's gotta annoy musk too.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 10, 2023, 05:38:11 AM
Quote from: HVC on July 10, 2023, 04:15:14 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 10, 2023, 04:00:49 AMMusk was not the best hill for Berkut to die on.

Threads not the same without someone championing Elmo


As for the dick measuring contest, Zucks  been with his wife for 20 years, and musk can't hold onto a woman. Make of that what you will

I mean ... the contrast is stark. Not a fan of Zuckerberg in general, but next to Musk he starts looking like Albert Schweitzer.

(https://i.postimg.cc/6q64HRSw-/image.png)

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on July 10, 2023, 06:51:09 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 10, 2023, 04:00:49 AMMusk was not the best hill for Berkut to die on.

What happened to Berkut? Did he get so embarrassed about being clearly wrong about Musk that he quit the forum?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on July 10, 2023, 08:39:44 AM
I'm assuming he had your typical late stage internet emotional meltdown.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on July 10, 2023, 09:57:44 AM
Berkut still visits.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on July 10, 2023, 10:08:58 AM
Quote from: FunkMonk on July 10, 2023, 06:51:09 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 10, 2023, 04:00:49 AMMusk was not the best hill for Berkut to die on.

What happened to Berkut? Did he get so embarrassed about being clearly wrong about Musk that he quit the forum?

He's named after a Russian jet so embarrassment is in order.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on July 10, 2023, 10:12:43 AM
I thought he was named after a brutal Ukrainian riot police.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 11, 2023, 02:16:20 AM
Well, at least the Taliban are endorsing Twitter.

(https://i.redd.it/2wfxagu666bb1.jpg)

https://twitter.com/AnasHaqqani313/status/1678395006279876609
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anas_Haqqani
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on July 11, 2023, 04:51:51 AM
The taliban are really against intolerance.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 12, 2023, 12:41:48 AM
(https://i.imgur.com/cXmApqo.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on July 12, 2023, 02:49:24 AM
What a triumvirate.  :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on July 12, 2023, 10:42:02 AM
Not what I expected

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F0x4FdkacAENTFN?format=jpg&name=large)

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 12, 2023, 11:15:58 AM
When the cage match was proposed, I read that he has been doing MMA workouts for a few years, so confirmation of that story.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on July 12, 2023, 11:22:49 AM
I think he's actually won some tournies. Still I imagined him as a lanky computer nerd :D
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on July 12, 2023, 02:57:28 PM
Quote from: HVC on July 12, 2023, 11:22:49 AMI think he's actually won some tournies. Still I imagined him as a lanky computer nerd :D

I mean he still is - he's just a really fit, lanky, computer nerd.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 12, 2023, 03:49:10 PM
Quote from: Barrister on July 12, 2023, 02:57:28 PM
Quote from: HVC on July 12, 2023, 11:22:49 AMI think he's actually won some tournies. Still I imagined him as a lanky computer nerd :D

I mean he still is - he's just a really fit, lanky, computer nerd.
A really fit, lanky, computer nerd VS a pot smoking loudmouth engineer.
Should be an interesting 1 minute 30 seconds fight.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on July 12, 2023, 03:58:44 PM
Quote from: viper37 on July 12, 2023, 03:49:10 PM
Quote from: Barrister on July 12, 2023, 02:57:28 PM
Quote from: HVC on July 12, 2023, 11:22:49 AMI think he's actually won some tournies. Still I imagined him as a lanky computer nerd :D

I mean he still is - he's just a really fit, lanky, computer nerd.
A really fit, lanky, computer nerd VS a pot smoking loudmouth engineer.
Should be an interesting 1 minute 30 seconds fight.


I feel like I need to point out that Musk is a pot smoking loudmouth.  He's not an engineer.  He has bachelor degrees in physics and economics.

Zuckerberg on the other hand dropped out of Harvard computer science once Facebook started growing.  So I guess computer nerd still works.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on July 12, 2023, 04:01:29 PM
If zucks pulls of a "why are you hitting yourself" during the match it'll be glorious.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 12, 2023, 04:02:17 PM
Are they actually going to fight? It's not just internet posturing?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on July 12, 2023, 04:03:12 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 12, 2023, 04:02:17 PMAre they actually going to fight? It's not just internet posturing?

Probably not. More so because I don't think musk would. But it'd really be funny to watch. All 30 seconds of it. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on July 12, 2023, 04:06:06 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 12, 2023, 04:02:17 PMAre they actually going to fight? It's not just internet posturing?

Almost certainly just Musk shitposting.

Zuck might have actually done it.  But then again it's clear he'd win.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 12, 2023, 05:50:40 PM
Quote from: HVC on July 12, 2023, 04:03:12 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 12, 2023, 04:02:17 PMAre they actually going to fight? It's not just internet posturing?

Probably not. More so because I don't think musk would. But it'd really be funny to watch. All 30 seconds of it. 
Musk hired Georges St-Pierre to train him.  Assuming GSP doesn't resign before the presumed fight, he's going to last at least 1min.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 12, 2023, 05:51:01 PM
Quote from: Barrister on July 12, 2023, 03:58:44 PM
Quote from: viper37 on July 12, 2023, 03:49:10 PM
Quote from: Barrister on July 12, 2023, 02:57:28 PM
Quote from: HVC on July 12, 2023, 11:22:49 AMI think he's actually won some tournies. Still I imagined him as a lanky computer nerd :D

I mean he still is - he's just a really fit, lanky, computer nerd.
A really fit, lanky, computer nerd VS a pot smoking loudmouth engineer.
Should be an interesting 1 minute 30 seconds fight.


I feel like I need to point out that Musk is a pot smoking loudmouth.  He's not an engineer.  He has bachelor degrees in physics and economics.

Zuckerberg on the other hand dropped out of Harvard computer science once Facebook started growing.  So I guess computer nerd still works.
Duly noted.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tonitrus on July 12, 2023, 08:11:55 PM
I cannot tell how pointy the elbows are, but man do those knees look like raw meat.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 12, 2023, 08:34:00 PM
Quote from: viper37 on July 12, 2023, 05:50:40 PM
Quote from: HVC on July 12, 2023, 04:03:12 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 12, 2023, 04:02:17 PMAre they actually going to fight? It's not just internet posturing?

Probably not. More so because I don't think musk would. But it'd really be funny to watch. All 30 seconds of it. 
Musk hired Georges St-Pierre to train him.  Assuming GSP doesn't resign before the presumed fight, he's going to last at least 1min.


For the training to have any effect on performance Elon would have to actually train, unlike most of his accomplishments he cannot simply take credit for the work of others and hope to survive.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on July 12, 2023, 08:45:39 PM
Musk is a fat boy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 13, 2023, 09:41:23 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 12, 2023, 08:34:00 PM
Quote from: viper37 on July 12, 2023, 05:50:40 PMMusk hired Georges St-Pierre to train him.  Assuming GSP doesn't resign before the presumed fight, he's going to last at least 1min.


For the training to have any effect on performance Elon would have to actually train, unlike most of his accomplishments he cannot simply take credit for the work of others and hope to survive.
That's why I said "assuming he doesn't resign".  If Musk isn't serious in his training, GSP will quit.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 14, 2023, 06:56:18 AM
Why would he turn down money for nothing?  He already apparently accepted money to work with Musk, once you take that plunge why why would he stop?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on July 14, 2023, 08:53:27 AM
And Musk is building an AI - which explains why he's so antsy about others scraping Twitter (and on that I see the FTC is taking action against OpenAI over the sourcing of its data).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on July 14, 2023, 08:54:45 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 14, 2023, 08:53:27 AMAnd Musk is building an AI - which explains why he's so antsy about others scraping Twitter (and on that I see the FTC is taking action against OpenAI over the sourcing of its data).

Aren't there rules against using your interests in unrelated companies unfairly?

But this isn't just twitter. Reddit's locking down is mostly in response to AI scraping I hear.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 15, 2023, 04:11:23 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 14, 2023, 06:56:18 AMWhy would he turn down money for nothing?  He already apparently accepted money to work with Musk, once you take that plunge why why would he stop?
Because he is a professional, and he would prefer to work with someone who is serious.  If Musk isn't serious, he will walk away from the money.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 15, 2023, 04:12:30 PM
Quote from: Josquius on July 14, 2023, 08:54:45 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 14, 2023, 08:53:27 AMReddit's locking down is mostly in response to AI scraping I hear.
Yeah, but there's a lot of bullshit going on with Reddit and their schemes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 15, 2023, 05:32:04 PM
Quote from: viper37 on July 15, 2023, 04:11:23 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 14, 2023, 06:56:18 AMWhy would he turn down money for nothing?  He already apparently accepted money to work with Musk, once you take that plunge why why would he stop?
Because he is a professional, and he would prefer to work with someone who is serious.  If Musk isn't serious, he will walk away from the money.


Do you know that musk has a lot of lawyers working for him right?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on July 15, 2023, 06:00:56 PM
GSP is not that professional. Dude did take bet99 and Disney's money.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 16, 2023, 01:59:21 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on July 15, 2023, 06:00:56 PMGSP is not that professional. Dude did take bet99 and Disney's money.

In the way you guys are using the word he is the consummate professional. He's just being paid for what he does.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 16, 2023, 02:41:53 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 15, 2023, 05:32:04 PM
Quote from: viper37 on July 15, 2023, 04:11:23 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 14, 2023, 06:56:18 AMWhy would he turn down money for nothing?  He already apparently accepted money to work with Musk, once you take that plunge why why would he stop?
Because he is a professional, and he would prefer to work with someone who is serious.  If Musk isn't serious, he will walk away from the money.


Do you know that musk has a lot of lawyers working for him right?
Doesn't mean that GSP hasn't drafted his contract with his own lawyer and his own clause.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 16, 2023, 02:44:31 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on July 15, 2023, 06:00:56 PMGSP is not that professional. Dude did take bet99 and Disney's money.
Lots of athletes take gambling sites' money to advertise them.  Lots of stars are on Disney's payroll too.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on July 16, 2023, 07:03:39 PM
Sellouts, the lot of them.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on July 16, 2023, 09:21:08 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on July 16, 2023, 07:03:39 PMSellouts, the lot of them.

Without corporate advertising dollars the professional sports leagues would not exist.  Professional sports "sold out" a long time ago.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 16, 2023, 10:42:02 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on July 16, 2023, 07:03:39 PMSellouts, the lot of them.
Yes they are.  Lots of Habs players made ads for McD after all.  And Crosby was advertising for Tim Horton's for a while.  I doubt he buys that shit coffee. :yucky:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on July 17, 2023, 08:44:51 AM
What, are hockey players too good for Tim Horton's?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 17, 2023, 08:55:28 AM
Quote from: viper37 on July 16, 2023, 02:41:53 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 15, 2023, 05:32:04 PM
Quote from: viper37 on July 15, 2023, 04:11:23 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 14, 2023, 06:56:18 AMWhy would he turn down money for nothing?  He already apparently accepted money to work with Musk, once you take that plunge why why would he stop?
Because he is a professional, and he would prefer to work with someone who is serious.  If Musk isn't serious, he will walk away from the money.


Do you know that musk has a lot of lawyers working for him right?
Doesn't mean that GSP hasn't drafted his contract with his own lawyer and his own clause.


You missed the point. Musk has a lot of professionals working for him. Despite the fact he can't be taken seriously at this point.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 17, 2023, 08:57:00 AM
Quote from: Valmy on July 17, 2023, 08:44:51 AMWhat, are hockey players too good for Tim Horton's?

If so, all hockey players who started out in Tim Hortons sponsored teams need to hang their heads in shame.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on July 17, 2023, 03:13:57 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 17, 2023, 08:55:28 AMYou missed the point. Musk has a lot of professionals working for him. Despite the fact he can't be taken seriously at this point.
Ah.

Well, I just meant that if GSP sees that Musk doesn't want to train, he'll walk away before the fight.  If the fight goes on.

I'm not sure it will go on, but you never know with Musk.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on July 21, 2023, 08:54:03 AM
Just saw this but a little old. There's a new EU law that's been talked about a lot in this thread (the DSA) which is often described as anti-disinformation etc and is basically a regulation for the big platform.

The EU Commissioner responsible has responded positively to Macron's suggestion that the law could be used to basically shut down social media and certain content during riots or public unrest. Note Breton uses "immediately" four times in that very short quote. I'd also add that under this law the public authorities who can make these demands of social media platform are incredibly broadly defined (but would include the police, intelligence services etc) and do not require a court order - it's an administrative process. So basically everything civil libertarians warned about is confirmed within about six months of the law passing which feels like a rather unfortunate record <_<
QuoteSocial media riot shutdowns possible under EU content law, top official says
Thierry Breton responds to French President Emmanuel Macron's idea.
By Clothilde Goujard and Nicolas Camut   
July 10, 2023 11:07 am CET

Social media platforms like TikTok and Snapchat will face possible shutdowns when they don't crack down on problematic content during riots under the European Union's content law, Internal Commissioner Thierry Breton said Monday.

Breton, a French politician, was responding in a French radio interview to comments by French President Emmanuel Macron that floated closing down some social media to clamp down on riots. Some critics likened this to measures seen in authoritarian states like China and Iran.

"When there is hateful content, content that calls – for example – for revolt, that also calls for killing and burning of cars, they will be required to delete [the content] immediately," Breton said in the interview on France Info, citing the Digital Services Act which will impose new requirements on large platforms from August 25.

"If they fail to do so, they will be immediately sanctioned. We have teams who can intervene immediately," he said. "If they don't act immediately, then yes, at that point we'll be able not only to impose a fine but also to ban the operation [of the platforms] on our territory."


Nineteen very large online platforms including TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter will have to comply with new legal obligations to limit the spread of illegal and harmful content from next month. Platforms with over 45 million users in the EU will also have to hand the Commission a first detailed assessment of their major risks for users. They risk potential fines of up to 6 percent of their global revenue.

Breton also said the Commission will carry out a "stress test" on TikTok next week to check how ready it is to comply with the new rules. Twitter has already done a test and Meta has agreed to be tested this month.

The message from the EU here is that internet shutdowns are a permissible tool in responding to civil unrest and that the DSA provides a legitimising model for their use and rapid deployment. I suspect it'll be copied by less savoury regimes who will be able to say they're simply following European best practice. It feels like if a European country has (as France just did) a catalyst like the killing of Nahel that we'll see social media restrictions very quickly - it might stop the spread of inciting content, but it is also very likely to stop the spread of real grievances.

And I know I keep flagging it (because it's also working its way into UK law) - and I am far from a free speech absolutist - but I still think the concept of mandating companies to regulate "legal but harmful" speech is a really dodgy idea that we shouldn't be exploring.

It does help give an example of why regulating the social media platforms is tricky but I still think this law is really really problematic - even if it does allow European politicians like Breton to pose about making Musk's life difficult.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on July 21, 2023, 09:10:12 AM
Yeah, I hadn't been following the DSA too closely, but this is the first I have heard it would contain such a provisions. I think that is a power government should not have in a free society.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on July 21, 2023, 12:00:26 PM
This is going to come very handy for Orban.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on July 21, 2023, 12:02:11 PM
Moreover I think whoever thinks it's a good idea considers the general public unruly subjects.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on July 21, 2023, 12:38:24 PM
Quote from: Tamas on July 21, 2023, 12:02:11 PMMoreover I think whoever thinks it's a good idea considers the general public unruly subjects.

Don't tell me you're surprised by this. The commission is not the friend of the european peoples
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sophie Scholl on July 23, 2023, 03:26:38 AM
So it appears "Twitter" and the "bird" are not long for this world. He's going with the super edgy "x" as a name instead. I'm baffled that the manchild is actually 52. I had to look it up to confirm. He's eternally stuck in the mindset of a teen in the early 90's. Just... wow.  Arrested Psychological Development has a legit poster child forever now.   :yucky:
F1se0-XX0AEmNpn.jpg
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 23, 2023, 04:36:08 AM
He's hoping for a WWE attitude era logo, isn't he?

(https://prowrestlingstories.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/WWF-Attitude-Era-Scratch-Logo.jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 25, 2023, 01:18:36 AM
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-24/twitter-turning-into-x-is-set-to-kill-billions-in-brand-value

QuoteTwitter Turning Into X Is Set to Kill $4-20 Billion in Brand Value

It's rare for corporate brands to become so intertwined with everyday conversation that they become verbs. It's rarer still for the owner of such a brand to announce plans to intentionally destroy it.

On Sunday, in the middle of a quiet summer weekend, Elon Musk decreed that Twitter's product name would be changed to "X," and that he is getting rid of the bird logo and all the associated words, including "tweet." Musk's move wiped out anywhere between $4 billion and $20 billion in value, according to analysts and brand agencies.

"It took 15-plus years to earn that much equity worldwide, so losing Twitter as a brand name is a significant financial hit," said Steve Susi, director of brand communication at Siegel & Gale. Musk, whose company has already declined significantly in value since he purchased it for $44 billion in October, announced the change on Saturday night. By Monday morning a new black "X" logo, designed by a fan over the weekend, began to appear across the site. New Chief Executive Officer Linda Yaccarino outlined the company's vision for X to become a site for audio, video, messaging, payments and banking.

Analysts and brand agencies call the product's renaming a mistake. Twitter is one of the most recognizable social media brands, said Todd Irwin, founder of brand agency Fazer. Bird decals adorn small businesses and websites worldwide, alongside Instagram and Facebook logos.

Twitter's popularity has also made verbs like "tweet" and "retweet" part of modern culture, used regularly to explain how celebrities, politicians and others communicated with the public, said Joshua White, assistant professor of finance at Vanderbilt University.

X will require the company to rebuild that cultural pull and linguistic consensus from scratch. But that may be part of the motivation, so users stop comparing Twitter post-takeover to what it was before. "It's an exceptionally rare thing — in life or in business — that you get a second chance to make another big impression," Yaccarino tweeted.

Other tech companies have renamed themselves in recent years. Google turned into Alphabet Inc. to allow different businesses within the company to grow without being tied to search. Facebook changed into Meta Platforms Inc. in order to emphasize the company's commitment to the metaverse. But the product names remained; we still google things by going to Google.

That's worth a lot. Twitter's brand value is estimated at about $4 billion, according to brand valuation consulting firm Brand Finance. The firm values the Facebook brand at $59 billion and Instagram at $47.4 billion. Vanderbilt University estimates Twitter's brand value at $15 billion to $20 billion, which is comparable to Snapchat. Brand valuation is difficult to determine, and there's no single approach, which is why estimates vary, said Dipanjan Chatterjee, an analyst with Forrester Research Inc. But several analysts and agencies agreed that the company's brand has already taken a significant hit since Musk's takeover. Brand Finance for example, estimates the Twitter brand lost 32% of its value since last year.

As the perception of Twitter's brand has changed, advertisers have fled. Advertisers were concerned about Musk's courting of controversy and embrace of tweeters who broke content rules. Advertising revenue at Twitter is down more than 50% since October, Musk has said. "Twitter's corporate brand is already heavily intertwined with Musk's personal brand, with or without the name X, and much of Twitter's established brand equity has already been lost among users and advertisers," said Jasmine Enberg, an analyst with Insider Intelligence.

It's "completely irrational from a business and brand point of view," said Allen Adamson, co-founder of the marketing and brand consulting group Metaforce. He called it an "ego decision" on the part of Musk. "To me, it's going to go down in history as one of the fastest unwinding of a business and brand ever."

There's also the risk to Musk's future goals. Building banking and payments into the app will require customer trust — something that's difficult to get with a brand-new product name. "I just think that customers outside of Musk's sort of core fan base would really struggle to use Twitter to exchange their money," Vanderbilt's White said.

One thing working in Musk's favor: "The Elon brand," said Irwin. "His personal brand might be more powerful than the Twitter brand."


Also, the "fan designed X logo" seems to come from just some font:

(https://i.postimg.cc/cCVW4KD8/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on July 25, 2023, 01:43:21 AM
3d chess.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 25, 2023, 01:55:00 AM
Also, "X" is very popularly trademarked by companies for various stuff, including Microsoft and Meta:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/problem-with-x-meta-microsoft-hundreds-more-own-trademarks-new-twitter-name-2023-07-25/

QuoteJuly 24 (Reuters) - Billionaire Elon Musk's decision to rebrand Twitter as X could be complicated legally: companies including Meta (META.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) already have intellectual property rights to the same letter.

X is so widely used and cited in trademarks that it is a candidate for legal challenges - and the company formerly known as Twitter could face its own issues defending its X brand in the future.

"There's a 100% chance that Twitter is going to get sued over this by somebody," said trademark attorney Josh Gerben, who said he counted nearly 900 active U.S. trademark registrations that already cover the letter X in a wide range of industries.

Musk renamed social media network Twitter as X on Monday and unveiled a new logo for the social media platform, a stylized black-and-white version of the letter.

Owners of trademarks - which protect things like brand names, logos and slogans that identify sources of goods - can claim infringement if other branding would cause consumer confusion. Remedies range from monetary damages to blocking use.

Microsoft since 2003 has owned an X trademark related to communications about its Xbox video-game system. Meta Platforms - whose Threads platform is a new Twitter rival - owns a federal trademark registered in 2019 covering a blue-and-white letter "X" for fields including software and social media.

Meta and Microsoft likely would not sue unless they feel threatened that Twitter's X encroaches on brand equity they built in the letter, Gerben said.

The three companies did not respond to requests for comment.

Meta itself drew intellectual property challenges when it changed its name from Facebook. It faces trademark lawsuits filed last year by investment firm Metacapital and virtual-reality company MetaX, and settled another over its new infinity-symbol logo.

And if Musk succeeds in changing the name, others still could claim 'X' for themselves.

"Given the difficulty in protecting a single letter, especially one as popular commercially as 'X', Twitter's protection is likely to be confined to very similar graphics to their X logo," said Douglas Masters, a trademark attorney at law firm Loeb & Loeb.

"The logo does not have much distinctive about it, so the protection will be very narrow."

Insider reported earlier that Meta had an X trademark, and lawyer Ed Timberlake tweeted that Microsoft had one as well.

Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington; Additional reporting by Sheila Dang; Editing by Peter Henderson and Sonali Paul
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 25, 2023, 04:22:15 AM
(https://i.postimg.cc/CK0hz24c/image.png)

 :lmfao:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on July 25, 2023, 06:07:47 AM
Maybe this is Musk's 'X it' strategy from the business?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on July 25, 2023, 06:29:53 AM
This makes no sense. Surely the main value in twitter is the branding?
I guess some data value and eliminating a competitor too but... Damn.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on July 25, 2023, 06:57:38 AM
Quote from: Josquius on July 25, 2023, 06:29:53 AMThis makes no sense. Surely the main value in twitter is the branding?
I guess some data value and eliminating a competitor too but... Damn.

I suspect that public attention on his Twitter shenanigans was waning, causing increasing bruises on his ego. He had to do SOMETHING and a rebrand a 12 years old boy would come up with was the best he could think of.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 25, 2023, 07:05:12 AM
(https://i.postimg.cc/bvGDGS8N/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on July 25, 2023, 07:59:16 AM
I don't understand this idea of making an everything app. What about Musk would make someone interested in giving him more information about themselves?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on July 25, 2023, 08:31:19 AM
I mean it works in Asia. A few different examples of it there.

Though from what I understand the financial system is very different there and this app as a work around is necessary. No chip and pin, crap bank apps, expensive slow person to person transfers, etc...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on July 25, 2023, 08:43:12 AM
Quote from: Josquius on July 25, 2023, 08:31:19 AMI mean it works in Asia. A few different examples of it there.

Though from what I understand the financial system is very different there and this app as a work around is necessary. No chip and pin, crap bank apps, expensive slow person to person transfers, etc...


Sorry I don't question the entire premise of an everything app. I question why we would want that from Musk.

Also, with all the discussions of data privacy and concerns around social media, I wonder if there is much appetite now for an app to appear that does all.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 25, 2023, 09:32:39 AM
Quote from: garbon on July 25, 2023, 08:43:12 AMSorry I don't question the entire premise of an everything app. I question why we would want that from Musk.

I don't think that question is that relevant to Musk. What's more important is that he wants everyone to use his app. What we might want and why is secondary.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on July 25, 2023, 10:03:04 AM
Quote from: garbon on July 25, 2023, 08:43:12 AMSorry I don't question the entire premise of an everything app. I question why we would want that from Musk.
I mean even before he took over would you want it to be Twitter? Also from their perspective an everything app probably needs everyone or lots of people to use it and I just don't see Twitter as a route to that? :hmm:

QuoteAlso, with all the discussions of data privacy and concerns around social media, I wonder if there is much appetite now for an app to appear that does all.
I was thinking the best candidate - from a Euro perspective - might be something like WhatsApp. But that's owned by Meta and would you really want them to be your everything app?

To flip it as well if you're a business offering a social media app - do you really want to get into regulated markets like consumer credit or financial products (especially if you've just fired loads of people)?

QuoteThough from what I understand the financial system is very different there and this app as a work around is necessary. No chip and pin, crap bank apps, expensive slow person to person transfers, etc...
I've mentioned it before but I think there is something to the idea that a lot of what made crypto and the apps supporting that popular in the US was a comparatively poor level of tech from the existing financial institutions. From my unerstanding very few if any US banks offer the sort of features you get on, say, Monzo (which other incumbent banks in the UK are now adopting as standard) plus there are charges for lots of things - transfers, withdrawals etc.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 25, 2023, 12:02:54 PM
One explanation for Musk's logic that runs "Twitter --> everything app" is that's how WeChat developed. It was initially just a chat / timeline / tweet app not too different from Twitter, before it evolved into what it is now.

WeChat did have a few advantages Twitter doesn't have, though. It got massive adoption as a social media platform in China because competitors were kept out of the market. I think it also had a few more government backed advantages when it came to driving adoption of their pay systems.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on July 25, 2023, 12:44:27 PM
Remember it's not just wechat in Asia though. A bunch of countries have similar. I recall heading Indonesias version is just as big nationally.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on July 25, 2023, 01:05:40 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 25, 2023, 12:02:54 PMOne explanation for Musk's logic that runs "Twitter --> everything app" is that's how WeChat developed. It was initially just a chat / timeline / tweet app not too different from Twitter, before it evolved into what it is now.

WeChat did have a few advantages Twitter doesn't have, though. It got massive adoption as a social media platform in China because competitors were kept out of the market. I think it also had a few more government backed advantages when it came to driving adoption of their pay systems.
Yeah - I think that's probably right.

My thought was that the everything app would be more likely to be a messaging app more generally, which is why I thought WhatsApp because it has (in Europe) been adopted by everyone across generations. Not least because they're used for communication across generations. So many people have family WhatsApp groups - basically the apps that allow sharing of photos of grandkids using data so no SMS costs :lol:

While I think social media like Twitter or TikTok or Facebook is slightly different (at least in how its been adopted in the West) - it's broadcasting, it tends to silo a bit generationally. So I feel like it would just be an everything app for journalists and the terminally online, which is probably not enough to be an everything app.

As with Musk's idea of Twitter having some form of subscription model for creators etc. Again it feels like his understanding of what Twitter is is based on his experience as a super-user with millions of followers rather than what Twitter actually is? (Obvious caveat that he's vastly successful, while I have an assortment of plant pots and spend my weekends making preserves...)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on July 25, 2023, 01:34:14 PM
Honestly I think the potential for a everything app in Europe at least (no idea in the US) is a ship that has sailed.
With all the stuff banks are now doing and the massive negative baggage social media companies have built up, I just can't see the need.
I agree WhatsApp would be the most likely vector but why would anyone pay via WhatsApp rather than just their bank card or Google pay?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on July 25, 2023, 02:02:14 PM
I give you:

'Paypal The social network'
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on July 26, 2023, 01:09:25 AM
Quote from: mongers on July 25, 2023, 02:02:14 PMI give you:

'Paypal The social network'

I'd like to wake up now
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on July 26, 2023, 07:25:08 AM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on July 26, 2023, 01:09:25 AM
Quote from: mongers on July 25, 2023, 02:02:14 PMI give you:

'Paypal The social network'

I'd like to wake up now

:D
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Duque de Bragança on July 26, 2023, 09:30:59 AM
Quote from: mongers on July 26, 2023, 07:25:08 AM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on July 26, 2023, 01:09:25 AM
Quote from: mongers on July 25, 2023, 02:02:14 PMI give you:

'Paypal The social network'

I'd like to wake up now

:D

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 27, 2023, 12:28:53 AM
(https://i.postimg.cc/Sx5gnJXS/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on July 27, 2023, 01:02:23 AM
I've not had a look myself but hearing mutterings the x rebrand is going terribly due to the obvious well known meaning of x online...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 27, 2023, 01:29:56 AM
Oh, also the guy who's had the @x handle for 16 years has been assigned a new one:


(https://i.imgur.com/GJyLqk7.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on July 27, 2023, 01:35:56 AM
I'm slightly annoyed that it didn't count down all the way to 1x
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Solmyr on July 27, 2023, 03:14:09 AM
Quote from: Josquius on July 27, 2023, 01:02:23 AMI've not had a look myself but hearing mutterings the x rebrand is going terribly due to the obvious well known meaning of x online...

Indonesia apparently blocked the entire site due to the country's porn laws.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on July 27, 2023, 04:03:41 AM
Quote from: Solmyr on July 27, 2023, 03:14:09 AM
Quote from: Josquius on July 27, 2023, 01:02:23 AMI've not had a look myself but hearing mutterings the x rebrand is going terribly due to the obvious well known meaning of x online...

Indonesia apparently blocked the entire site due to the country's porn laws.


Ah. That's another one I hadn't heard of. I just meant Close/error :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on July 27, 2023, 05:47:40 AM
Quote from: Josquius on July 27, 2023, 01:02:23 AMI've not had a look myself but hearing mutterings the x rebrand is going terribly due to the obvious well known meaning of x online...
Well yes. "I'm subscribing to X Blue" is very :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 03:48:27 AM
Great. The Twitter app has updated on my phone so I now see this edgelord X icon on my screen. It' kind of making me sad and depressed. That such a douchebag can become this influential, and that I continue to use this crap.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on July 28, 2023, 04:16:37 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 03:48:27 AMGreat. The Twitter app has updated on my phone so I now see this edgelord X icon on my screen. It' kind of making me sad and depressed. That such a douchebag can become this influential, and that I continue to use this crap.

Well you do have agency. Delete it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 04:20:35 AM
Quote from: garbon on July 28, 2023, 04:16:37 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 03:48:27 AMGreat. The Twitter app has updated on my phone so I now see this edgelord X icon on my screen. It' kind of making me sad and depressed. That such a douchebag can become this influential, and that I continue to use this crap.

Well you do have agency. Delete it.

Of course but as discussed previously, it's my only source of quick Ukraine rumours, news, and videos.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on July 28, 2023, 04:26:20 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 04:20:35 AM
Quote from: garbon on July 28, 2023, 04:16:37 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 03:48:27 AMGreat. The Twitter app has updated on my phone so I now see this edgelord X icon on my screen. It' kind of making me sad and depressed. That such a douchebag can become this influential, and that I continue to use this crap.

Well you do have agency. Delete it.

Of course but as discussed previously, it's my only source of quick Ukraine rumours, news, and videos.

Hardly sounds like a necessity.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 04:33:30 AM
Quote from: garbon on July 28, 2023, 04:26:20 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 04:20:35 AM
Quote from: garbon on July 28, 2023, 04:16:37 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 03:48:27 AMGreat. The Twitter app has updated on my phone so I now see this edgelord X icon on my screen. It' kind of making me sad and depressed. That such a douchebag can become this influential, and that I continue to use this crap.

Well you do have agency. Delete it.

Of course but as discussed previously, it's my only source of quick Ukraine rumours, news, and videos.

Hardly sounds like a necessity.

Only food and shelter are necessities yet here we are.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on July 28, 2023, 05:20:54 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 04:33:30 AM
Quote from: garbon on July 28, 2023, 04:26:20 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 04:20:35 AM
Quote from: garbon on July 28, 2023, 04:16:37 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 03:48:27 AMGreat. The Twitter app has updated on my phone so I now see this edgelord X icon on my screen. It' kind of making me sad and depressed. That such a douchebag can become this influential, and that I continue to use this crap.

Well you do have agency. Delete it.

Of course but as discussed previously, it's my only source of quick Ukraine rumours, news, and videos.

Hardly sounds like a necessity.

Only food and shelter are necessities yet here we are.

That seems like a cop out. I don't think you need to feel bad but if it is depressing you to support his product, stop using it. You are not trapped and I can't imagine close attention to a war is mood boosting.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 08:52:57 AM
I think you are reading more into the word depressed than I meant, which is my fault.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on July 28, 2023, 09:20:33 AM
I know. You aren't actually all that bothered to use his app. ;)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 09:33:42 AM
I guess its similar to being annoyed by some of the editorials and a lot of the clickbait titles on the Guardian but still frequenting them because of the news updates. With the difference is that the platform provider and the content creators are different in this case.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on July 28, 2023, 10:01:10 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 09:33:42 AMI guess its similar to being annoyed by some of the editorials and a lot of the clickbait titles on the Guardian but still frequenting them because of the news updates. With the difference is that the platform provider and the content creators are different in this case.
Sir Simon Jenkins is bad, but he's not Elon Musk bad :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 10:08:45 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 28, 2023, 10:01:10 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 09:33:42 AMI guess its similar to being annoyed by some of the editorials and a lot of the clickbait titles on the Guardian but still frequenting them because of the news updates. With the difference is that the platform provider and the content creators are different in this case.
Sir Simon Jenkins is bad, but he's not Elon Musk bad :P

 :D For sure, but it's a similar feeling of "ugh" seeing his article titles to the feeling of seeing that edgelord X.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on July 28, 2023, 12:04:22 PM
The x for Belgium looks a lot like the x dexia bank had before it turned into a financial disaster in 2008.

Past year's twitter shenanigans have at least had the effect that twitter is used a bit less in what are supposed to be serious news outlets.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 28, 2023, 02:39:18 PM
Quote from: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 09:33:42 AMI guess its similar to being annoyed by some of the editorials and a lot of the clickbait titles on the Guardian but still frequenting them because of the news updates. With the difference is that the platform provider and the content creators are different in this case.

You just equated the Guardian to Twitter (or whatever it is now). 

Best delete that app asap.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on July 28, 2023, 03:35:30 PM
I mainly used Twitter for sports news and updates but I now use other means, mainly a discord community that is much less toxic than Twitter.

There are other ways of getting the info you believe you need.

I deactivated Twitter and don't plan on ever using it again.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 06:49:01 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 28, 2023, 02:39:18 PM
Quote from: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 09:33:42 AMI guess its similar to being annoyed by some of the editorials and a lot of the clickbait titles on the Guardian but still frequenting them because of the news updates. With the difference is that the platform provider and the content creators are different in this case.

You just equated the Guardian to Twitter (or whatever it is now). 

Best delete that app asap.

Yeah that's totally what I did. Thanks for contributing.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on July 29, 2023, 02:34:21 AM
I guess we're lucky Musk was born in South Africa or in this day and age he'd be the GOP frontrunner at this point.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on July 29, 2023, 10:05:03 AM
Quote from: celedhring on July 29, 2023, 02:34:21 AMI guess we're lucky Musk was born in South Africa or in this day and age he'd be the GOP frontrunner at this point.

So that list is getting pretty long, the one of people in the US whom you're glad can't run for President because they were born abroad.

But what about foreign born US citizens who you wish would be eligible to run, who if any would be on it?

Obviously Arnie is tip of my list, just for the enhanced culture wars and progressive meme, but also because he'd take the job very seriously, unlike some of the GOP contenders for whom running appears to be an exercise in egotism.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on July 31, 2023, 04:04:06 AM
Don't miss your chance!

(https://i.postimg.cc/v8zbtdtK/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on July 31, 2023, 04:42:49 AM
Just me scanning the username and all the other signs as this clearly screams scam, fake account, etc...?
Way to go Musk in giving all those con artists cover in this actually happening for once.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on July 31, 2023, 04:57:55 AM
I was reading about the neighbors really unhappy with that X lights how
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on July 31, 2023, 07:10:40 AM
I saw some talk about people pissed about the lights...but isn't this in a downtown business district? I haven't been to SF since like 2006, but I remember it, like most cities, being pretty damn illuminated in the core downtown all night long just like most major cities. I would think if you have an apartment in a downtown business district you're well used to bright lights outside your window (and this is why they invented blackout curtains, also.)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on July 31, 2023, 07:12:51 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on July 31, 2023, 07:10:40 AMI saw some talk about people pissed about the lights...but isn't this in a downtown business district? I haven't been to SF since like 2006, but I remember it, like most cities, being pretty damn illuminated in the core downtown all night long just like most major cities. I would think if you have an apartment in a downtown business district you're well used to bright lights outside your window (and this is why they invented blackout curtains, also.)

Maybe but the video I saw of it looked pretty egregious.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/31/twitter-x-new-logo-complaints-san-francisco-hq
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on July 31, 2023, 07:19:00 AM
The fact that it alternates on and off would annoy me more then the brightness (which is excessive, even for a city core)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on July 31, 2023, 07:26:46 AM
Quote from: HVC on July 31, 2023, 07:19:00 AMThe fact that it alternates on and off would annoy me more then the brightness (which is excessive, even for a city core)

It accurately reflects his personality.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 31, 2023, 09:30:18 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 06:49:01 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 28, 2023, 02:39:18 PM
Quote from: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 09:33:42 AMI guess its similar to being annoyed by some of the editorials and a lot of the clickbait titles on the Guardian but still frequenting them because of the news updates. With the difference is that the platform provider and the content creators are different in this case.

You just equated the Guardian to Twitter (or whatever it is now). 

Best delete that app asap.

Yeah that's totally what I did. Thanks for contributing.

If you don't see the difference between an actual newspaper, and whatever it is, musk is running over there you've got some serious issues.


And I fear that your lack of insight into this issue is widespread and is contributing to the lack of meaningful political dialogue in our society. We are truly in a post- truth era.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on July 31, 2023, 10:45:19 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 31, 2023, 09:30:18 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 06:49:01 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 28, 2023, 02:39:18 PM
Quote from: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 09:33:42 AMI guess its similar to being annoyed by some of the editorials and a lot of the clickbait titles on the Guardian but still frequenting them because of the news updates. With the difference is that the platform provider and the content creators are different in this case.

You just equated the Guardian to Twitter (or whatever it is now). 

Best delete that app asap.

Yeah that's totally what I did. Thanks for contributing.

If you don't see the difference between an actual newspaper, and whatever it is, musk is running over there you've got some serious issues.


And I fear that your lack of insight into this issue is widespread and is contributing to the lack of meaningful political dialogue in our society. We are truly in a post- truth era.

You completely missed what I was trying to achieve wit my comparison, whixh has nothing to do with what you are up in arms about. But i didn't feel like explainig it because if you think me that ignorant and stuoid that I would equate the Guardian with posts on twitter then I am not even sure where to begin with that.

But ok here it goes again: I find utility in the Guardian as a news source so I continue using it despite some of the editorials making my eyes roll.

I wanted to use this to compare my usage of twitter: I find utility in it in reading Ukraine rumours and watching Ukraine videos so I continue using it despite the X sign reminding me of Musk and making my stomach turn.

Instead of the Guardian, I could have used the Paradox forums as an example, which I continue to browse occasionally to keep up with patch news despite the quite toxic collection of entitled powergamers and balkantards.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 31, 2023, 12:49:57 PM
Speaking of comparisons and the Paradox Fora...

When did "making comparisons" become so frowned upon?

I feel like I recall a time when you could compare two things (i.e. point out similarities), without being assumed/ accused of equating them in totality. Then at some point - and I feel like it happened in the early days of my time on the Paradox Fora - that changed. These days it seems you can only compare and contrast things if you want to make the point that "they're basically the same"; otherwise it seems you're 99.9% likely to be doing a disservice to one or both parties of the comparison.

Was it always like that and I just missed it, or was there a change at some point? I certainly remember writing all sorts of short answers and essays in elementary and high school comparing things. There the intention was always to express an understanding of the two subjects and not as a rhetorical device to condemn or elevate one subject by virtue of the other subject's traits.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on July 31, 2023, 02:19:15 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 31, 2023, 12:49:57 PMSpeaking of comparisons and the Paradox Fora...

When did "making comparisons" become so frowned upon?

I feel like I recall a time when you could compare two things (i.e. point out similarities), without being assumed/ accused of equating them in totality. Then at some point - and I feel like it happened in the early days of my time on the Paradox Fora - that changed. These days it seems you can only compare and contrast things if you want to make the point that "they're basically the same"; otherwise it seems you're 99.9% likely to be doing a disservice to one or both parties of the comparison.

Was it always like that and I just missed it, or was there a change at some point? I certainly remember writing all sorts of short answers and essays in elementary and high school comparing things. There the intention was always to express an understanding of the two subjects and not as a rhetorical device to condemn or elevate one subject by virtue of the other subject's traits.

Haven't been on the Paradox fora for many years, but if what you are saying is true, I am missing nothing.

Comparing the pros and cons of two possible outcomes for a decision, for instance, cannot be saying that they are essentially the same outcome.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on July 31, 2023, 02:22:35 PM
Quote from: grumbler on July 31, 2023, 02:19:15 PMHaven't been on the Paradox fora for many years, but if what you are saying is true, I am missing nothing.

Me neither - this was years ago, but it's where I started noticing the trend. I don't think it's confined to Paradox OT, though.

QuoteComparing the pros and cons of two possible outcomes for a decision, for instance, cannot be saying that they are essentially the same outcome.

Agreed. Yet I find I avoid using comparisons in online discussions because they inevitably go down the path of "how can you compare A to B like that?"
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on July 31, 2023, 02:55:33 PM
Quote from: Tamas on July 31, 2023, 10:45:19 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 31, 2023, 09:30:18 AM
Quote from: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 06:49:01 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on July 28, 2023, 02:39:18 PM
Quote from: Tamas on July 28, 2023, 09:33:42 AMI guess its similar to being annoyed by some of the editorials and a lot of the clickbait titles on the Guardian but still frequenting them because of the news updates. With the difference is that the platform provider and the content creators are different in this case.

You just equated the Guardian to Twitter (or whatever it is now). 

Best delete that app asap.

Yeah that's totally what I did. Thanks for contributing.

If you don't see the difference between an actual newspaper, and whatever it is, musk is running over there you've got some serious issues.


And I fear that your lack of insight into this issue is widespread and is contributing to the lack of meaningful political dialogue in our society. We are truly in a post- truth era.

You completely missed what I was trying to achieve wit my comparison, whixh has nothing to do with what you are up in arms about. But i didn't feel like explainig it because if you think me that ignorant and stuoid that I would equate the Guardian with posts on twitter then I am not even sure where to begin with that.

But ok here it goes again: I find utility in the Guardian as a news source so I continue using it despite some of the editorials making my eyes roll.

I wanted to use this to compare my usage of twitter: I find utility in it in reading Ukraine rumours and watching Ukraine videos so I continue using it despite the X sign reminding me of Musk and making my stomach turn.

Instead of the Guardian, I could have used the Paradox forums as an example, which I continue to browse occasionally to keep up with patch news despite the quite toxic collection of entitled powergamers and balkantards.

I know.  And I find it troubling that you have equated an editorial at a newspaper with what is happening at X.

Quote from: Jacob on July 31, 2023, 12:49:57 PMSpeaking of comparisons and the Paradox Fora...

When did "making comparisons" become so frowned upon?

I feel like I recall a time when you could compare two things (i.e. point out similarities), without being assumed/ accused of equating them in totality. Then at some point - and I feel like it happened in the early days of my time on the Paradox Fora - that changed. These days it seems you can only compare and contrast things if you want to make the point that "they're basically the same"; otherwise it seems you're 99.9% likely to be doing a disservice to one or both parties of the comparison.

Was it always like that and I just missed it, or was there a change at some point? I certainly remember writing all sorts of short answers and essays in elementary and high school comparing things. There the intention was always to express an understanding of the two subjects and not as a rhetorical device to condemn or elevate one subject by virtue of the other subject's traits.


Marti always got called on his silly analogies. 

An analogy only works if the things are roughly comparable for the purpose of the point being made.  If not it's not an analogy, it is something else that likely falls into the category of a logical fallacy. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on July 31, 2023, 03:23:38 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 31, 2023, 12:49:57 PMSpeaking of comparisons and the Paradox Fora...

When did "making comparisons" become so frowned upon?

I feel like I recall a time when you could compare two things (i.e. point out similarities), without being assumed/ accused of equating them in totality. Then at some point - and I feel like it happened in the early days of my time on the Paradox Fora - that changed. These days it seems you can only compare and contrast things if you want to make the point that "they're basically the same"; otherwise it seems you're 99.9% likely to be doing a disservice to one or both parties of the comparison.

Was it always like that and I just missed it, or was there a change at some point? I certainly remember writing all sorts of short answers and essays in elementary and high school comparing things. There the intention was always to express an understanding of the two subjects and not as a rhetorical device to condemn or elevate one subject by virtue of the other subject's traits.

I think it goes under the category of not making a good faith effort to have a discussion, which probably did become a lot more prevalent over time.  Human communication has a lot of shortcuts for reasons of practicality, and often good faith effort is required to understand the intended point.  Good faith effort is also required to respond to the intended point, and not to the point that could plausibly or not so plausibly be attributed to what was said.  If the people who don't disagree with you don't conflate comparison with equation, then the problem is not with comparisons.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on July 31, 2023, 03:40:02 PM
Tamas:  bail out!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on August 01, 2023, 01:41:40 AM
Many people view language not as a tool for communication but as a weapon to achieve and demonstrate dominance. Their view is very destructive.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on August 01, 2023, 12:25:24 PM
I don't agree with Tamas's decision to get his news from Twitter(X), but I will defend to the death his right to do so!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on August 01, 2023, 12:30:09 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on August 01, 2023, 12:25:24 PMI don't agree with Tamas's decision to get his news from Twitter(X), but I will defend to the death his right to do so!

How dare you compare musk to Voltaire. You're worse then Hitler.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on August 01, 2023, 12:35:45 PM
Quote from: Jacob on July 31, 2023, 12:49:57 PMSpeaking of comparisons and the Paradox Fora...

When did "making comparisons" become so frowned upon?

I feel like I recall a time when you could compare two things (i.e. point out similarities), without being assumed/ accused of equating them in totality. Then at some point - and I feel like it happened in the early days of my time on the Paradox Fora - that changed. These days it seems you can only compare and contrast things if you want to make the point that "they're basically the same"; otherwise it seems you're 99.9% likely to be doing a disservice to one or both parties of the comparison.

Was it always like that and I just missed it, or was there a change at some point? I certainly remember writing all sorts of short answers and essays in elementary and high school comparing things. There the intention was always to express an understanding of the two subjects and not as a rhetorical device to condemn or elevate one subject by virtue of the other subject's traits.


So two things come to mind.

First - it usually isn't about comparing "two things".  In particular if you're talking about early 2000s.  It's about making Hitler/holocaust comparisons.  There was even a name for the phenomenon - the Godwin Law - which stated that as an online conversation goes on, the chance of someone making a Hitler comparison approaches 100%.  There was a pretty natural reaction against Hitler comparisons.  That reaction is 99% of the time perfectly correct, but does mean that more-or-less literal Nazis can get away without being called Nazis.

More recently though it's been the phrase "whataboutism".  It isn't 100% what you're talking about, but it's really close.  It's a phrase that has become more and more popular over the last few years in online discourse.  And again there's been a probably natural reaction against whataboutism, but does mean some otherwise legitimate comparisons can get unfairly dismissed.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on August 02, 2023, 01:02:45 AM
German (actual) ad:


(https://www.hindustantimes.com/ht-img/img/2023/07/31/550x309/wwf-twitter-logo-wildlife-conservation-viral_1690803979847_1690804050410.jpg)
"Protect our animal species before it's too late."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on August 02, 2023, 07:40:25 AM
Quote from: Syt on August 02, 2023, 01:02:45 AMGerman (actual) ad:


(https://www.hindustantimes.com/ht-img/img/2023/07/31/550x309/wwf-twitter-logo-wildlife-conservation-viral_1690803979847_1690804050410.jpg)
"Protect our animal species before it's too late."

That's great!  :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on August 18, 2023, 12:24:24 AM
So they added scratchmarks to the logo. I stick by my statement that he tries to bring back late 1990s WWF edginess. :P

(https://i.postimg.cc/G3zWv4Ct/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on August 22, 2023, 02:12:30 PM
FYI for people who are still on the site formerly known as Twitter to stay on top of developing news stories:

(https://i.postimg.cc/SQBDDYFk/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on August 23, 2023, 04:34:16 PM
Quote from: Syt on August 22, 2023, 02:12:30 PMFYI for people who are still on the site formerly known as Twitter to stay on top of developing news stories:

(https://i.postimg.cc/SQBDDYFk/image.png)

Absolutely baffling.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on August 23, 2023, 04:38:21 PM
Trying to get his tax write off as quickly as possible.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on August 23, 2023, 04:58:26 PM
I guess it's... Interesting? Increasingly choosing the image to go with an article has seemed to drop down in importance with even the BBC et al often going with the most worthless of stock photos.
This pushes them to the front.
Which... If this was something like Instagram, image focussed, would fit the brand and be a worthy sacrifice in ux.
For twitter though... Headline blurbs are basically what it's all about.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on August 30, 2023, 12:58:49 AM
Unsure how credible the source is, but it confirms my biases. :P

(https://i.postimg.cc/PdGKG3BW/image.png)

(Though I assume most of us have worked for similar managers at some point or other :D )

Also, this:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/29/twitter-x-political-ads-us-policy-misinformation

QuoteTwitter allows US political candidates and parties to advertise in policy switch
Announcement by the Elon Musk-owned social media platform has experts concerned over misinformation ahead of 2024 election


The social media company formerly known as Twitter said Tuesday it would now allow political advertising in the US from candidates and political parties, reversing previous policies and raising concerns over misinformation and hate speech ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Before billionaire Elon Musk acquired the company, now called X, in October 2022, Twitter had banned all political ads globally since 2019. In January, the platform lifted the ban and began allowing "cause-based ads" in the US that raise awareness of issues such as voter registration, stating that it planned to expand the types of political ads it would allow on the platform.

The move to allow all political ads in the US could help X grow its revenue at a time when many advertisers have fled or reduced spending on the platform for fear of appearing next to inappropriate content. It also comes as Musk has attempted to position X as a "town square" for elections, hosting Ron DeSantis's campaign announcement in May.

In a blog post on Tuesday, X said it would grow its teams to combat content manipulation and "emerging threats".

The company said it would create a global advertising transparency center, which would let users see what political ads were being promoted on X, and added it would continue to prohibit political ads that spread false information or seek to undermine public confidence in an election.
This is in keeping with the company's goal of "seeking to preserve free and open political discourse", the blog post said.

Since Musk's acquisition, X has faced questions about its readiness for the US presidential election after laying off thousands of employees, including those who had worked on the trust and safety team.

The platform, like other social media companies, has long been criticized by researchers and lawmakers for not doing enough to prevent misleading or false content during major elections.

Those criticisms intensified surrounding the 6 January 2021 events, in which former president Donald Trump used Twitter extensively to rile up his supporters, who ultimately stormed the US capitol. Trump was removed from the platform after the incident, but Musk unilaterally lifted the ban in November 2022.

Despite the reactivation of his account, Trump remained silent on Twitter until last week, when he shared a picture of his mugshot after surrendering at a Georgia county jail on racketeering and conspiracy charges for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

His official return has sparked concern from a number of misinformation experts, and civil rights advocates had previously warned that Trump's return, accompanied by a loosening of content moderation policies, would "open the floodgates of disinformation" and abuse.

Twitter, now called X, did not respond to request for comment.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on September 05, 2023, 01:02:35 AM
So over the weekend there was a thing on Twitter to ban the Anti-Defamation League, making the hashtag #BanTheADL the number one trending item in the US at least.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/elon-musk-boosts-antisemitic-propaganda-twitter-anti-defamation-league-1234817008/

Musk chimed in, saying the ADL had been doing good work in the past but had gotten infected by the woke mind virus. He claims that the ADL is running a campaign to put Twitter out of business by flagging offensive content and he's made unsubstantiated claims that ad revenue was still down 60% down because the ADL was putting pressure on advertisers. Also, he's posted that he would take the ADL to court and sue them for defamation.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on September 05, 2023, 01:12:12 AM
(https://i.postimg.cc/x81VjrHh/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on September 05, 2023, 09:02:40 AM
(https://i.postimg.cc/CMNkc1CS/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on September 05, 2023, 09:04:33 AM
You know you're the villain when....
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on September 05, 2023, 09:08:05 AM
Free speech through bogus defamation lawsuits.   The Musk Ministry of Truth is in full gear.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on September 05, 2023, 09:11:40 AM
I don't know what "document discovery of all communications between the ADL an advertisers" will show but Musk's tweet ("X?") indicates that communications between Elon Musk/X and advertisers will be an interesting avenue of discovery.  And potentially give us all the opportunity to see the many reasons advertisers are really giving for dropping the artist formally known as Twitter.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on September 05, 2023, 09:12:35 AM
The only person who destroyed half of Twitters revenue stream is Elmo himself.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on September 07, 2023, 06:55:43 AM
(https://i.postimg.cc/Vv8BrrXH/image.png)

(https://i.postimg.cc/3xVG00TC/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on September 07, 2023, 09:40:56 AM
jesus christ
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on September 07, 2023, 12:53:05 PM
Hmm.  "X" says account suspended.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on September 07, 2023, 12:54:30 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on September 07, 2023, 12:53:05 PMHmm.  "X" says account suspended.

Maybe he made fun of Musk?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on September 07, 2023, 12:58:57 PM
Quote from: HVC on September 07, 2023, 12:54:30 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on September 07, 2023, 12:53:05 PMHmm.  "X" says account suspended.

Maybe he made fun of Musk?

He cast aspersions on little goblins so yes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on September 07, 2023, 02:06:24 PM
Is there a full story behind it?  Things can always fall through the cracks, and that's what gets meme'd.  It could also be that the decision got changed when this went public.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on September 07, 2023, 02:20:36 PM
Not much public. Could be the initial response was automated, and there was a human review after many people complained?

Meanwhile:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1699556514879451614

(https://i.postimg.cc/LXqjDVGD/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on September 07, 2023, 03:05:46 PM
Is there something wrong with a gay orgy? I mean so long as it is consensual.

And how is that a domino effect unless Obama becoming President determined whether or not he was allegedly in this gay orgy. If he had never become a Senator he would not have (allegedly) participated in any gay orgies?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on September 07, 2023, 03:18:36 PM
Wasn't  Ryan losing anyway before the sex club thing broke?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on September 07, 2023, 03:25:38 PM
I don't know. I would also think a sex scandal for somebody running for office would be a bigger deal for a guy who hasn't been in office for seven years. Yet Musk thinks that was a tiny thing and this one is a huge deal.

Why? Obama is just a private citizen now. Why is that a giant domino?

Musk can't meme.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on September 08, 2023, 01:54:44 AM
I'm really not sure what that's trying to say at all. Given the source I guess it's a play on the typical "the left are hypocrites!" Nonsense cope?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on September 08, 2023, 02:26:10 AM
In a bit of cross topic news...

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-blocked-ukraine-starlink-access-crimea-russia-war-putin-2023-9

Prick
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on September 08, 2023, 06:23:17 AM
Quote from: Josquius on September 08, 2023, 02:26:10 AMIn a bit of cross topic news...

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-blocked-ukraine-starlink-access-crimea-russia-war-putin-2023-9

Prick

(https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c94d80428a27d96a8fed02520d3ba9ed10ed55644fdb7423fee48ebc47d2f426.jpg?w=800&h=1168)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PJL on September 08, 2023, 06:40:53 AM
He truly is the Henry Ford of our time, especially warts and all.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Darth Wagtaros on September 08, 2023, 06:41:56 AM
Quote from: Valmy on September 07, 2023, 03:25:38 PMI don't know. I would also think a sex scandal for somebody running for office would be a bigger deal for a guy who hasn't been in office for seven years. Yet Musk thinks that was a tiny thing and this one is a huge deal.

Why? Obama is just a private citizen now. Why is that a giant domino?

Musk can't meme.
Because he thinks people will like him if he keeps stuff like this up. He's got a taste of that aclaim that comes with being an outrageporn star.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on September 08, 2023, 07:07:03 AM
I've said it before and I'll say it again: nationalise it :contract:

Even if Musk genuinely was spinning out about nuclear war (which seems plausible, especially in those circles), a billionaire's panic attacks should not be capable of crippling a state's foreign policy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on September 08, 2023, 07:31:21 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 08, 2023, 07:07:03 AMI've said it before and I'll say it again: nationalise it :contract:

Even if Musk genuinely was spinning out about nuclear war (which seems plausible, especially in those circles), a billionaire's panic attacks should not be capable of crippling a state's foreign policy.

So that Trump can cripple it?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on September 08, 2023, 07:50:17 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 08, 2023, 07:07:03 AMI've said it before and I'll say it again: nationalise it :contract:

Even if Musk genuinely was spinning out about nuclear war (which seems plausible, especially in those circles), a billionaire's panic attacks should not be capable of crippling a state's foreign policy.

Tsk, tsk, he's just a neutral guy wanting peace. :P

(https://i.postimg.cc/rsNF9C2Q/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on September 08, 2023, 09:41:40 AM
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F5fBOVvasAAb-U9?format=png&name=small)

Saw a post somewhere that I think is spot on: "People wonder why El*n and his ilk are so ambivalent about Ukraine and open to Russia. My 2 cents: they see most reasonable people being pro Ukraine, and because they think they're too smart to go with the crowd, they inherently gravitate towards the other side".
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on September 08, 2023, 11:13:06 AM
Quote from: PJL on September 08, 2023, 06:40:53 AMHe truly is the Henry Ford of our time, especially warts and all.

Henry Ford installing kill switches on all Sherman tanks so they automatically shut down if they cross the Rhine.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on September 08, 2023, 11:22:06 AM
Quote from: Syt on September 08, 2023, 07:50:17 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on September 08, 2023, 07:07:03 AMI've said it before and I'll say it again: nationalise it :contract:

Even if Musk genuinely was spinning out about nuclear war (which seems plausible, especially in those circles), a billionaire's panic attacks should not be capable of crippling a state's foreign policy.

Tsk, tsk, he's just a neutral guy wanting peace. :P

(https://i.postimg.cc/rsNF9C2Q/image.png)

Ah, the Orban rhetoric. So neutral, much wow.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on September 08, 2023, 11:25:41 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on September 08, 2023, 09:41:40 AM(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F5fBOVvasAAb-U9?format=png&name=small)

Saw a post somewhere that I think is spot on: "People wonder why El*n and his ilk are so ambivalent about Ukraine and open to Russia. My 2 cents: they see most reasonable people being pro Ukraine, and because they think they're too smart to go with the crowd, they inherently gravitate towards the other side".

Funny image.

The analysis potentially gives them too much credit.
I think much of it is as simple as the left eyes say Russia bad and we should help Ukraine hence this is wrong.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on September 08, 2023, 11:37:27 AM
Quote from: Josquius on September 08, 2023, 02:26:10 AMIn a bit of cross topic news...

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-blocked-ukraine-starlink-access-crimea-russia-war-putin-2023-9

Prick

We need someone to defend Musk. Where is Berkut?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on September 08, 2023, 12:15:44 PM
To be fair to Berkut, he said what he said back when Musk was far less gone than he is now.  It didn't age well, but at the time it wasn't that unreasonable of a take.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on September 08, 2023, 12:30:40 PM
Quote from: DGuller on September 08, 2023, 12:15:44 PMTo be fair to Berkut, he said what he said back when Musk was far less gone than he is now.  It didn't age well, but at the time it wasn't that unreasonable of a take.

I wonder is Musk realizes how badly he's torched his reputation in the last 12 months or so.  Or does the adulation of the Twitter groypers make up for it?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on September 08, 2023, 12:38:53 PM
Quote from: Barrister on September 08, 2023, 12:30:40 PM
Quote from: DGuller on September 08, 2023, 12:15:44 PMTo be fair to Berkut, he said what he said back when Musk was far less gone than he is now.  It didn't age well, but at the time it wasn't that unreasonable of a take.

I wonder is Musk realizes how badly he's torched his reputation in the last 12 months or so.  Or does the adulation of the Twitter groypers make up for it?

To those people he was always a misunderstood genius. Musk has been an ass for more then 12 months. This thread alone is 5 years old. Most of the berks out there probably still feel the same.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on September 08, 2023, 01:01:19 PM
I obviously misunderstood Musk. I always thought he was a showman and an attention whore but I thought he was using his powers for good causes, he was the guy getting stuff worked on and then promoting it. I never thought he was some kind of engineering genius, I mean he got big by investing in internet banking.

But I thought he really cared about the environment and space exploration and science and all that. But he seems completely contemptuous of all of those things. So what the hell did he do all that for? He doesn't seem to have any consistent positions or principles on anything.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on September 08, 2023, 01:29:24 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 08, 2023, 01:01:19 PMI obviously misunderstood Musk. I always thought he was a showman and an attention whore but I thought he was using his powers for good causes, he was the guy getting stuff worked on and then promoting it. I never thought he was some kind of engineering genius, I mean he got big by investing in internet banking.

But I thought he really cared about the environment and space exploration and science and all that. But he seems completely contemptuous of all of those things. So what the hell did he do all that for? He doesn't seem to have any consistent positions or principles on anything.

Same.
I used to have fairly mixed views on him. Yeah he's a credit hog and might have been doing the right things for the wrong reasons but a lot of what he was doing seemed  good.
This has passed the point of being less and less the case.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on September 08, 2023, 01:31:39 PM
Quote from: DGuller on September 08, 2023, 12:15:44 PMTo be fair to Berkut, he said what he said back when Musk was far less gone than he is now.  It didn't age well, but at the time it wasn't that unreasonable of a take.

If you ignore those of us who did say Berkut's take was unreasonable at the time.  This is the orginal title of the thread  ;)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on September 08, 2023, 01:51:31 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 08, 2023, 01:31:39 PM
Quote from: DGuller on September 08, 2023, 12:15:44 PMTo be fair to Berkut, he said what he said back when Musk was far less gone than he is now.  It didn't age well, but at the time it wasn't that unreasonable of a take.

If you ignore those of us who did say Berkut's take was unreasonable at the time.  This is the orginal title of the thread  ;)

:showoff:

Though peep 2nd post in the thread
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on September 08, 2023, 02:03:40 PM
I was curious what exactly I said 5 years ago about Musk, so I went back.

Quote from: BarristerHe's kind of made from the Steve Jobs mold.  If he wasn't an egotistical SOB I doubt he'd have been able to founded two separate billion dollar companies that are trying to change the world.

I admire the heck out of the man, but he is not someone I'd really want to have a beer with.

I would no longer say "I admire the heck out of the man", but I don't think the rest aged too badly.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on September 08, 2023, 02:12:21 PM
I think the comparison to Jobs is pretty apt in terms of business, both had massive egos, horrible interpersonal skills, and were both basically miserable human beings on an interpersonal level. Elements of all those flaws likely were required for them to achieve what they did--note I don't think it is required everyone who is successful have flaws like that, but I think certain personality types are only capable of success on those terms.

The biggest difference between Musk and Jobs I think is their relationship with the public. Jobs certainly cultivated a bit of a cult of personality, but I would argue Apple's success was less based on that than Tesla's has been based on Musk's cult. People have very consistently valued Tesla shares at levels simply unsupported by any fundamentals of investing, and that has created a hype effect that kept pushing the share price ever higher. This enabled a lot of Musk's broad success in the last 5 years because it transformed him from "just a billionaire" to the world's richest person.

Musk also is far more interested in direct public interaction, while social media wasn't as prominent in Jobs' lifetime, Jobs never showed much sign of caring about the sort of direct social interactions Musk lives on. Jobs preferred to communicate with the public at big stage events and things like that, it is unlikely if Jobs was still alive that he would be living on social media like Musk does.

I also think if Jobs were still alive he would be far less likely to get involved in right wing politics, Jobs had a much more narrow interest in business dominance and seemed largely contemptuous and disinterested in the political system.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Berkut on September 08, 2023, 02:32:13 PM
As I've said about a dozen times in this thread, Musk is an asshole. 

I also said I thought the things he accomplished vastly outweigh the damage he has done personally. Mainly because the damage he has done is mostly just bullshit - he says stupid stuff, and acts like a douchebag, but none of that really mattered beyond enraging people who like to be enraged.

Twitter I thought was shit before he bought it, and it becoming even more shit....so what? It is a cancer, and the world would be better if Twitter had never been invented. Now, for Musk, the fact that he was destroying something that *I* think was terrible to begin with doesn't really exonerate him in particular, since he thinks it was useful, but it does mean my analysis of his relative value to humanity was largely unaffected by is Twitter antics. If he wants to rub shit all over himself, and act like a douchebag while torching Twitter, what do I care? I care about electric, autonomous vehicles and advancing space exploration and exploitation and shit like that.

The latest though....well, this is something very different. Using his position as business leader to pass judgement on sovereign nations ability to defend themselves is far, far, FAR different from anything else. That is fucked up on so many levels, I don't even know where to start. I cannot even imagine how it is even legal. 

And at this point, it is clear that any benefit he ever had, even as I measured it, has long since ceased. SpaceX does not need him anymore, nor does Tesla, and in fact they both would certainly be better off not being associated with the guy. He is toxic, and has been for some time.

I am perfectly happy with everything I've said in this thread, at the times I said them. The guys is obviously an asshole, and I never said otherwise.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on September 08, 2023, 02:35:52 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 08, 2023, 01:01:19 PMI obviously misunderstood Musk. I always thought he was a showman and an attention whore but I thought he was using his powers for good causes, he was the guy getting stuff worked on and then promoting it. I never thought he was some kind of engineering genius, I mean he got big by investing in internet banking.

But I thought he really cared about the environment and space exploration and science and all that. But he seems completely contemptuous of all of those things. So what the hell did he do all that for? He doesn't seem to have any consistent positions or principles on anything.

My impression is that he's only really interested in "saving humanity" or doing "good" if he's the one doing the saving.

I think that may have been best exemplified during the incident with the kids trapped in a cave where he offered help to be a big shiny hero, but when someone else did the job he disparaged them non-stop.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Legbiter on September 08, 2023, 02:59:25 PM
Berkut!  :thumbsup:  :ccr

Elon's biggest problem since taking over twitter is that he's been distracted from what he's good at which is Tesla and affordable space travel.

Because he took over twitter and gave bluechecks to the masses the American shitlibs employed within legacy media have been absolutely livid, he personally diluted their aristocratic privileges down to worthless. His bizarre penchant for shitposting while actively running businesses has been...ill advised. Then again, common sense should have steered him away from impregnating a married close coworker... :huh:

His Ukrainian position is the classic "dealmaker" trap. Everything can be negotiated if the right people just sit down in good faith. Which breaks down once you get to someone like Putin. 

The only answer is to supply Ukraine with what it needs to win the war. May every Zigger on this earth be killed.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on September 08, 2023, 08:25:29 PM
People are overthinking Musk. He's shitlord that is so rich that he forgot which side he is on. He seemed to have always thought laws didn't apply to him.

The Western world should really do something about our capital owning class being a bunch of traitors in the making.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tonitrus on September 08, 2023, 09:19:26 PM
Musk is bad...but I think some of his underlings might be even worse...

https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-shotwell-mad-elon-musk-continued-financing-ukraine-starlink-report-2023-9

QuoteSpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell was upset when Elon Musk kept financing Starlink in Ukraine even after the Pentagon offered to fund the enterprise, author Walter Isaacson wrote in a recent excerpt from his biography on Musk.

"The Pentagon had a $145 million check ready to hand to me, literally," Shotwell said, according to Isaacson. "Then Elon succumbed to the bullshit on Twitter and to the haters at the Pentagon who leaked the story."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on September 09, 2023, 12:44:59 AM
Was it Elon Musk who financed Starlink in Ukraine or was it SpaceX? If SpaceX then it seems like a valid complaint.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on September 09, 2023, 01:16:22 AM
Quote from: Tonitrus on September 08, 2023, 09:19:26 PMMusk is bad...but I think some of his underlings might be even worse...

https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-shotwell-mad-elon-musk-continued-financing-ukraine-starlink-report-2023-9

QuoteSpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell was upset when Elon Musk kept financing Starlink in Ukraine even after the Pentagon offered to fund the enterprise, author Walter Isaacson wrote in a recent excerpt from his biography on Musk.

"The Pentagon had a $145 million check ready to hand to me, literally," Shotwell said, according to Isaacson. "Then Elon succumbed to the bullshit on Twitter and to the haters at the Pentagon who leaked the story."

Reads as reasonable until the haters at the pentagon bit, which sounds bizzare.
I guess by bullshit on twitter he means not the actual bullshit on twitter but the reasonable people on there?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: mongers on September 09, 2023, 08:06:08 AM
Quote from: Valmy on September 08, 2023, 01:01:19 PMI obviously misunderstood Musk. I always thought he was a showman and an attention whore but I thought he was using his powers for good causes, he was the guy getting stuff worked on and then promoting it. I never thought he was some kind of engineering genius, I mean he got big by investing in internet banking.

But I thought he really cared about the environment and space exploration and science and all that. But he seems completely contemptuous of all of those things. So what the hell did he do all that for? He doesn't seem to have any consistent positions or principles on anything.

Ego, therefore I am.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on September 09, 2023, 09:06:21 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on September 08, 2023, 08:25:29 PMPeople are overthinking Musk. He's shitlord that is so rich that he forgot which side he is on. He seemed to have always thought laws didn't apply to him.

The Western world should really do something about our capital owning class being a bunch of traitors in the making.

Fyp

Musk is just one example of concentration of wealth ending badly.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Caliga on September 09, 2023, 09:17:11 AM
Quote from: Caliga on July 18, 2018, 08:50:26 AMI think I've mentioned before that I think Elon Musk is a piece of shit and a con artist. :hmm:
Here's what I said when this thread first started. :cool: I stand by my words and double down on them.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on September 09, 2023, 10:44:43 AM
Berkut!

I hope you are back.  I've missed your insights and takes on things.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on September 09, 2023, 10:46:59 AM
Quote from: Tonitrus on September 08, 2023, 09:19:26 PMMusk is bad...but I think some of his underlings might be even worse...

https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-shotwell-mad-elon-musk-continued-financing-ukraine-starlink-report-2023-9

QuoteSpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell was upset when Elon Musk kept financing Starlink in Ukraine even after the Pentagon offered to fund the enterprise, author Walter Isaacson wrote in a recent excerpt from his biography on Musk.

"The Pentagon had a $145 million check ready to hand to me, literally," Shotwell said, according to Isaacson. "Then Elon succumbed to the bullshit on Twitter and to the haters at the Pentagon who leaked the story."

I'm not following the "may be worse" argument.  If the Five-Sided Playpen had a contract in hand, Musk couldn't randomly interrupt service on a whim.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on September 09, 2023, 02:47:22 PM
I'm seeing claims that Musk's actions with StarLink directly prevented a Ukrainian surprise attack in the Russian navy.

If true that's definitely shitty.

Edit: Musk is apparently the person making the claim.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on September 09, 2023, 04:34:30 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 09, 2023, 09:06:21 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on September 08, 2023, 08:25:29 PMPeople are overthinking Musk. He's shitlord that is so rich that he forgot which side he is on. He seemed to have always thought laws didn't apply to him.

The Western world should really do something about our capital owning class being a bunch of traitors in the making.

Fyp

Musk is just one example of concentration of wealth ending badly.

No. He's only the most known example.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on September 10, 2023, 01:39:03 AM
It appears he and Grimes had another child:
https://web.archive.org/web/20230909163011/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/09/books/review/elon-musk-walter-isaacson.html

QuoteThe musician Grimes, the mother of three of Musk's children (the existence of the third, Techno Mechanicus, nicknamed Tau, has been kept private until now), calls his roiling anger "demon mode" — a mind-set that "causes a lot of chaos." She also insists that it allows him to get stuff done.

Wiki has a handy summary:

QuoteRelationships and children
Musk has 11 children.[452] Musk met his first wife, Canadian author Justine Wilson, while attending Queen's University in Ontario, Canada; and they married in 2000.[453] In 2002, their first child died of sudden infant death syndrome at the age of 10 weeks.[454] After his death, the couple decided to use IVF to continue their family.[455] They had twins in 2004 followed by triplets in 2006.[455] The couple divorced in 2008 and shared custody of their children.[456][457] In 2022, one of the twins (his eldest child) officially changed her name to reflect her gender identity as a trans woman and to use Wilson as her last name because she no longer wished to be associated with Musk.[458] Musk blamed the estrangement of his daughter on what the Financial Times characterized as "the supposed takeover of elite schools and universities by neo-Marxists."[459]

In 2008, Musk began dating English actress Talulah Riley.[460] They married two years later at Dornoch Cathedral in Scotland.[461][462] In 2012, the couple divorced, before remarrying the following year.[463] After briefly filing for divorce in 2014,[463] Musk finalized a second divorce from Riley in 2016.[464] Musk then dated Amber Heard for several months in 2017;[465] he had reportedly been pursuing her since 2012.[466] Johnny Depp later accused Musk of having an affair with Heard while she was still married to Depp.[467][468] Musk and Heard both denied the affair.[467]

In 2018, Musk and Canadian musician Grimes revealed that they were dating.[469] Grimes gave birth to their son in May 2020.[470][471] According to Musk and Grimes, his name was "X Æ A-12" (/ɛks æʃ eɪ ˈtwɛlv/); however, the name would have violated California regulations as it contained characters that are not in the modern English alphabet,[472][473] and was then changed to "X Æ A-Xii". This drew more confusion, as Æ is not a letter in the modern English alphabet.[474] The child was eventually named X AE A-XII Musk, with "X" as a first name, "AE A-XII" as a middle name, and "Musk" as surname.[475] In December 2021, Grimes and Musk had a second child, a daughter named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk (nicknamed "Y"), born via surrogacy.[1] Despite the pregnancy, Musk confirmed reports that the couple were "semi-separated" in September 2021; in an interview with Time in December 2021, he said he was single.[476][477] In March 2022, Grimes said of her relationship with Musk: "I would probably refer to him as my boyfriend, but we're very fluid."[1] Later that month, Grimes tweeted that she and Musk had broken up again but remained on good terms.[478] In September 2023 it was revealed that the pair had a third child, a son named Techno Mechanicus "Tau" Musk.[3]

In July 2022, Insider published court documents revealing that Musk had had twins with Shivon Zilis, director of operations and special projects at Neuralink, in November 2021.[479] They were born weeks before Musk and Grimes had their second child via surrogate in December. The news "raise[d] questions about workplace ethics", given that Zilis directly reported to Musk.[480] Also in July 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk allegedly had an affair with Nicole Shanahan, the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, in 2021, leading to their divorce the following year.[481] Musk denied the report.[482]

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on September 10, 2023, 04:20:41 AM
Interesting tidbit about the trans kid there. The timing lines up with Musk becoming visibly nuts too I think?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on September 12, 2023, 03:17:25 AM
(https://i.postimg.cc/0yzT2JKm/image.png)

(https://i.postimg.cc/yYZxgWRq/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on September 15, 2023, 02:27:47 AM
Well, I guess Elon wants to keep liking things he doesn't want people to know he likes. :P

(https://i.postimg.cc/CLwZDpg2/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on September 15, 2023, 02:56:03 AM
What's the point? Isn't the purpose of a like to say you endorse something?
I guess they're thinking about some kind of shifty digital  kkk secret handshake thing where the OP can see you liked them but nobody else?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on September 19, 2023, 05:00:38 AM
Guardian reporting that Musk announced Twitter will be instituting a monthly fee for all users.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on September 19, 2023, 05:23:12 AM
Quote from: garbon on September 19, 2023, 05:00:38 AMGuardian reporting that Musk announced Twitter will be instituting a monthly fee for all users.
:lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on September 19, 2023, 07:03:03 AM
Well I guess he's looking for a tax write off at this point?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on September 19, 2023, 11:04:37 AM
Quote from: garbon on September 19, 2023, 05:00:38 AMGuardian reporting that Musk announced Twitter will be instituting a monthly fee for all users.

He should try to make the fee retroactive.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on September 19, 2023, 11:33:08 AM
Quote from: HVC on September 19, 2023, 07:03:03 AMWell I guess he's looking for a tax write off at this point?

He is probably feeling pressure from his Saudi backers as they see their money evaporate.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on September 26, 2023, 01:12:25 AM
(https://i.postimg.cc/KjWdRpkM/image.png)

Every time someone has a Tweet (Xeet?) on screen it's a "view" regardless of interaction or just scrolling past, including multiple views by the same user. And with the API restrictions probably a lot of scraping scripts? :hmm:

It's like counting newspaper views by how often I walk by a news stand.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on September 26, 2023, 11:14:01 AM
Grifters are gonna grift. HE'S A GENIUS CAN WE GET 50 MORE OF HIM PLEASE!@!!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on September 26, 2023, 01:13:49 PM
Quote from: Syt on September 26, 2023, 01:12:25 AMEvery time someone has a Tweet (Xeet?) on screen it's a "view" regardless of interaction or just scrolling past, including multiple views by the same user. And with the API restrictions probably a lot of scraping scripts? :hmm:

It's like counting newspaper views by how often I walk by a news stand.
That's the problem with measuring media impact online in a nutshell :lol: Everyone tries to work out what is a meaningful click from a media perspective - for social media it's normally a scroll. And the honest answer is it's really difficult to work out. There is no agreed metric. I know some look at time spent on the page - but again that doesn't account for the length and complexity of the article.

You can identify some bots because they declare themselves or because their behaviour is obvious. But it is not easy and there are an awful lot who are not declared but scraping (in media the default paranoid assumption is that is someone hoovering up our content to build AI models). And some bots are actually a legitimate view from a social media perspective - for example, if you post a Tweet to another social media platform that social media platform will scrape Twitter's site to display a thumbnail. Given the way Twitter works especially that is often enough to read the Tweet, there is no need to click in the way there normally is with, say, an article or an Instagram post.

For what it's worth the internet equivalent of newspaper circulation figures is largely based on views and clicks - at the minute the best we can do is supplement that with surveys and market research. I think it does capture something and is a really important additional bit of context with viewership and circulation figures. But it is really imperfect and there is an irony that arguably the media that allows us to collect the most data is actually the one that we have least information about.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on September 29, 2023, 01:31:07 AM
(https://i.imgur.com/je13anb.png)

 :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on September 29, 2023, 01:35:02 AM
It explains much about Musk  - he treats myth as being factual.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on September 29, 2023, 01:52:22 AM
What I find more telling is his framing this as his idea, or at the very least not making any references to this being an old story.

It ties in with how he often finds a meme, likes it, and then shares it without crediting the person he took it from. Now, that happens all the time on social media, but for some reason it feels a bit extra petty from him (esp. on a platform where you can easily share someone else's posts).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Maladict on September 29, 2023, 01:57:08 AM
He seems to be claiming one of the most well-known Roman myths as an independent discovery, which is quite bizarre.

And he still gets it wrong. Even in the myth the exiles were not a group of competent soldiers. Aeneas was one of the few soldiers that escaped, they were just a bunch of refugees. And Aeneas founded Lavinium, not Rome.

Edit: preempted by the presumptive king of languish. :sleep:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on September 29, 2023, 02:04:28 AM
He's making a strong case for liberal arts education.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Maladict on September 29, 2023, 02:12:41 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on September 29, 2023, 02:04:28 AMHe's making a strong case for liberal arts education.

Or a proper history/archaeology education. Rome had already been founded by the time the Trojan war is supposed to have happened.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on September 29, 2023, 02:21:57 AM
Quote from: Maladict on September 29, 2023, 02:12:41 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on September 29, 2023, 02:04:28 AMHe's making a strong case for liberal arts education.

Or a proper history/archaeology education. Rome had already been founded by the time the Trojan war is supposed to have happened.

Aren't those liberal arts? :unsure:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Maladict on September 29, 2023, 03:11:28 AM
Quote from: garbon on September 29, 2023, 02:21:57 AM
Quote from: Maladict on September 29, 2023, 02:12:41 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on September 29, 2023, 02:04:28 AMHe's making a strong case for liberal arts education.

Or a proper history/archaeology education. Rome had already been founded by the time the Trojan war is supposed to have happened.

Aren't those liberal arts? :unsure:

Badly phrased. I meant a more factual approach rather than the myths.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on September 29, 2023, 03:59:13 AM
Quote from: Maladict on September 29, 2023, 03:11:28 AM
Quote from: garbon on September 29, 2023, 02:21:57 AM
Quote from: Maladict on September 29, 2023, 02:12:41 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on September 29, 2023, 02:04:28 AMHe's making a strong case for liberal arts education.

Or a proper history/archaeology education. Rome had already been founded by the time the Trojan war is supposed to have happened.

Aren't those liberal arts? :unsure:

Badly phrased. I meant a more factual approach rather than the myths.

Got it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Savonarola on September 29, 2023, 07:35:49 AM
Quote from: Syt on September 29, 2023, 01:31:07 AM(https://i.imgur.com/je13anb.png)

 :hmm:

How about that, men really do think about the Roman Empire every day; even those who are obviously completely ignorant of the subject.  I wonder what evolutionary function that serves, and why it's a sex-selective gene.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on September 29, 2023, 08:14:01 AM
Quote from: Syt on September 29, 2023, 01:31:07 AM(https://i.imgur.com/je13anb.png)

 :hmm:

He has to be trolling here. It's way too on the nose.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on September 29, 2023, 08:52:57 AM
Quote from: Savonarola on September 29, 2023, 07:35:49 AMHow about that, men really do think about the Roman Empire every day; even those who are obviously completely ignorant of the subject.  I wonder what evolutionary function that serves, and why it's a sex-selective gene.

I've heard this claim before and wonder where it came from.  It's certainly not true of me nor (that I know of) any man I know.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on September 29, 2023, 08:58:34 AM
It was a TikTok trend of women asking their husbands/bfs and being amazed how often they think about the Roman Empire.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Maladict on September 29, 2023, 09:04:04 AM
Daily is pushing it, but at least once a week? Definitely.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on September 29, 2023, 09:14:35 AM
I mean I think about the Roman Empire from time to time because I studied Latin in school and know a lot about Roman history and it relates to plenty of stuff in our western culture.

But if I didn't have an interest in that stuff why would I think about it? I mean I also think about Napoleon pretty often.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on September 29, 2023, 09:20:11 AM
Quote from: Maladict on September 29, 2023, 01:57:08 AMAnd he still gets it wrong. Even in the myth the exiles were not a group of competent soldiers. Aeneas was one of the few soldiers that escaped, they were just a bunch of refugees. And Aeneas founded Lavinium, not Rome.

It's a telling error. Musk's explanation for the historical achievements of the Roman Empire is that the Romans must descend from a master race of super soldiers.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on September 29, 2023, 09:57:59 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on September 29, 2023, 09:20:11 AM
Quote from: Maladict on September 29, 2023, 01:57:08 AMAnd he still gets it wrong. Even in the myth the exiles were not a group of competent soldiers. Aeneas was one of the few soldiers that escaped, they were just a bunch of refugees. And Aeneas founded Lavinium, not Rome.

It's a telling error. Musk's explanation for the historical achievements of the Roman Empire is that the Romans must descend from a master race of super soldiers.

... who are most remembered for losing a war. :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on September 29, 2023, 10:32:35 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on September 29, 2023, 09:20:11 AM
Quote from: Maladict on September 29, 2023, 01:57:08 AMAnd he still gets it wrong. Even in the myth the exiles were not a group of competent soldiers. Aeneas was one of the few soldiers that escaped, they were just a bunch of refugees. And Aeneas founded Lavinium, not Rome.

It's a telling error. Musk's explanation for the historical achievements of the Roman Empire is that the Romans must descend from a master race of super soldiers.

Alba Longa was descended from the Trojans. The only Roman descended from the Trojans was Romulus himself, and he had no children IIRC.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on September 29, 2023, 10:49:46 AM
I wonder how long until he invents Adam and Eve.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on September 29, 2023, 11:01:22 AM
Just sayin'. Humans had to start somewhere. There must have once been two of them. And they must have had a lot of kids. Shows this to be the optimum natural behaviour.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on September 29, 2023, 11:01:28 AM
Quote from: Syt on September 29, 2023, 09:57:59 AM... who are most remembered for losing a war. :P

Because of trickery

IT WAS RIGGED
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on September 29, 2023, 11:23:09 AM
He hasn't even watched Troy :lol: (I have a classicist friend who is obsessed with that moment in the movie and maybe the thought they were thinking of doing a Trojan cinematic universe if Troy had been...good...)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on September 29, 2023, 11:31:54 AM
Troy had some OK stuff mixed in with the rest IIRC.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Savonarola on September 29, 2023, 11:56:32 AM
Quote from: Maladict on September 29, 2023, 09:04:04 AMDaily is pushing it, but at least once a week? Definitely.

That sounds like a poll...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on September 29, 2023, 04:25:37 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 29, 2023, 10:32:35 AMAlba Longa was descended from the Trojans. The only Roman descended from the Trojans was Romulus himself, and he had no children IIRC.

Alba Longa's populous was absorbed into Rome, and several patrician families claimed descent from the Trojans, notably the Julii from Aeneas himself.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on October 05, 2023, 01:30:50 AM
https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/4/23903859/x-elon-musk-headlines-links-image-twitter

QuoteX stops showing headlines because Elon Musk thinks it will make posts look better

X, formerly Twitter, is no longer showing headlines on articles shared on the platform. Instead, X is only showing the article's lead image and the domain it will link you to.

You can see the differences between the new version of link previews in the X iOS app and the old version on the web in this comparison image I stitched together:

[His screenshot sucks, I add other below]

I also made a post on X to demonstrate what's going on.

(https://duet-cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0x0:1122x894/750x598/filters:focal(561x447:562x448):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24977878/IMG_3801.PNG)

After I first published this article, I also saw the new format on the web.

(https://duet-cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0x0:1188x1124/750x710/filters:focal(594x562:595x563):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24978812/Screenshot_2023_10_04_at_9.57.36_PM.png)This change, while very annoying, doesn't come as a total surprise. Fortune reported in August that this change was in the works, and X owner Elon Musk confirmed that the switchover was "coming from me directly" and would "greatly improve the esthetics [sic]." I don't have an Android device to test with, but if the change hasn't already appeared on the Android version of the app, I'd guess it will show up there eventually.

Musk has recently been encouraging users to post more content to X directly in an effort to help boost engagement on the platform (and perhaps also because he "almost never" reads "legacy news anymore"). He's also said that the platform's algorithm "tries to optimize time spent on X," meaning that "links don't get as much attention" and that the "best thing is to post content in long form on this platform."

In my opinion, removing headlines makes X harder to use — posts are less easy to parse at a glance — so I'm not sure if this change is going to lead to people posting more often like Musk hopes.

Update October 5th, 1:02AM ET: The change has appeared on the web, too.


(https://i.postimg.cc/P504zwwS/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on October 05, 2023, 02:59:49 AM
Those poor UX designers.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on October 06, 2023, 04:10:04 AM
Seems he's doubling down ...

(https://i.postimg.cc/FHdzMjkz/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on October 06, 2023, 04:13:56 AM
And yet millions keep using.  :whistle:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on October 06, 2023, 04:22:59 AM
Which is baffling. I was quite reluctant to leave because I had curated my feed and mostly got relevant content/discussion in it, and most people I was following hadn't left, either..

But when it was switched to showing paid sub comments at the top of all responses ... nah, not gonna scroll through all that. And none of the "improvements" since were exactly enticing.

Also seeing conflicting reports on platform usage. I think login by unique users per month are up, but interactions are away down?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on October 06, 2023, 04:32:56 AM
Im not so sure people keep using it... A lot of prominent figures have left.
I suppose a lot keep wanting to watch the flames and there's a lot happening in the world now.
Also the drop off in usage by the sane will be somewhat counter balanced by the shit eaters coming back.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on October 12, 2023, 11:07:34 AM
I mean ... I guess it's worth a try. :lol:

(https://i.imgur.com/oNSO1Gx.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on October 12, 2023, 11:34:21 AM
I suspect the EU will not use Twitter to serve notice on regulatory infractions. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on October 12, 2023, 12:29:37 PM
I wonder if Elon understands that regulator has the authority to order X to suspend its operations until they come within compliance.


And am I correct that there is essentially a reverse onus?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on October 12, 2023, 01:36:07 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 12, 2023, 12:29:37 PMI wonder if Elon understands that regulator has the authority to order X to suspend its operations until they come within compliance.


And am I correct that there is essentially a reverse onus?

Also the burden of proof for compliance lies with X. This isn't the US legal system.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on October 12, 2023, 01:37:32 PM
My guess is Elmo fired all the compliance people so he couldn't produce evidence of compliance with the DSA even if he wanted to.

Also the DSA fine is up to 6% of global turnover. Enjoy!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on October 12, 2023, 01:55:07 PM
Quote from: Hamilcar on October 12, 2023, 01:37:32 PMMy guess is Elmo fired all the compliance people so he couldn't produce evidence of compliance with the DSA even if he wanted to.

Also the DSA fine is up to 6% of global turnover. Enjoy!

He didn't fire them all, but the ones he didn't quit within a couple weeks anyway.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on October 12, 2023, 02:27:53 PM
Quote from: Hamilcar on October 12, 2023, 01:37:32 PMMy guess is Elmo fired all the compliance people so he couldn't produce evidence of compliance with the DSA even if he wanted to.

Also the DSA fine is up to 6% of global turnover. Enjoy!

Ah but what's 6% of a negative number.
Negative fine baby!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on October 12, 2023, 02:56:39 PM
Quote from: Josquius on October 12, 2023, 02:27:53 PM
Quote from: Hamilcar on October 12, 2023, 01:37:32 PMMy guess is Elmo fired all the compliance people so he couldn't produce evidence of compliance with the DSA even if he wanted to.

Also the DSA fine is up to 6% of global turnover. Enjoy!

Ah but what's 6% of a negative number.
Negative fine baby!

I don't think it is net profit, but revenue.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on October 12, 2023, 03:14:04 PM
It is.

I'm gonna enjoy the man-baby going up against EU bureaucracy.

Hint: it will not go well for the man-baby.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on October 12, 2023, 03:32:50 PM
Quote from: Zanza on October 12, 2023, 11:34:21 AMI suspect the EU will not use Twitter to serve notice on regulatory infractions. 
Breton posted it on Twitter:
QuoteThierry Breton
@ThierryBreton
Following the terrorist attacks by Hamas against 🇮🇱, we have indications of X/Twitter being used to disseminate illegal content & disinformation in the EU.

Urgent letter to @elonmusk on #DSA obligations ⤵️
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F8GRHMeWYAAI7ax?format=jpg&name=900x900)

Musk replied:
QuoteElon Musk
@elonmusk
Our policy is that everything is open source and transparent, an approach that I know the EU supports.

Please list the violations you allude to on 𝕏, so that that the public can see them.

Merci beaucoup.

That's the chain before the screenshot above and Breton's further response on this issue is:
QuoteThierry Breton
@ThierryBreton
We have received the reply by @X to our letter raising concerns about the spread of illegal content and disinformation related to the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel.

The #DSA enforcement team will analyse the reply and decide on next steps.

I'm not entirely sure it needed to start publicly, especially without any specific allegations of infringement that is, instead, heavy on insinuation.

I would say in my area of European regulation that whole approach is very, very unusual (but largely enforced by member state regulators not the Commission directly). As you say it's normally lengthy legal letters identifying specific issues, or requests for information/intent to investigate with deadlines/a timetable. Not a general, public letter on a social media platform @ing the owner. There might be a press release but it will be short and purely informative to avoid risk to any decision - a lot like this where they are actually launching an investigation:
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_23_4953

I think that first letter posted on Twitter may well end up being part of a legal challenge, if the Commission does enforce.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Hamilcar on October 12, 2023, 03:33:47 PM
Breton has his own confrontational style.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on October 12, 2023, 04:05:25 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on October 12, 2023, 03:32:50 PMI'm not entirely sure it needed to start publicly, especially without any specific allegations of infringement that is, instead, heavy on insinuation.

I would say in my area of European regulation that whole approach is very, very unusual (but largely enforced by member state regulators not the Commission directly). As you say it's normally lengthy legal letters identifying specific issues, or requests for information/intent to investigate with deadlines/a timetable. Not a general, public letter on a social media platform @ing the owner. There might be a press release but it will be short and purely informative to avoid risk to any decision - a lot like this where they are actually launching an investigation:
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_23_4953

I think that first letter posted on Twitter may well end up being part of a legal challenge, if the Commission does enforce.

I'm guessing the "my team will follow up shortly" will be the actual "meat" of the request. Posting this publicly is a stunt, yes, but he probably also wanted to make sure Elon paid attention.

Though I can't help roll my eyes a bit at his response.

Breton: "Hey, you may have stuff on your platform that is illegal under EU law."
Musk: "Oh yeah? What exactly? Please post here!" (i.e. add more links/attention to the content you think is problematic and shouldn't be shown)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on October 12, 2023, 04:19:29 PM
I don't disagree on the response I think Musk is very annoying. Although I don't think it's unreasonable for Musk to aks for specifics.

Breton has form on messages to Musk - eg from this time last year:
QuoteThierry Breton
@ThierryBreton
👋 @elonmusk
 

In Europe, the bird will fly by our 🇪🇺 rules.

#DSA

Or the video after their meeting: https://x.com/ThierryBreton/status/1523773895974612992?s=20

Cynically I think it's grandstanding because Twitter and Musk are more news-y than Meta (which on literally every issue I think is 10 times more shady than anyone else :lol:), TikTok or Google. I think Breton wants to advertise this new law and regulatory power in his portfolio which makes sense but may get in the way of actually enforcing against Twitter.

You do not see Margrethe Vestager, for example, publishing open letters at companies she thinks are breaking competition law - you see her announcing findings with big fines after lengthy investigations. (And I think within Brussels this may be a little bit of dick swinging of Breton as Internal Market Commissioner with new powers, precisely because Vestager as Competition Commissioner has been so effective :ph34r:)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on October 12, 2023, 04:34:24 PM
I am going to push back a bit on your analysis Sheilbh - enforcement is not the only job of a regulator in her role.  Public education is also a significant part of her job.  You often get regulators who are woefully inadequate at that role  And often way too cautious about what they are prepared to say publicly with that hat on.

It is important to consider the context of the company to which she is addressing her comments.  These are mainly aimed at the public so that everyone who is currently is filing complaints with her office regarding what is being allowed by X will know she is on the job.

I find her approach to be a breath of fresh air. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on October 12, 2023, 05:02:11 PM
Maybe - that's fair. I think it is also particularly important with European law because a lot of what the EU does is quite technical, so output legitimacy is really important when it can be attached to something newsworthy or that people care about. See also the big fuss about forcing Apple to change their charger. My general view is that effective enforcement is the best PR for a regulator - again why I think Vestager at Competition has been so good.

Breton's role is not much of a public facing regulator though - broadly it's more like the Commission's role on competition law. Technically I don't think individuals have a right to complain to the Commission - but member states don't actually need to nominate the authority for taking complaints in each country until February, so the Commission may be taking complaints direct. The Commission has very broad rights to investigate directly which its exercising but there's no duty to even consider or respond to public complaints.

I think that's possibly because of the way EU data protection law has slightly been the dog that didn't bark in terms of actual enforcement which may also be why Breton is being so public. There's been some big fines but less than I think many expected, particularly because enforcement is broadly in the hands of member state regulators and some have been captured so for this law the Commission has their own powers and they are broad (obviously worth pointing out that member states also have very broad powers with real risks to civil liberties).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on October 19, 2023, 12:51:33 AM
(https://i.postimg.cc/Hxh86ZQM/image.png)

Musk is also floating the idea of charging $1 a year to new xwitter users - "to fight bots".

Also, report claims that Twitter traffic is down 14% YoY a year after Musk's takeover, and monthly active users down 17%.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/17/one-year-post-acquisition-x-traffic-and-monthly-active-users-are-in-decline-report-claims/

Also also:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/musk-considers-removing-x-platform-europe-over-eu-law-insider-2023-10-18/

QuoteMusk considers removing X platform from Europe over EU law - Insider

Oct 18 (Reuters) - Elon Musk, owner of social media platform X, is considering removing the service formerly called Twitter from Europe in response to a new internet platform regulation in the region, news site Insider reported on Wednesday.

The billionaire has discussed removing the app's availability in the region, or blocking users in the European Union from accessing it, a person familiar with the company told the publication.

The European Union in August adopted the Digital Services Act (DSA), which sets forth rules for preventing the spread of harmful content, banning or limiting certain user-targeting practices, and sharing some internal data with regulators and associated researchers, among other things.

X did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

(On that note, Meta's Threads is still not available in the EU because they want to make sure that if they launch they follow DSA and data protection rules - Meta got burned on that before - though not sure if they're seriously pusuing this at the moment.)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on October 19, 2023, 01:08:54 AM
(https://i.postimg.cc/zvsKptnB/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on October 19, 2023, 03:06:25 AM
That reply on the voter suppression. Two counts of :bleeding:.
How can a guy so seemingly dumb be so successful?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on October 19, 2023, 05:45:33 AM
Quote from: Syt on October 19, 2023, 12:51:33 AM(On that note, Meta's Threads is still not available in the EU because they want to make sure that if they launch they follow DSA and data protection rules - Meta got burned on that before - though not sure if they're seriously pusuing this at the moment.)
It's not the DSA or data protection that's holding up Threads, it's the Digital Markets Act which is part of the digital package the EU's been working on. There are big challenges for Meta (as I say - my default assumptions is that whatever you think Twitter or Google are doing dodgily with data, Meta are ten times worse :lol:) on DP especially. But it's working its way through the courts and process very, very slowly - in my view there is regulatory capture in Ireland and the Irish regulator is going to bat for Meta on that stuff. But broadly speaking Meta would say their big platforms - Facebook, Insta, WhatsApp - comply with those EU laws. It would be wild (and expensive) to build a new product that didn't. Similarly Threads launched in the UK which still has more or less exactly the same DP rules as the EU and has just passed legislation very similar to the DSA - but nothing like the DMA (although the competition regulator is consulting on it, in part because I think it's unclear if it needs new legislation or if they already have the relevant powers).

Basically the DSA is about online harms and the platforms' responsibilities in relation to content; the DMA is more about their market power as "gatekeepers" in the digital world. I have concerns about the DSA, but generally think the DMA is really good not least because traditional approaches to competition struggle with big digital companies, particularly social media.

The particular thing from my understanding that's an issue for Meta from the DMA is that it basically bans "self-preferencing" where you favour other of your own products. I think there is a little bit of a lack of clarity on this. But the impact on Threads is the reason it launched well in other markets was that it was a new product that you must use your Instagram account to create - that is arguably self-preferencing. It's also what allowed Google or Amazon to easily launch new, distinct products is you simply use your account from one into another. To an extent I sympathise with the companies that it generally is easier to integrate a product with something you've already got, on the other hand the point from the DMA and how to approach competition online is that it's an abuse of a dominant position.

They could launch it tomorrow if you had to create a new account or sign-up with your email, rather than it being basically a new product from your Instagram account.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on October 19, 2023, 05:48:40 AM
QuoteIt's not the DSA or data protection that's holding up Threads, it's the Digital Markets Act which is part of the digital package the EU's been working on. There are big challenges for Meta (as I say - my default assumptions is that whatever you think Twitter or Google are doing dodgily with data, Meta are ten times worse :lol:)
:yes:
Particularly fucked up is the device profiles they make to track you even if you  aren't logged into FB.

I guess the UK launch is because getting a fine in the UK isn't so bad as getting a fine EU-wide....Plus they probably gamble our government will not be particularly eager to enforce a law carried over from the EU, and they're incompetent.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on October 19, 2023, 06:09:41 AM
Quote from: Josquius on October 19, 2023, 03:06:25 AMThat reply on the voter suppression. Two counts of :bleeding:.
How can a guy so seemingly dumb be so successful?

He's highly charismatic, especially to venture capitalists.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on October 19, 2023, 06:10:57 AM
Quote from: Syt on October 19, 2023, 12:51:33 AM(https://i.postimg.cc/Hxh86ZQM/image.png)

Musk is also floating the idea of charging $1 a year to new xwitter users - "to fight bots".

Also, report claims that Twitter traffic is down 14% YoY a year after Musk's takeover, and monthly active users down 17%.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/17/one-year-post-acquisition-x-traffic-and-monthly-active-users-are-in-decline-report-claims/

Also also:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/musk-considers-removing-x-platform-europe-over-eu-law-insider-2023-10-18/

QuoteMusk considers removing X platform from Europe over EU law - Insider

Oct 18 (Reuters) - Elon Musk, owner of social media platform X, is considering removing the service formerly called Twitter from Europe in response to a new internet platform regulation in the region, news site Insider reported on Wednesday.

The billionaire has discussed removing the app's availability in the region, or blocking users in the European Union from accessing it, a person familiar with the company told the publication.

The European Union in August adopted the Digital Services Act (DSA), which sets forth rules for preventing the spread of harmful content, banning or limiting certain user-targeting practices, and sharing some internal data with regulators and associated researchers, among other things.

X did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

(On that note, Meta's Threads is still not available in the EU because they want to make sure that if they launch they follow DSA and data protection rules - Meta got burned on that before - though not sure if they're seriously pusuing this at the moment.)

I used to use tweetdeck everyday to browse Twitter but Elmo took that away. Of course, I don't visit twitter anymore.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on October 19, 2023, 06:16:45 AM
Quote from: Josquius on October 19, 2023, 05:48:40 AMParticularly fucked up is the device profiles they make to track you even if you  aren't logged into FB.
:ph34r: Everyone does/is trying to do that.

QuoteI guess the UK launch is because getting a fine in the UK isn't so bad as getting a fine EU-wide....Plus they probably gamble our government will not be particularly eager to enforce a law carried over from the EU, and they're incompetent.
It's worse to get a fine in the UK. The fining power is exactly as it was under European law - so depending on the breach a max of €10-20 million or 2-4% of global turnover. The UK now has the same fining power as the EU.

The law is being enforced. I think I said earlier across Europe, that in terms of actual enforcement data protection is sort of the dog that didn't bark. Some of it has happened but not as much as I think people expected and there are still some bits of the law and, for example, the rules on cookies go back to the early 2000s and haven't been updated so generally the maximum fine there is a lot, lot lower (around €500k). The UK and EU are updating that bit of the law too. Although on the EU side, I wouldn't hold your breath - the first draft was 6 years ago and they've been in trilogue for 2 years. Obviously we don't really know why/what the outstanding issues are.

But the UK regulator's had some issues with its enforcement - and I think this is possibly similar to issues across Europe. In European terms, the UK regulator is one of the best resourced and when we were in the EU had a reputation as very useful and communautaire. They'd take the lead on drafting guidance etc. That side of things and, I think, the individual rights bit is going well (I can't remember where I saw it but the UK regulator gets vastly more individual complaints than most European ones, I think with the exception of Germany - if there is someone Brits can complain to, they will :lol:).

But I think there are two big problems which are that I think they're struggling to provide the right sort of support and resources for SMEs and they're not strong enough to deal with the big tech companies. These are not regulators like in, say, competition or financial regulation who are used to fighting with big companies and necessarily have the resources, experience or expertise to do that. So the UK regulator is re-launching their whole enforcement strategy. They announced two big fines but both ended up settling for about 10% of what they'd initially proposed - from my reading of the public initial fine and settlement that's because they made lots of procedural mistakes and hadn't necessarily copper-bottomed everything. Companies would just accept a fine from regulators when it was just up to €500k, now they're hundreds of millions or billions they will fight, they'll take it to the courts and judicial review if necessary. I've heard the former regulator in the UK (formerly from BC) say the biggest thing they weren't prepared for was litigation costs.

I think there is similar in Ireland. They have announced a big fine of Meta which was really forced on the Irish regulator by everyone else in Europe (and they're going to the European courts over some other points), but it was 5 years from when they started that investigation. Things are taking a long time because it's now serious enough for companies to fight every step.

The UK regulator have just announced an initial finding against Snap over AI but they've only released a very light press release so it'll be interesting to follow that and see if they've learned their lessons. That may be more of a "stop doing this" order than a fine though.

And they have a really tough job. They receive (in the UK) tens of thousands of individual complaints, they're responsible for regulating the world's biggest companies, the public sector, charities and SMEs who all have different needs - and in the UK they're also they're also in charge of freedom of information legislation. I think their HQ is in a small Cheshire suburb about half-way between Manchester and Stoke but I think that indicates the importance people thought an information regulator might have in the mid-80s when they were set up v now (they have satellite offices now in Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and London).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Savonarola on October 19, 2023, 07:24:33 AM
Quote from: Josquius on October 19, 2023, 03:06:25 AMThat reply on the voter suppression. Two counts of :bleeding:.
How can a guy so seemingly dumb be so successful?

QuoteI shall provide you with the god of Delphi as witness of my own wisdom, if indeed it is wisdom, and of the sort of wisdom it is. Indeed I presume you knew Chaerophon. He was my friend from my youngest years, and a friend of your democracy too, and he joined you in your recent exile and returned along with you. Well, you also know what Chaerophon was like, and how impulsive he was in anything he took on. And in fact he once went to Delphi and dared to consult the oracle about this, and – as I said, please do not raise a clamour, gentlemen – yes, he asked if anyone was wiser than me. So the Pythia answered that no one was wiser. And his brother, who is here, will be your witness of this, since the man himself is dead.

Now consider my reasons for saying all this, for I am going to set out for you the origin of the slander against me. Indeed when I heard this, I reflected upon it as follows. "What exactly does the god mean, and what on earth is the riddle he poses? For I myself am aware of being wise in nothing great or small, so what precisely does he mean when he says I am the wisest? Of course he cannot be lying, since that is not lawful for him." And I was perplexed for a considerable time as to what precisely he meant. Then, with much reluctance, I turned to a process of enquiry that went something like this. I went to one of the people who seem to be wise on the assumption that there, if anywhere,  I could refute the oracular utterance and show the oracle, "This person is wiser than me, but you said I was the wisest." Now I need not name the man, but it was one of our politicians I was examining, and my experience, men of Athens, was somewhat as follows. As I engaged him in discourse, it seemed to me that, although this man was thought wise by many other people and most of all by himself, he was not wise. So, I then attempted to show him that, although he believed himself to be wise, he was not wise. As a result, I was hated by him, and by many of those present. I reckoned as I was going that I am wiser than this man, for it is likely that neither of us knows anything noble and good, but he thinks he knows something, when he does not know, while I do not actually know. I do not even think that I know. So perhaps in this one minor respect, I am wiser than he is, because I do not think I know what I do not know. I then went to someone else, to one of the people who seemed wiser than that man, and I came to the very same conclusions, and in this case too I was hated by him, and by many others.

Now after this I kept on going, aware that I was hated, grieving and fearful, but it seemed necessary nevertheless to set the work of the god above all else. In considering the meaning of the oracle, I had to go to all those who seemed to know something. And by the Dog, men of Athens, for I must speak the truth to you, my experience was something like this. When it came to understanding, those with the most exalted reputations seemed to me, as I searched at the god's behest, well-nigh worse-off, while other men, of lower repute, were better off.

So I must recount my wanderings to you, and the labours I undertook, only to find the oracle irrefutable. For after the politicians I went to the poets – the tragedians, the dithyrambists and the rest – expecting in this case to show myself up, blatantly, as being more ignorant than they. So, selecting poems of theirs that in my opinion they had crafted most intricately, I would question them as to what they meant, in order to learn something from them in the process. Now, gentlemen, I am ashamed to recount the truth to you, but it must be spoken nevertheless. For in a sense, almost anyone who was present might have spoken better than the poets, about the poems they themselves had composed. So in the case of the poets too, I quickly realised that it is not by wisdom that they compose their works, but by nature, and by being inspired, just like the prophets and deliverers of oracles. For these people also say a great deal, and it is beautiful too, but they know nothing about what they are saying. It was evident to me that the poets were in a similar predicament, and I became aware at the same time that because of their poetry, they also thought themselves the wisest of men in general, when they were not. So I left their company too, thinking I was better off than they are, in the same way that I was better off than the politicians.

Then finally I came to the craftsmen, for I myself was aware that I really had no knowledge, and yet I knew I would find that their knowledge was extensive and beautiful. Well, I was not deceived in this. They did know things I did not know, and in this respect they were wiser than me. But, men of Athens, it seemed to me that the pre-eminent craftsmen also had the same failing as the poets. Because they exercised their skill so beautifully, they each deemed themselves extremely wise in other matters too, matters of great importance, and this error of theirs obscured that wisdom. So I asked myself, on behalf of the oracle, whether I should accept my present condition, neither wise in any of their wisdom nor foolish in their folly, or possess their wisdom and their folly. So I responded to myself and the oracle that it was better for me to remain as I was.
-Plato "The Apology"

It's not unusual (and certainly not novel) for successful people to think they're experts on every subject.  (Perhaps you've even met people like that ;).)  A better question might be, why do we pay so much attention to the opinions of successful people in areas outside their area of expertise? 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on October 19, 2023, 08:37:32 AM
Quote from: Josquius on October 19, 2023, 03:06:25 AMThat reply on the voter suppression. Two counts of :bleeding:.
How can a guy so seemingly dumb be so successful?

Being in the right place at the right time before a company goes public has a lot more to do with luck than intelligence.

However, we often make the mistake of equating financial success with intelligence.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on October 23, 2023, 08:55:40 AM
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/4270360-elon-musk-offers-1m-to-wikipedia-if-theyll-change-their-name/

QuoteElon Musk offers $1M to Wikipedia if they'll change their name

Billionaire Elon Musk offered Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, $1 million under the condition that it would change its name to "Dickipedia."

The owner of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, wrote his offer in a post on his new site. He quoted an earlier post with a screenshot of a personal appeal from Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales stating that the website is "not for sale."

"I will give them a billion dollars if they change their name to Dickipedia," Musk wrote.

"Please add that to the [cow and poop emojis] on my wiki page," he continued under the post. "In the interests of accuracy."

When one user, Journalist Ed Krassenstein, told the online encyclopedia to take the offer, saying that it can "can always change it back after you collect," Musk replied that the website must keep the name for "one year minimum."

"One year minimum. I mean, I'm a not fool lol," he said.

Musk's posts come after his earlier posts criticizing the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that hosts Wikipedia, for asking for money.

"Have you ever wondered why the Wikimedia Foundation wants so much money? It certainly isn't needed to operate Wikipedia," he wrote on X. "You can literally fit a copy of the entire text on your phone! So, what's the money for? Inquiring minds want to know ..."

The app's "Community Notes," which allows users to sign up to become contributors and create notes on posts for context, left an explanation under his post initially stating that Wikipedia handles "over 25B page views per month and over 44M page edits a month, requiring substantial operating costs."

It also noted that the organization employs third-party financial auditors whose reports are made available to the public.

The note since noted the organization's expense, $146 million, and left a bullet list specifying where the money goes by percent.

Wales has been an outspoken critic of Musk. In May, Wales condemned Musk's decision to censor critics ahead of the Turkish presidential election.

"What Wikipedia did: we stood strong for our principles and fought to the Supreme Court of Turkey and won," Wales wrote in response to a post from Musk defending his decision.  "This is what it means to treat freedom of expression as a principle rather than a slogan."

Musk has come under withering criticism in some quarters for misinformation on X since he purchased the platform and instituted a number of changes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on October 23, 2023, 08:59:40 AM
That man would be US President if he was allowed. Trump can't hold a candle to Musk's ankles.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on October 23, 2023, 10:15:17 AM
Calling Ed Krassenstein a "journalist" seems ... generous.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/feds-seized-a-fortune-from-resistance-icons-accused-of-boosting-online-ponzi-schemes
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on October 27, 2023, 03:45:05 PM
https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/26/23934216/x-twitter-bank-elon-musk-2024

QuoteElon Musk gives X employees one year to replace your bank

Elon Musk wants X to be the center of your financial world, handling anything in your life that deals with money. He expects those features to launch by the end of 2024, he told X employees during an all-hands call on Thursday, saying that people will be surprised with "just how powerful it is."

"When I say payments, I actually mean someone's entire financial life," Musk said, according to audio of the meeting obtained by The Verge. "If it involves money. It'll be on our platform. Money or securities or whatever. So, it's not just like send $20 to my friend. I'm talking about, like, you won't need a bank account."

X CEO Linda Yaccarino said the company sees this becoming a "full opportunity" in 2024. "It would blow my mind if we don't have that rolled out by the end of next year," Musk said.

The company is currently working on locking down money transmission licenses across the US so that it can offer financial services. Musk told employees Thursday that he hopes to get the others X needs in "the next few months."

Musk has discussed his plans to turn X into a financial hub before. He even renamed Twitter after his dot-com-boom-era online bank, X.com, which eventually became part of PayPal. He previously said the platform would offer high-yield money market accounts, debit cards, checks, and loan services, with the goal of letting users "send money anywhere in the world instantly and in real-time."

The original plan for X.com is clearly on Musk's mind. "The X/PayPal product roadmap was written by myself and David Sacks actually in July of 2000," Musk said on Thursday's internal X call. "And for some reason PayPal, once it became eBay, not only did they not implement the rest of the list, but they actually rolled back a bunch of key features, which is crazy. So PayPal is actually a less complete product than what we came up with in July of 2000, so 23 years ago."

Turning X into a rich hub for financial services ties directly into Musk's goal of making the platform into an "everything app," akin to super apps like WeChat in China that offer access to shopping, transportation, and more.

Musk faces major challenges to get there, though. Convincing people why they need such a platform is one. Getting them to trust X with their entire financial life is another.


Currently I wouldn't trust Musk to hold my drink while I tie my shoes, let alone my money. :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on October 27, 2023, 03:52:34 PM
Yeah that's what he said he was going to do. It makes sense. And if he pulls it off, he'll be sitting pretty... and it explains why he doesn't really care that much about curating the social media platform and is okay using it as primarily an ego boost. He doesn't care for it as a social media platform, he only purchased it as an initial user base/ marketing case for his upcoming financial product.

... and yeah, I'm with Syt. I wouldn't entrust anything that mattered to me to something with Musk in charge.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on October 27, 2023, 03:57:19 PM
Yeah - also apparently turning Twitter into a dating app (can you imagine? :blink:)....

Having spent the last year firing compliance and information security teams should certainly help smooth the way into launching consumer financial services products :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on October 27, 2023, 04:07:47 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on October 27, 2023, 03:57:19 PMYeah - also apparently turning Twitter into a dating app (can you imagine? :blink:)....

 :lol:

QuoteHaving spent the last year firing compliance and information security teams should certainly help smooth the way into launching consumer financial services products :hmm:

 :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on October 27, 2023, 04:14:22 PM
In separate news, Musk has started a fight with a Scandinavian union and seems set on escalating it: https://www.thelocal.se/20231027/tesla-threatens-to-bring-in-strikebreakers-as-swedish-workers-strike

QuoteTesla threatens to bring in strikebreakers as Swedish workers strike

Members of Sweden's IF Metall metalworkers' union working at Tesla service centres went on strike on Friday morning following a breakdown in negotiations over a collective bargaining agreement.

Around 90 percent of employees in Sweden are covered by a collective bargaining agreement, and the metal workers' union, IF Metall, has long tried to negotiate one with Tesla without success.

The union wants Tesla to sign an agreement offering the same working conditions to Tesla's mechanics as those offered to mechanics at other companies.

The company is refusing to sign one, IF Metall has reported, saying that company claims that it doesn't sign collective bargaining agreements anywhere in the world.

Tesla's Nordic lead, Kim Jensen, said in an internal meeting that the company is considering employing strikebreakers, Dagens Arbete has reported.

"If they bring in strikebreakers then that's completely unique," IF Metall's bargaining agreement secretary, Veli-Pekka Säikkälä, told the newspaper. "That would be crossing all boundaries. That kind of thing happened in Sweden in the 1920s and 30s."

"If they start employing strikebreakers and actively try to break the strike, then they have mobilised the entire union movement against them. Not just the Swedish Trade Union Confederation, but all of them. Then the issue at hand becomes less important."

Tesla Sweden's head of communications, Maria Lantz, did not wish to comment when approached by the TT newswire.

Not all of the employees working at the affected service centres are IF Metall members and the union did not disclose how many of the workers were members, saying only that it was "a lot", and that more had joined in recent days.

If the union succeeds with its blockade, it could become more difficult for Tesla owners to get their cars serviced or repaired, despite the fact that some other workshops also service Tesla cars.

However, things could get worse if the union extends its strike.

IF Metall has given notice of its intention to extend the strike from November 3rd to apply to 20 further workshops, which would also put members there under a blockade, preventing them from carrying out any work on Tesla cars at all. This could also prevent owners of new cars from collecting them, as members would be barred from carrying out the work needed in order to register new cars.

There are no plans for new negotiations between the two parties.

"As recently as Tuesday, when we had our last meeting with Tesla, they made it clear that they have no intentions of signing a collective bargaining agreement with us," IF Metall's spokesperson, Jesper Pettersson, said.

When asked how long strike measures were going to continue, he replied they would be in place "until we have a collective bargaining agreement in place".

It'll be interesting to see how that goes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on October 27, 2023, 04:44:19 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on October 27, 2023, 03:57:19 PMYeah - also apparently turning Twitter into a dating app (can you imagine? :blink:)....
That's a good platform for the Homelander and Stormfront of this world. :wub:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on October 27, 2023, 05:48:16 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on October 27, 2023, 03:57:19 PMYeah - also apparently turning Twitter into a dating app (can you imagine? :blink:)....

Having spent the last year firing compliance and information security teams should certainly help smooth the way into launching consumer financial services products :hmm:

Not to mention his history of SEC issues is not going to help in applying for any banking charters or brokerage licenses.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on October 27, 2023, 08:55:24 PM
Quote from: Jacob on October 27, 2023, 04:14:22 PMIn separate news, Musk has started a fight with a Scandinavian union and seems set on escalating it: https://www.thelocal.se/20231027/tesla-threatens-to-bring-in-strikebreakers-as-swedish-workers-strike

QuoteTesla threatens to bring in strikebreakers as Swedish workers strike

Members of Sweden's IF Metall metalworkers' union working at Tesla service centres went on strike on Friday morning following a breakdown in negotiations over a collective bargaining agreement.

Around 90 percent of employees in Sweden are covered by a collective bargaining agreement, and the metal workers' union, IF Metall, has long tried to negotiate one with Tesla without success.

The union wants Tesla to sign an agreement offering the same working conditions to Tesla's mechanics as those offered to mechanics at other companies.

The company is refusing to sign one, IF Metall has reported, saying that company claims that it doesn't sign collective bargaining agreements anywhere in the world.

Tesla's Nordic lead, Kim Jensen, said in an internal meeting that the company is considering employing strikebreakers, Dagens Arbete has reported.

"If they bring in strikebreakers then that's completely unique," IF Metall's bargaining agreement secretary, Veli-Pekka Säikkälä, told the newspaper. "That would be crossing all boundaries. That kind of thing happened in Sweden in the 1920s and 30s."

"If they start employing strikebreakers and actively try to break the strike, then they have mobilised the entire union movement against them. Not just the Swedish Trade Union Confederation, but all of them. Then the issue at hand becomes less important."

Tesla Sweden's head of communications, Maria Lantz, did not wish to comment when approached by the TT newswire.

Not all of the employees working at the affected service centres are IF Metall members and the union did not disclose how many of the workers were members, saying only that it was "a lot", and that more had joined in recent days.

If the union succeeds with its blockade, it could become more difficult for Tesla owners to get their cars serviced or repaired, despite the fact that some other workshops also service Tesla cars.

However, things could get worse if the union extends its strike.

IF Metall has given notice of its intention to extend the strike from November 3rd to apply to 20 further workshops, which would also put members there under a blockade, preventing them from carrying out any work on Tesla cars at all. This could also prevent owners of new cars from collecting them, as members would be barred from carrying out the work needed in order to register new cars.

There are no plans for new negotiations between the two parties.

"As recently as Tuesday, when we had our last meeting with Tesla, they made it clear that they have no intentions of signing a collective bargaining agreement with us," IF Metall's spokesperson, Jesper Pettersson, said.

When asked how long strike measures were going to continue, he replied they would be in place "until we have a collective bargaining agreement in place".

It'll be interesting to see how that goes.

Musk once again forgets that US law does not apply.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on October 28, 2023, 09:09:36 AM
Quote from: Syt on October 27, 2023, 03:45:05 PMhttps://www.theverge.com/2023/10/26/23934216/x-twitter-bank-elon-musk-2024

QuoteElon Musk gives X employees one year to replace your bank

Elon Musk wants X to be the center of your financial world, handling anything in your life that deals with money. He expects those features to launch by the end of 2024, he told X employees during an all-hands call on Thursday, saying that people will be surprised with "just how powerful it is."

"When I say payments, I actually mean someone's entire financial life," Musk said, according to audio of the meeting obtained by The Verge. "If it involves money. It'll be on our platform. Money or securities or whatever. So, it's not just like send $20 to my friend. I'm talking about, like, you won't need a bank account."

X CEO Linda Yaccarino said the company sees this becoming a "full opportunity" in 2024. "It would blow my mind if we don't have that rolled out by the end of next year," Musk said.

The company is currently working on locking down money transmission licenses across the US so that it can offer financial services. Musk told employees Thursday that he hopes to get the others X needs in "the next few months."

Musk has discussed his plans to turn X into a financial hub before. He even renamed Twitter after his dot-com-boom-era online bank, X.com, which eventually became part of PayPal. He previously said the platform would offer high-yield money market accounts, debit cards, checks, and loan services, with the goal of letting users "send money anywhere in the world instantly and in real-time."

The original plan for X.com is clearly on Musk's mind. "The X/PayPal product roadmap was written by myself and David Sacks actually in July of 2000," Musk said on Thursday's internal X call. "And for some reason PayPal, once it became eBay, not only did they not implement the rest of the list, but they actually rolled back a bunch of key features, which is crazy. So PayPal is actually a less complete product than what we came up with in July of 2000, so 23 years ago."

Turning X into a rich hub for financial services ties directly into Musk's goal of making the platform into an "everything app," akin to super apps like WeChat in China that offer access to shopping, transportation, and more.

Musk faces major challenges to get there, though. Convincing people why they need such a platform is one. Getting them to trust X with their entire financial life is another.


Currently I wouldn't trust Musk to hold my drink while I tie my shoes, let alone my money. :P

That's an interesting headline, given that it's about something never covered in the article.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on October 28, 2023, 09:19:55 AM
Quote"If it involves money. It'll be on our platform. Money or securities or whatever. So, it's not just like send $20 to my friend. I'm talking about, like, you won't need a bank account."

I think it could be inferred from this comment that he wants to make banks (or at least bank accounts) superfluous.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on October 28, 2023, 09:21:02 AM
Also, surely the kind of post you should make when your companies make a lot of money from the US government:

(https://i.postimg.cc/MHy6Ly8D/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on October 28, 2023, 10:56:22 AM
Bizzare post. More something you'd expect from the left. Can't see his fans much going for that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on October 28, 2023, 10:59:15 AM
I think the military base thing is one of the pillars of Russian propaganda, you can't listen to it for long before military bases come up.  Any bit of Russian propaganda will eventually have believers on the right.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on October 28, 2023, 11:05:57 AM
Quote from: Josquius on October 28, 2023, 10:56:22 AMBizzare post. More something you'd expect from the left. Can't see his fans much going for that.

Not really. It's on brand for a South African to side with Russia.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Maladict on October 28, 2023, 11:19:02 AM
Yes, all those nonexisting US bases in Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan must be such a threat.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on October 28, 2023, 02:13:05 PM
Quote from: Maladict on October 28, 2023, 11:19:02 AMYes, all those nonexisting US bases in Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan must be such a threat.

maybe some of those flags represent mc donalds franchises?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on October 28, 2023, 02:51:43 PM
The stable genius obviously knows where all the secret bases are
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 30, 2023, 02:58:19 PM
Testing the conspiracy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on October 30, 2023, 03:00:50 PM
All the history lost, like tears in the rain  :cry:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on October 30, 2023, 03:05:23 PM
He lacks the charm.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on October 30, 2023, 03:29:04 PM
What am I missing?  :ph34r:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on October 30, 2023, 03:30:16 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on October 30, 2023, 03:29:04 PMWhat am I missing?  :ph34r:

When languish was down the Elon musk thread disappeared. Current bets are Elon did it, Berk did it, or it was just a weird coincidence :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Solmyr on October 31, 2023, 03:53:41 AM
Quote from: HVC on October 30, 2023, 03:30:16 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on October 30, 2023, 03:29:04 PMWhat am I missing?  :ph34r:

When languish was down the Elon musk thread disappeared. Current bets are Elon did it, Berk did it, or it was just a weird coincidence :P

Where's the Jaron option?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on October 31, 2023, 08:06:04 AM
A wise man once said, I think, we need "50 more guys like him" in reference to Dear Elon.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on October 31, 2023, 08:23:04 AM
Was that man Vladimir Putin?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on October 31, 2023, 08:54:42 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on October 31, 2023, 08:06:04 AMA wise man once said, I think, we need "50 more guys like him" in reference to Dear Elon.

Meh, SpaceX, Tesla, "x" - 2 out of 3 ain't bad.
This really nothing fundamentally wrong with Elon that a little nationalization of Starlink can't fix.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on October 31, 2023, 08:56:16 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on October 31, 2023, 08:23:04 AMWas that man Vladimir Putin?

I won't slur Berky like that, I do like the guy despite us arguing at times.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on October 31, 2023, 10:54:32 AM
For all his faults, the impact of which may yet grow catastrophically, it does feel very off when his accomplishments are dismissed.  With both Tesla and SpaceX, you can make an argument that one man made a big difference to the world.  Yes, some people say that Musk didn't do anything himself, but that sounds like an unserious selective critique.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on October 31, 2023, 11:15:38 AM
At the very least, he was good at identifying a winner and swooping in to take the credit.

A more generous interpretation is that he brought something to the table that turned potential winners into de-facto winners.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on October 31, 2023, 11:19:17 AM
Quote from: Jacob on October 31, 2023, 11:15:38 AMAt the very least, he was good at identifying a winner and swooping in to take the credit.

Blind luck that he chose Tesla
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on October 31, 2023, 11:21:17 AM
He's a great pitch man. He can get investors to hand over money. Which is a great skill in and of itself.  But then again so is trump.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on October 31, 2023, 11:36:45 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 31, 2023, 11:19:17 AMBlind luck that he chose Tesla

I have no clue, and don't really care either way. Being consistently lucky is not bad either.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on October 31, 2023, 11:38:19 AM
Quote from: DGuller on October 31, 2023, 10:54:32 AMFor all his faults, the impact of which may yet grow catastrophically, it does feel very off when his accomplishments are dismissed.  With both Tesla and SpaceX, you can make an argument that one man made a big difference to the world.  Yes, some people say that Musk didn't do anything himself, but that sounds like an unserious selective critique.

My take was always Musk's killer talent is as a pitch man. I think some people view that as a derogatory claim--it isn't. If everyone could attract massive investor capital to businesses which, at the time, were losers in every meaningful respect (SpaceX and Tesla) and continue to maintain investor enthusiasm until both became viable businesses--then there would be a lot fewer businesses of this type going tits up after a few years. It is a genuine skill, and one that is rewarded lucratively.

What I have always objected to is the portrayals of him as a modern day Edison or Tesla (and yes, I know Edison himself has an exaggerated reputation.) Musk largely is not a technical person, lied about how much of technical education he even had, has apparently not worked on any actual technical work since doing some PHP programming in the mid-90s in his small startup that later got acquired--and fell ass backwards into a few billion due to being acquired by the company that became PayPal.

He was not responsible for PayPal's success--in fact he was fired from there due to being bad at his job.

But he deserves meaningful credit in being able to hold investors together to fund two companies in fields that historically have not been able to attract capital or sustain much investment as startups--a car company and a rocket company.

However, he wants to claim full credit for the tech work, which he didn't do. Tesla was started by two smart automotive engineers, and all of its technical successes have been because of its engineering teams, not Musk's personal tech savvy. SpaceX was always largely staffed by rocketry experts from other aerospace firms.

Musk just literally does not have the education or the occupational history to design rockets or cars. He has, factually, not designed rockets or cars. He pays people to do so.

That isn't a neg, it is a statement of fact. The reason it comes off as a neg is because Musk wants to be known as an inventor, not a really successful capital raiser, but that is what he is.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on October 31, 2023, 01:45:16 PM
Musk was incredibly effective as a pitch man. I love him, he was just what the EV market needed. EVs had to be cool to succeed and he made them cool.

So it is really frustrating he is destroying himself as an asset with all this insanity. Yet another thing twitter/X ruined.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on October 31, 2023, 02:05:53 PM
Musk made a lot of money in the late 90s from Paypal.  I mean there was the whole dotcom bubble, lots of people made money.  Musk made out with $175 million when Paypal was acquired by eBay.  Obviously a lot of money, but nothing completely crazy in the world of silicon valley.

He could have done a bunch of things with his money.  He could go retire on a tropical island somewhere.  He could go form yet another venture capitalist firm.

But no - he goes out and invests $100 million to found SpaceX, and then goes on to buy a majority stake in start-up Tesla.  Both of which promised technologies that could revolutionize their respective industries by having reusable rockets and electric cars.  But both of which were highly risky endeavours, and well outside the typical world of software startups.

Not a technical genius, although he'd like you to think he is.  He has many personal flaws, and definitely in a story as old as time his considerable success has gone to his head making him think he can do no wrong.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on October 31, 2023, 03:06:19 PM
So good of us to recreate the content of my dead thread.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on October 31, 2023, 03:08:14 PM
Quote from: garbon on October 31, 2023, 03:06:19 PMSo good of us to recreate the content of my dead thread.

We won't let Elon win!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on October 31, 2023, 03:12:31 PM
Quote from: garbon on October 31, 2023, 03:06:19 PMSo good of us to recreate the content of my dead thread.

It belonged to the people  :pope:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Darth Wagtaros on October 31, 2023, 03:45:24 PM
Quote from: Solmyr on October 31, 2023, 03:53:41 AM
Quote from: HVC on October 30, 2023, 03:30:16 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on October 30, 2023, 03:29:04 PMWhat am I missing?  :ph34r:

When languish was down the Elon musk thread disappeared. Current bets are Elon did it, Berk did it, or it was just a weird coincidence :P

Where's the Jaron option?

Where is Jaron?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on October 31, 2023, 03:46:26 PM
Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on October 31, 2023, 03:45:24 PM
Quote from: Solmyr on October 31, 2023, 03:53:41 AM
Quote from: HVC on October 30, 2023, 03:30:16 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on October 30, 2023, 03:29:04 PMWhat am I missing?  :ph34r:

When languish was down the Elon musk thread disappeared. Current bets are Elon did it, Berk did it, or it was just a weird coincidence :P

Where's the Jaron option?

Where is Jaron?


Who is Jaron?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on October 31, 2023, 04:04:11 PM
Quote from: Barrister on October 31, 2023, 03:46:26 PMWho is Jaron?

We are all Yi
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on October 31, 2023, 04:09:02 PM
Quote from: Valmy on October 31, 2023, 04:04:11 PM
Quote from: Barrister on October 31, 2023, 03:46:26 PMWho is Jaron?

We are all Yi

I was trying to set up a "I'll do you one better - why is Jaron?" punchline. :(
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Savonarola on October 31, 2023, 04:40:05 PM
Quote from: Barrister on October 31, 2023, 04:09:02 PMI was trying to set up a "I'll do you one better - why is Jaron?" punchline. :(

If eyes were made for seeing,
Then Jaron is his own excuse for Being

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Darth Wagtaros on October 31, 2023, 07:08:51 PM
Quote from: Barrister on October 31, 2023, 03:46:26 PM
Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on October 31, 2023, 03:45:24 PM
Quote from: Solmyr on October 31, 2023, 03:53:41 AM
Quote from: HVC on October 30, 2023, 03:30:16 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on October 30, 2023, 03:29:04 PMWhat am I missing?  :ph34r:

When languish was down the Elon musk thread disappeared. Current bets are Elon did it, Berk did it, or it was just a weird coincidence :P

Where's the Jaron option?

Where is Jaron?


Who is Jaron?
Why is Jaron? :jaron:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on October 31, 2023, 08:48:18 PM
Jaron is Elon Musk?  :o
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on October 31, 2023, 09:34:51 PM
Quote from: Valmy on October 31, 2023, 04:04:11 PM
Quote from: Barrister on October 31, 2023, 03:46:26 PMWho is Jaron?

We are all Yi

In a previous iteration of bank security. This sentence was what I use to make sure I was on the legitimate bank login page.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tonitrus on October 31, 2023, 10:00:24 PM
Quote from: Valmy on October 31, 2023, 01:45:16 PMMusk was incredibly effective as a pitch man. I love him, he was just what the EV market needed. EVs had to be cool to succeed and he made them cool.

So it is really frustrating he is destroying himself as an asset with all this insanity. Yet another thing twitter/X ruined.

Perhaps he is a modern-day Howard Hughes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josephus on November 01, 2023, 05:34:36 AM
How is Jaron?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 01, 2023, 12:55:13 PM
https://twitter.com/DiedSuddenly_/status/1719705299647422801

(https://i.postimg.cc/qvMScTPJ/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 01, 2023, 01:15:55 PM
What is Musk basing that opinion on? Feelings?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 01, 2023, 01:20:02 PM
Quote from: Valmy on November 01, 2023, 01:15:55 PMWhat is Musk basing that opinion on? Feelings?

Rocket engineering. You wouldn't understand it.

:P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 01, 2023, 01:20:22 PM
Quote from: Valmy on November 01, 2023, 01:15:55 PMWhat is Musk basing that opinion on? Feelings?

Probably something posted on Twitter by noted physician @catturd2
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 01, 2023, 01:28:43 PM
I mean this is sort of like saying most of those who receive treatment for stage 4 cancer die, so clearly the treatment is killing the patient not the stage 4 cancer.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 01, 2023, 01:30:58 PM
It's very well known that ventilators killed thousands of COVID victims by preventing them from evolving the capacity for anaerobic respiration.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 01, 2023, 01:32:19 PM
Quote from: Valmy on November 01, 2023, 01:28:43 PMI mean this is sort of like saying most of those who receive treatment for stage 4 cancer die, so clearly the treatment is killing the patient not the stage 4 cancer.

Finally there is understanding.
100% of everyone who died in all of history breathed oxyygen.  If we could just get people to stop doing that we could save billions of lives.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 01, 2023, 02:30:07 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 01, 2023, 01:30:58 PMIt's very well known that ventilators killed thousands of COVID victims by preventing them from evolving the capacity for anaerobic respiration.

maybe they think people get 'connected' to those big ventilators using fast-spinning blades in their fans?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on November 01, 2023, 02:42:34 PM
To be fair, I vaguely recall that at the beginning of the pandemic, ventilators were often not used correctly (they needed to be used differently for Covid patients than what was SOP pre-Covid), and I recall some arguing that they were indeed more likely to finish off the patient that might have survived than to save the patient that would've died.  This is not to say that those two towering intellects were thinking of it in this way, though.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 01, 2023, 02:44:46 PM
These are the guys that would protest against seat belt because they increase vehicle injuries while ignoring the decreased vehicle deaths.

I used to like Joe, I could look past his dumb moon conspiracy stuff, because it was harmless, but he's just a dumb rich guy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 01, 2023, 02:49:22 PM
Yeah, most likely Elon's off the cuff was a misunderstanding of that.

Ventilators do damage the body, and are brutal to use, but they are typically used when someone is in a condition where the alternative is "dying from inability to breathe."

Early covid, in some cases, people may have been vented before they needed to be, and that can cause harm that perhaps would not have otherwise occurred. However, at the same time--without some of the better treatments available, venting them early often times you may still have been talking about a patient that was on their way out regardless. But later in covid they definitely tried to use positional breathing and oxygen supplementation for longer before switching someone to a vent.

I would wager the vast majority of those who died on vents died because they had a terminal covid infection and weren't going to survive regardless.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 01, 2023, 02:57:58 PM
Not sure why you guys question Elon Musk, MD.

(https://i.postimg.cc/Qxsw-3dLb/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 01, 2023, 03:04:10 PM
Quote from: DGuller on November 01, 2023, 02:42:34 PMTo be fair, I vaguely recall that at the beginning of the pandemic, ventilators were often not used correctly (they needed to be used differently for Covid patients than what was SOP pre-Covid), and I recall some arguing that they were indeed more likely to finish off the patient that might have survived than to save the patient that would've died.  This is not to say that those two towering intellects were thinking of it in this way, though.
Yeah I don't think that's at all what they mean, but I think it was one of the early shifts in treating covid was that they were intubating etc too quickly and too often. I think it was basically treating it like you would other similar-ish diseases, but it turned out to not help.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on November 01, 2023, 03:29:43 PM
Quote from: Syt on November 01, 2023, 02:57:58 PMNot sure why you guys question Elon Musk, MD.

(https://i.postimg.cc/Qxsw-3dLb/image.png)
That's an interesting theory.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 01, 2023, 05:27:04 PM
Elon is going to buy up all the hospitals and pharma companies next. Tell them how to do things.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 01, 2023, 06:46:06 PM
To fully capture the previous thread, the sub caption on the thread title should have read "and we need 50 more like him"
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 02, 2023, 04:40:39 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 01, 2023, 03:04:10 PM
Quote from: DGuller on November 01, 2023, 02:42:34 PMTo be fair, I vaguely recall that at the beginning of the pandemic, ventilators were often not used correctly (they needed to be used differently for Covid patients than what was SOP pre-Covid), and I recall some arguing that they were indeed more likely to finish off the patient that might have survived than to save the patient that would've died.  This is not to say that those two towering intellects were thinking of it in this way, though.
Yeah I don't think that's at all what they mean, but I think it was one of the early shifts in treating covid was that they were intubating etc too quickly and too often. I think it was basically treating it like you would other similar-ish diseases, but it turned out to not help.

If we're going to be generous maybe reports about these early screw ups got filtered through a few years of insane people playing Chinese whispers into a modern general purpose VENTILATORS ARE DEATH MACHINES.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 08, 2023, 06:34:06 AM
(https://i.postimg.cc/vHR14W8V/image.png)

(https://i.postimg.cc/QdmVYwQQ/image.png)

 :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on November 08, 2023, 09:34:40 AM
The Spanish trade market regulator has announced it is investingating X for running fraudulent cryptocurrency advertising.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 08, 2023, 11:06:05 AM
I thought a whole bunch of IC vehicles actually gained value on the used market in the last few years. Seems like Tesla's fared quite poorly relative to a number of other vehicles in terms of depreciation.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 08, 2023, 11:11:14 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 08, 2023, 11:06:05 AMI thought a whole bunch of IC vehicles actually gained value on the used market in the last few years. Seems like Tesla's fared quite poorly relative to a number of other vehicles in terms of depreciation.

During the parts and production shortage, yeah. I think things have gone back to normal though.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on November 08, 2023, 11:13:04 AM
Quote from: HVC on November 08, 2023, 11:11:14 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 08, 2023, 11:06:05 AMI thought a whole bunch of IC vehicles actually gained value on the used market in the last few years. Seems like Tesla's fared quite poorly relative to a number of other vehicles in terms of depreciation.

During the parts and production shortage, yeah. I think things have gone back to normal though.

No, not really.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 08, 2023, 11:17:51 AM
Quote from: Tamas on November 08, 2023, 11:13:04 AM
Quote from: HVC on November 08, 2023, 11:11:14 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 08, 2023, 11:06:05 AMI thought a whole bunch of IC vehicles actually gained value on the used market in the last few years. Seems like Tesla's fared quite poorly relative to a number of other vehicles in terms of depreciation.

During the parts and production shortage, yeah. I think things have gone back to normal though.

No, not really.


I stand corrected.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 08, 2023, 02:00:14 PM
Quote from: Tamas on November 08, 2023, 11:13:04 AM
Quote from: HVC on November 08, 2023, 11:11:14 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 08, 2023, 11:06:05 AMI thought a whole bunch of IC vehicles actually gained value on the used market in the last few years. Seems like Tesla's fared quite poorly relative to a number of other vehicles in terms of depreciation.

During the parts and production shortage, yeah. I think things have gone back to normal though.

No, not really.

So I can't say for the UK, but we bought a used truck this past summer.  There was lots of selection and it seemed like things had gotten pretty normal-ish in the used vehicle market.

But yeah a year earlier I heard of dealerships just calling customers up and basically begging to buy their vehicles from them.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 08, 2023, 05:32:31 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on October 31, 2023, 08:54:42 AMMeh, SpaceX, Tesla, "x" - 2 out of 3 ain't bad.
This really nothing fundamentally wrong with Elon that a little nationalization of Starlink can't fix.

Paypal :contract:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on November 08, 2023, 10:41:21 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 08, 2023, 02:00:14 PM
Quote from: Tamas on November 08, 2023, 11:13:04 AM
Quote from: HVC on November 08, 2023, 11:11:14 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 08, 2023, 11:06:05 AMI thought a whole bunch of IC vehicles actually gained value on the used market in the last few years. Seems like Tesla's fared quite poorly relative to a number of other vehicles in terms of depreciation.

During the parts and production shortage, yeah. I think things have gone back to normal though.

No, not really.

So I can't say for the UK, but we bought a used truck this past summer.  There was lots of selection and it seemed like things had gotten pretty normal-ish in the used vehicle market.

But yeah a year earlier I heard of dealerships just calling customers up and basically begging to buy their vehicles from them.

It was 2022 or 2021, because new cars, at least some types, were in real short supply because of the chip shortage.

I still never got any crazy offers for my 2013 VW Jetta though. :(
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 09, 2023, 10:36:45 AM
I recently got a used 2013 Nissan Leaf, my first completely electric vehicle. So far I really like it, such a smooth and quiet ride though you do have to always be thinking about your battery life.

But it fits my main requirement for car: it was cheap. A quality Teslas tend not to have.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 09, 2023, 12:15:57 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 08, 2023, 05:32:31 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on October 31, 2023, 08:54:42 AMMeh, SpaceX, Tesla, "x" - 2 out of 3 ain't bad.
This really nothing fundamentally wrong with Elon that a little nationalization of Starlink can't fix.

Paypal :contract:

He wasn't the main guy on that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on November 12, 2023, 11:34:34 AM
Tesla will sue Cybertruck owners if they resell the first year (https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-sue-cybertruck-buyers-they-resell-in-first-year-2023-11)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 12, 2023, 11:39:24 AM
Does cybertruck at least fix the known visibility and safety issues of pickup trucks? Doesn't look quite so beefy at a glance....
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Darth Wagtaros on November 12, 2023, 12:17:16 PM
Does Tusla?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 12, 2023, 12:58:17 PM
Quote from: viper37 on November 12, 2023, 11:34:34 AMTesla will sue Cybertruck owners if they resell the first year (https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-sue-cybertruck-buyers-they-resell-in-first-year-2023-11)

QuoteGiven the subscription model of much of the software Tesla EVs use, resale can be complicated. The Full Self-Driving feature, which costs up to $199 per month, is not transferable to a new owner, Fast Company reported.
:lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 16, 2023, 01:48:01 AM
(https://i.imgur.com/4syQIg5.jpeg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 16, 2023, 01:58:19 AM
When will someone rid us of this turbulent billionaire?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: jimmy olsen on November 16, 2023, 02:42:18 AM
Absolutely disgusting
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 16, 2023, 02:44:33 AM
Also, I guess Musk doesn't consider Jews to be "white" now?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on November 16, 2023, 03:40:11 AM
I am also disappointed this thread is still here, disproving our thesis that the old one was destroyed on Musk's orders.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 16, 2023, 03:43:03 AM
Quote from: Tamas on November 16, 2023, 03:40:11 AMI am also disappointed this thread is still here, disproving our thesis that the old one was destroyed on Musk's orders.

Took him a few months to catch in to the last one, give him some time. Unlike what his fans think, he's not omniscient.

He's also trying to walk back his antisemitic "slip up"
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 16, 2023, 04:10:05 AM
Quote from: HVC on November 16, 2023, 03:43:03 AM
Quote from: Tamas on November 16, 2023, 03:40:11 AMI am also disappointed this thread is still here, disproving our thesis that the old one was destroyed on Musk's orders.

Took him a few months to catch in to the last one, give him some time. Unlike what his fans think, he's not omniscient.

He's also trying to walk back his antisemitic "slip up"

I see two hypothesis here.

1: Time. It simply took time for Musk/his bot to stumble on the old one.
2: There was a critical recent post which really set off the trigger. What was it?


Or of course that it was a complete coincidence... but that's ridiculous.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 16, 2023, 04:26:22 AM
To provide fair context, this is the full post he agreed with:

(https://i.postimg.cc/028yKW5P/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on November 16, 2023, 04:39:13 AM
That full post is 10 out of 10 for finding a way to be railing against Muslim immigrants AND hating on local Jews. It's a conundrum far righters normally struggle with.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 16, 2023, 11:51:34 AM
We need 50 more of these guys.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on November 16, 2023, 01:17:21 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 16, 2023, 11:51:34 AMWe need 50 more of these guys.
:lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 16, 2023, 06:03:01 PM
That quote never gets old.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on November 16, 2023, 07:01:20 PM
It's ironic that a quote can age so poorly and yet never get old.  :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 16, 2023, 07:07:30 PM
I never would have imagined that after 20 years of arguing, raging, and frothing (  :berkut: ) people being mean to his Trumpian hero is what would finally break berkut.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on November 16, 2023, 07:10:12 PM
In another context it's what is breaking CC too.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 16, 2023, 10:27:29 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 16, 2023, 07:07:30 PMI never would have imagined that after 20 years of arguing, raging, and frothing (  :berkut: ) people being mean to his Trumpian hero is what would finally break berkut.

I suspect that it is the monotony of the insults here that bored him.  It bores me, as well, so I come here much less often than I used to.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 16, 2023, 10:46:40 PM
Quote from: grumbler on November 16, 2023, 10:27:29 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 16, 2023, 07:07:30 PMI never would have imagined that after 20 years of arguing, raging, and frothing (  :berkut: ) people being mean to his Trumpian hero is what would finally break berkut.

I suspect that it is the monotony of the insults here that bored him.  It bores me, as well, so I come here much less often than I used to.

While monotonous at times, true, that's always been the case. Though I guess trying to go toe to toe with Otto was a mistake on his part.

*edit* And that's not an insult against Otto. He's almost as entertaining as CdM in his pursuits. If that tickles your fancy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 16, 2023, 11:30:18 PM
Quote from: grumbler on November 16, 2023, 10:27:29 PMI suspect that it is the monotony of the insults here that bored him.  It bores me, as well, so I come here much less often than I used to.

Geez. Sorry man. Are there any insults in particular you want me to use more often?

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 16, 2023, 11:33:48 PM
Quote from: Valmy on November 16, 2023, 11:30:18 PM
Quote from: grumbler on November 16, 2023, 10:27:29 PMI suspect that it is the monotony of the insults here that bored him.  It bores me, as well, so I come here much less often than I used to.

Geez. Sorry man. Are there any insults in particular you want me to use more often?



Can't speak for him, but I'm partial to yo mama jokes
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 16, 2023, 11:34:54 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 16, 2023, 11:33:48 PMCan't speak for him, but I'm partial to yo mama jokes.

So's yo mama.

:lmfao:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 17, 2023, 01:41:16 AM
What about Yo-Yo Ma jokes? But I would hate to string you along. :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 17, 2023, 02:49:15 AM
Back on topic(?) I find at amusing that at the same time Musk was making his bizarre claim that the ADL "attacks the majority of the West," Musk was conducting his own staunch defense of the West and its values by groveling before the Red Emperor Xi.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on November 17, 2023, 05:25:56 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 17, 2023, 02:49:15 AMBack on topic(?) I find at amusing that at the same time Musk was making his bizarre claim that the ADL "attacks the majority of the West," Musk was conducting his own staunch defense of the West and its values by groveling before the Red Emperor Xi.

Jump the Shark called to tell you that is so six months ago.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 17, 2023, 09:10:49 AM
Musk met Xi in SF six months ago?  :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 17, 2023, 09:32:17 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 17, 2023, 02:49:15 AMBack on topic(?) I find at amusing that at the same time Musk was making his bizarre claim that the ADL "attacks the majority of the West," Musk was conducting his own staunch defense of the West and its values by groveling before the Red Emperor Xi.
Yes. Plus the Tesla factories and the Saudi money, it's the side of Musk's ownership I find most concerning. Interesting to see what's going on in test cases - e.g. Twitter's response to authorities in, say, India or Turkey.

And not to bang my drum too obsessively. But in the context of free speech and the internet I think there's a real risk in handing basically quasi-regulatory power to the platforms. I'm really not sure that their interests, see Musk or Zuckerberg (handing out copies of Xi Jinping thought to other execs), are necessarily aligned to the interests or priorities of a democratic society - we can't privatise our values.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 17, 2023, 09:49:27 AM
Quote from: Tamas on November 16, 2023, 03:40:11 AMI am also disappointed this thread is still here, disproving our thesis that the old one was destroyed on Musk's orders.

More like I keep forgetting to go spelunking in the DB to try and recover the old posts :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 17, 2023, 10:50:19 AM
Meanwhile in Sweden, Tesla management has succeeded in triggering collective union action against them by bringing in strikebreakers. Cleaning unions are refusing to clean Tesla premises, dockworkers are refusing to unload Teslas at the docks, postal workers are refusing to deliver to Tesla facilities and so on. In a similar situation against Toys R Us in the 90s, the financial worker union stopped processing Toys R Us transactions - I'm not sure whether that's the case with Tesla right now.

Apparently the main union that has called the strike action has increased strike pay to 130% of normal pay for the workers (the additional 30% to cover lost benefits), and has stated that their strike fund has enough money to cover the striking workers for 500 years.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 17, 2023, 10:56:05 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 17, 2023, 10:50:19 AMMeanwhile in Sweden, Tesla management has succeeded in triggering collective union action against them by bringing in strikebreakers. Cleaning unions are refusing to clean Tesla premises, dockworkers are refusing to unload Teslas at the docks, postal workers are refusing to deliver to Tesla facilities and so on. In a similar situation against Toys R Us in the 90s, the financial worker union stopped processing Toys R Us transactions - I'm not sure whether that's the case with Tesla right now.

Apparently the main union that has called the strike action has increased strike pay to 130% of normal pay for the workers (the additional 30% to cover lost benefits), and has stated that their strike fund has enough money to cover the striking workers for 500 years.

It'll

Huzzah!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on November 17, 2023, 11:00:58 AM
First Elon got our thread, now he got Jacob mid-post? :unsure:  Is there anything this incredibly gifted individual who's really a gift to us all can't accomplish?  :)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 17, 2023, 11:02:07 AM
Quote from: DGuller on November 17, 2023, 11:00:58 AMFirst Elon got our thread, now he got Jacob mid-post? :unsure:  Is there anything this incredibly gifted individual who's really a gift to us all can't accomplish?  :)

 :ph34r:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 17, 2023, 02:15:35 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 08, 2023, 11:06:05 AMI thought a whole bunch of IC vehicles actually gained value on the used market in the last few years. Seems like Tesla's fared quite poorly relative to a number of other vehicles in terms of depreciation.

As the range and efficiency of electric batteries increases, charging rates speed up, and overall comfort of the cars increases, those older models are never going to hold their value relative to IC cars - the IC engine is not encountering the sort of technological leaps that occur in the EV market.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 17, 2023, 02:18:28 PM
Good point.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 17, 2023, 06:14:07 PM
The New York Times is reporting that advertisers are leaving X in droves as a result of Musk's endorsement of the antisemitic post.

Musk is learning, or rather finding out, in real time that speech does have consequences, no matter how freely it is exercised. And I suppose more to the point, if not exercised in a way that is thoughtful.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 17, 2023, 07:00:55 PM
Not sure if it's tied to the same exodus but IBM just left when they found out their ads next to pro nazi ones.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 17, 2023, 07:02:03 PM
How much of his own money is tied up with the debacle? Don't think he'd really care if and when twitter goes belly up.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 17, 2023, 08:41:38 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 17, 2023, 07:02:03 PMHow much of his own money is tied up with the debacle? Don't think he'd really care if and when twitter goes belly up.

My understanding is of the $44bn deal, Musk agreed to put up $33.5bn of the purchase.

Investment banks put up the difference (which they have subsequently had trouble offloading, because during the time they were processing it the market sentiment on Twitter massively collapsed and it is seen as very junk grade debt.)

Of the $33.5bn Musk put up, I believe $7bn was from his equity partners--entities like Oracle's Larry Ellison, the Saudis. That left around $26.5bn to cover from Musk. Now, Musk already owned around 9.5% of Twitter publicly traded stock, which was folded into the deal for around $4bn, so Musk basically had to come up with around $20-22bn of real cash to close out the deal, which AFAIK was financed by selling TSLA shares.

I don't think the nominal value of the money is probably what he cares about, he is probably annoyed he had to move that much money out of TSLA since it is certainly the more valuable investment and more likely to have high future returns (although he is working vigorously to undermine Tesla's market standing as well.)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 17, 2023, 09:58:18 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 17, 2023, 06:14:07 PMMusk is learning, or rather finding out, in real time that speech does have consequences, no matter how freely it is exercised. And I suppose more to the point, if not exercised in a way that is thoughtful.

I would say speech has many facets. Klansman and neo-Nazis want the freedom to exploit powerful tech platforms to spread their noxious message.  Large advertisers want the freedom to deliver their own messages to potential customers free from assocation with Nazi propaganda.  Both freedoms can't be exercised at the same time; either one or the other has to accept some disappointment.  It's up to the platform to decide which speech to privilege. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 17, 2023, 11:04:25 PM
Seems to me that Twitter privileges the spreading of Musk's inane verbal wankery.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Gups on November 18, 2023, 04:52:27 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 17, 2023, 06:14:07 PMThe New York Times is reporting that advertisers are leaving X in droves as a result of Musk's endorsement of the antisemitic post.

Musk is learning, or rather finding out, in real time that speech does have consequences, no matter how freely it is exercised. And I suppose more to the point, if not exercised in a way that is thoughtful.

No, it's the fault of an organisation called Media Matters and he is going to sue them the split second the courtsopen on Monday. Thermonuclear style.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/18/elon-musk-to-file-thermonuclear-lawsuit-as-advertisers-desert-x

He sounds more and more like Trump every day.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 18, 2023, 06:33:36 AM
Surely he doesn't want to take them to task for exercising their right to free speech in their reporting etc.? :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 18, 2023, 06:50:41 AM
Media Matters is going to regret this bigly
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 18, 2023, 07:16:42 AM
Are they on North Norfolk Digital?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 18, 2023, 08:30:45 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 17, 2023, 09:58:18 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 17, 2023, 06:14:07 PMMusk is learning, or rather finding out, in real time that speech does have consequences, no matter how freely it is exercised. And I suppose more to the point, if not exercised in a way that is thoughtful.

I would say speech has many facets. Klansman and neo-Nazis want the freedom to exploit powerful tech platforms to spread their noxious message.  Large advertisers want the freedom to deliver their own messages to potential customers free from assocation with Nazi propaganda.  Both freedoms can't be exercised at the same time; either one or the other has to accept some disappointment.  It's up to the platform to decide which speech to privilege. 

Very true.  But entirely inconsistent with the views, musk has expressed regarding speech.

It's why I qualified my comment that he was learning something. I don't think he's learning anything at all, but rather this episode has confirmation of his own beliefs, that all speech should be free and without consequence.

At some point he had to collide with reality.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 18, 2023, 08:33:51 AM
Quote from: Gups on November 18, 2023, 04:52:27 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 17, 2023, 06:14:07 PMThe New York Times is reporting that advertisers are leaving X in droves as a result of Musk's endorsement of the antisemitic post.

Musk is learning, or rather finding out, in real time that speech does have consequences, no matter how freely it is exercised. And I suppose more to the point, if not exercised in a way that is thoughtful.

No, it's the fault of an organisation called Media Matters and he is going to sue them the split second the courtsopen on Monday. Thermonuclear style.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/18/elon-musk-to-file-thermonuclear-lawsuit-as-advertisers-desert-x

He sounds more and more like Trump every day.

Yep
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 18, 2023, 11:54:00 AM
He doesn't believe Media Matters should have free speech?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 18, 2023, 04:05:41 PM
Put aside the non-existent merits of such a lawsuit.  Media Matters is a non profit whose entire annual revenue wouldn't be enough to run The Company Formerly Known As Twitter for a day.  This is a nonsense business model.

How about a nice game of chess, Elon?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 18, 2023, 04:29:37 PM
I guess his goal is to destroy them?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 19, 2023, 08:22:38 PM
Hell of a scoop:
https://www.semafor.com/article/11/19/2023/twitter-bets-big-on-ceos-son

We know Yaccarino can't control Musk, but it sounds like she's got no interest in even trying to build a credible platform either.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 20, 2023, 01:28:11 AM
https://news.yahoo.com/elon-musk-says-many-big-105629269.html

QuoteElon Musk says many big advertisers are the 'greatest oppressors' of free speech after several pull ads from X in antisemitism controversy

Elon Musk said many large advertisers are "oppressors" of free speech after several corporations said they would pause ads on X amid an antisemitism controversy.

Musk posted encouraging users to sign up for the Premium+ version of X, which he said does not have ads, and added: "Many of the largest advertisers are the greatest oppressors of your right to free speech."

Apple, Disney, and IBM were among the major corporations who pulled ads from X after a controversial post from Musk appeared to endorse an antisemitic message.

Earlier this week, Musk responded to a post that criticized "western Jewish populations" and said Jewish people were pushing "hatred against whites."

"You have said the actual truth," Musk wrote in response.

The original post hinted at the "great replacement" conspiracy theory, which claims that nonwhite immigrants to Western countries are replacing white populations. The theory is often invoked against Jews who are pro-immigration.

Musk has faced widespread criticism for his comments, including Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz calling for him to step down from the six companies he is CEO of.

Amid the controversy, the nonprofit media watchdog group Media Matters put out a report saying it had found ads from big brands next to pro-Nazi content.

In response to the report, Musk said on Saturday that X will file a "thermonuclear" lawsuit against the organization.

X CEO Linda Yaccarino had tried to quell concerns about the platform, saying on Thursday: "When it comes to this platform -- X has also been extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination. There's no place for it anywhere in the world -- it's ugly and wrong. Full stop."

Always amusing to see a billionaire who uses his platform to boost/suppress opinions to his whims complain about billion dollar corporations doing same with their ad dollars. :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 20, 2023, 01:34:37 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 18, 2023, 04:05:41 PMPut aside the non-existent merits of such a lawsuit.  Media Matters is a non profit whose entire annual revenue wouldn't be enough to run The Company Formerly Known As Twitter for a day.  This is a nonsense business model.

How about a nice game of chess, Elon?

On that note, Chaya Raichik (Libs of TikTok) about Ari Drennen (the LGBTQ program director for Media Matters). And we know how Musk feels about trans people ...  :rolleyes:

(https://i.postimg.cc/1zShBV3q/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on November 20, 2023, 01:57:59 AM
Thecright picture makes look more like he's likes dressing up as a priest. Some unfortunate cropping there
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 20, 2023, 02:10:36 AM
Well, she's looking less priestly these days.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FrwHmcXaUAEhvP9?format=jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 20, 2023, 03:36:46 AM
Quote from: Syt on November 20, 2023, 02:10:36 AMWell, she's looking less priestly these days.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FrwHmcXaUAformat=jpg)

I dunno. Tell me this woman is a priest and my response would be "yep. Off duty and no collar but the dresscode matches."

QuoteAlways amusing to see a billionaire who uses his platform to boost/suppress opinions to his whims complain about billion dollar corporations doing same with their ad dollars. :P
It really is amazing how super into projection the far right are.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 20, 2023, 04:44:26 AM
(https://i.postimg.cc/WpCRPLzS/image.png)

(https://i.postimg.cc/qB5rM6bs/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on November 20, 2023, 04:48:16 AM
Wow what a shitshow.  :lol:

Let's count our blessings and be happy Musk wasn't born a US citizen, there'd be absolutely nothing stopping him becoming President otherwise.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 20, 2023, 04:51:23 AM
He feels more and more like a significantly richer John McAfee. :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 20, 2023, 10:32:11 AM
Many states including California and the District of Columbia, have anti-SLAPP laws. These laws impose monetary sanctions for dubious lawsuits targeting journalists exercising speech rights on matters of public interest. 

It may be possible to get around that by filing in federal court but you then expose yourself to Rule 11 sanctions for frivolous cases. Elon can talk to his buddy Donald about this, as a bunch of the Trump campaign lawyers got sanctioned in the 2020 election lawsuits.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 20, 2023, 10:58:04 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 18, 2023, 04:29:37 PMI guess his goal is to destroy them?

Then he is not as smart as his supporters claim. This will likely end up being costly for him as the court will likely throw out the lawsuit and impose significant financial costs on him for bringing a meritless defamation claim.  He will also likely end up paying the defendant's lawyers fees.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 20, 2023, 10:59:46 AM
... but... but... there are 2 dozen+ Conservative state AGs? Won't they just do Elon's bidding?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on November 20, 2023, 11:25:22 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 20, 2023, 10:59:46 AM... but... but... there are 2 dozen+ Conservative state AGs? Won't they just do Elon's bidding?

They will, well, try.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 20, 2023, 11:54:52 AM
Look I am not an attorney but based on my total layman's understanding:

1. I don't think its a conservative AGs job to force people to give Elon Musk money.

2. Also even if Media Matters is just lying its ass off, I don't see where the criminal fraud comes from. Maybe it is libel, but that is notoriously hard to prove.

3. Finally not just any AG can do this, they have to have jurisdiction.

But I am not a genius like Elon Musk so what do I know?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 20, 2023, 11:55:52 AM
Quote from: Valmy on November 20, 2023, 11:54:52 AMLook I am not an attorney but based on my total layman's understanding:

1. I don't think its a conservative AGs job to force people to give Elon Musk money.

2. Also even if Media Matters is just lying its ass off, I don't see where the criminal fraud comes from. Maybe it is libel, but that is notoriously hard to prove.

3. Finally not just any AG can do this, they have to have jurisdiction.

But I am not a genius like Elon Musk so what do I know?

I suspect Jacob was making a joke.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 20, 2023, 11:59:43 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2023, 11:55:52 AMI suspect Jacob was making a joke.

And what was he making the joke about? Maybe something else posted in the thread? Maybe this:

(https://i.postimg.cc/WpCRPLzS/image.png)

I was also commenting on that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 20, 2023, 12:02:55 PM
Quote from: Valmy on November 20, 2023, 11:54:52 AMLook I am not an attorney but based on my total layman's understanding:

1. I don't think its a conservative AGs job to force people to give Elon Musk money.

2. Also even if Media Matters is just lying its ass off, I don't see where the criminal fraud comes from. Maybe it is libel, but that is notoriously hard to prove.

3. Finally not just any AG can do this, they have to have jurisdiction.

But I am not a genius like Elon Musk so what do I know?

2 & 3 are basically right, but 1 is a political proposition, not a legal one. Not that long ago you'd be right but right now the job of any MAGA AG is to play a lead clown in the MAGA circus.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on November 20, 2023, 12:11:20 PM
Isn't it rather dangerous for the man who wrote Trump's speeches to remind everyone that fraud is a criminal offense?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 20, 2023, 12:16:28 PM
Quote from: Valmy on November 20, 2023, 11:59:43 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2023, 11:55:52 AMI suspect Jacob was making a joke.

And what was he making the joke about? Maybe something else posted in the thread? Maybe this:

(https://i.postimg.cc/WpCRPLzS/image.png)

I was also commenting on that.

I suspect he was making a joke about the post I made, and I now see JR made immediately before my post.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 20, 2023, 12:26:35 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2023, 11:55:52 AMI suspect Jacob was making a joke.

I was :D

... but the joke also sort of covered the fact that I don't know to what extent a compliant state AG could actually help Musk with his thermonuclear endeavours.

Though it's Monday morning. Has the suit been filed yet?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 20, 2023, 02:04:11 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 20, 2023, 12:16:28 PMI suspect he was making a joke about the post I made, and I now see JR made immediately before my post.

Well good for him. But I was making my post about the thing I quoted.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 20, 2023, 02:32:04 PM
Quote from: grumbler on November 20, 2023, 12:11:20 PMIsn't it rather dangerous for the man who wrote Trump's speeches to remind everyone that fraud is a criminal offense?

He's probably safe, it's hard to defraud someone when everyone automatically assumes you are lying.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 20, 2023, 11:14:40 PM
I read the complaint filed against Media Matters.  Turns out Elon was right all along.  It is a thermonuclear lawsuit.  But for the opposite reason he intended.  It will probably not destroy X on its own, but it will very likely do an enormous amount of damage.  Assuming MM can generate the funding and legal support to ligigate it strongly, they are going to have a field day in discovery.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 20, 2023, 11:16:26 PM
You think his lawyers warned him, or they were just blinded by the dollar signs in their eyes?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 20, 2023, 11:21:23 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 20, 2023, 11:16:26 PMYou think his lawyers warned him, or they were just blinded by the dollar signs in their eyes?
I think he's using lawyers to force a non-profit media company to spend their money on litigation, even if it's just defending or getting things kicked out. That's what the powerful do if they have legal avenues available (and is part of the in-built inequality of law).

It is different, but I think tech billionaires look at Thiel and Gawker as a great example/model.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 20, 2023, 11:24:18 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 20, 2023, 11:21:23 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 20, 2023, 11:16:26 PMYou think his lawyers warned him, or they were just blinded by the dollar signs in their eyes?
I think he's using lawyers to force a non-profit media company to spend their money on litigation, even if it's just defending or getting things kicked out. That's what the powerful do if they have legal avenues available (and is part of the in-built inequality of law).

It is different, but I think tech billionaires look at Thiel and Gawker as a great example/model.

 I mean Thiel might be a dick, but gawker as a whole was hardly blameless.

As an aside, jezebel finally went tits up. There goes my go to hate read site.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 20, 2023, 11:29:49 PM
No doubt - but the rich have always used law as a weapon against the media. I think that just opened up a new range of possibilities especially with the current trend (which is really positive from a media freedom perspective) of non-profits and specialist online media - they're more vulnerable to lawfare and you can even bankrupt them. Especially if you're rich enough to have no incentive to settle/push for your day in court.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 20, 2023, 11:32:02 PM
Are there limits anti SLAPP awards/penalties? I mean is the risk reward still on the rich guys side?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 20, 2023, 11:47:56 PM
I think it's more that risk/reward doesn't necessarily matter if you're a billionaire v if you're a commercial or non-profit enterprise, particularly without the deep(-ish) pockets of the established traditional media companies.

If you're a billionaire and motivated, you can take the costs of fighting 100 losing lawsuits. Some anti-SLAPP laws allow recovery of costs, but not all. The cost of successfully fighting 100 lawsuits can be pretty hefty for a small media company or non-profit. Even if they are able to recover all their costs (or have pro bono support) and they're not paying those as they go it's a still a lot of time and energy by reporters, editors etc to fight litigatiton.

That's where it has more of a chilling effect almost aside from the actual law, especially as rich people can open up a million and one fronts. Agree on Gawker but that was an example of Thiel looking for and funding other claims which is an option too.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 20, 2023, 11:50:46 PM
Some initial reactions to the suit - copy here - https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24172816/x-v-media-matters-complaint.pdf

1.  The lead attorney is an appeal specialist.  If he has trial experience, it is not listed on his resume or firm area of practice. Of the remaining two lawyers, one is also an appellate specialist; the other did a few years general litigation in the Texas AG office after 1-2 years doing commercial litigation as a junior associate.  This is a team of political lawyers who know their way around a Federalist Society symposium but are very light on trial experience.

2. It doesn't look like the court where they brought the suit has jurisdiction.  They don't allege any of the defendants had any contacts with Texas.  it may be the strategy here is to make headlines with an initial filing and then die quietly on a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction.

3. They ADMIT the existence of very problem they attack MM for writing about.  They try to minimize it by throwing a lot of metaphorical adjectives like "manufactured" or "inorganic". They claim it is "rare". Another way of saying the exact same thing is "it happens".  Its very odd to bring a disparagement case accusing the defendant of lying while admitting the truth of that very thing.

4. The crux of the complaint is that MM was able to generate their copy by refreshing, thereby "generating between 13 and 15 times more advertisements per hour than viewed by the average X user" (the bolding is in the original)  I don't think they realize how bad this looks for X.  The platform must have billions of views per day.  The Nazi/white nationalist feed alone are probably in the millions.  Divide that by 15 and it is a very scary number for an advertiser.

5.  The complaint directly and explicitly puts into issue the safety of the X platform, how much racist and Nazi ideology is on the platform and its rate of growth, how many big co ads "organically" appear next to such content, what that platform's advertising strategy is, its relationships with big advertisers, its revenues, etc.  In short there is a host of information about which MM is undoubtedly very interested, and now as part of civil discovery, they will be able to get to see some the innermost documents of the company on these subjects.  True there are confidentiality orders that restrict use of such materials, but the Fox-Dominion suit shows how ineffective those measures can be are as the case gets closer to trial.

It's amateur hour, except that the amateurs are indeed handling nuclear materials

Time to pop the popcorn and pull up a chair.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 20, 2023, 11:55:28 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 20, 2023, 11:32:02 PMAre there limits anti SLAPP awards/penalties? I mean is the risk reward still on the rich guys side?

If it stays in federal court in Texas, it won't be an issue because the Texas anti-slapp law does not apply in federal court.  I don't think this complaint is sanctionable either.  It's just a terrible idea to bring.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 21, 2023, 12:40:13 AM
A few questions for anyone who might know:

What sort of costs would MM need to adequately defend themselves?

Would they need more money to leverage the discovery process more effectively?

How much money do we assume MM has available to defend themselves?

Is this the kind of thing where someone highly competent would defend MM pro-bono or at reduced cost because bloodying Musk's nose is good publicity?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 21, 2023, 12:52:07 AM
If all they want to do is file a motion to kick the case on jurisdiction, costs will be low. 

If they want to leverage discovery and push the case to summary judgment, you get in the $1 million + territory.

I don't know how much cash MM has on hand, but this is the sort of thing you can fundraise off of.  And they have a decent chance of finding counsel willing to discount rates or provide pro bono support.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 21, 2023, 01:08:34 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 21, 2023, 12:40:13 AMA few questions for anyone who might know:

What sort of costs would MM need to adequately defend themselves?
It depends a lot on the cases they're facing. Hopefully they're weak and easy to dismiss (though that is still likely to have costs). Not sure how much that would cost.

Having said that not sure how much they'd have had to do this before. From what I understand they're more of a media commentary style site, they're not doing investigations.

QuoteWould they need more money to leverage the discovery process more effectively?
Yes, a lot more expensive.

The other side is disclosure goes both ways and this is where it can be a real resource sink. Not sure in the US but in the UK it's not helped by judges having quite high expectations of record keeping and process in journalism, which is not always the case.

QuoteHow much money do we assume MM has available to defend themselves?
Not sure - their revenue seems to be just a little bit under $20 million.

QuoteIs this the kind of thing where someone highly competent would defend MM pro-bono or at reduced cost because bloodying Musk's nose is good publicity?
As Minsky says they might get discounts or pro bono help. They'll also definitely use it for a fundraising/subscription campaign.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 21, 2023, 02:08:06 AM
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F_azd98XcAAD5BO?format=jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 21, 2023, 02:15:00 AM
Question since this popped up in my reddit feed:

(https://i.postimg.cc/Gp7KtdJ4/image.png)

So, can Musx take his case to Texas? :unsure:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 21, 2023, 02:20:14 AM
Two of the lawyers for X worked closely with Paxton, so this is an inside job.

Re the TOS, X will argue that this is not a TOS issue, although doing so is risky for obvious reasons.  One of many problems that this lawsuit may cause the company.

Venue is likely to be heavily litigated early.  Federal court gets you out of most anti-SLAPP laws but the fed courts also tend to enforce jurisdictional limitations.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 21, 2023, 02:24:09 AM
I don't know, but the terms of service are just the T&Cs of how users can use Twitter. I don't think the case is that Media Matters breached their T&Cs, it's more defamation etc. No idea if that's true or enough to get the case in Texas, mind.

And practically speaking there's a fair few open questions around online terms of service - especially in the open web context.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 21, 2023, 02:31:48 AM
Just a minor foot note:

(https://i.postimg.cc/MHFJmCSH/image.png)

He also said "Prosperity is ahead for Argentina."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 21, 2023, 08:14:25 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 20, 2023, 11:21:23 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 20, 2023, 11:16:26 PMYou think his lawyers warned him, or they were just blinded by the dollar signs in their eyes?
I think he's using lawyers to force a non-profit media company to spend their money on litigation, even if it's just defending or getting things kicked out. That's what the powerful do if they have legal avenues available (and is part of the in-built inequality of law).

It is different, but I think tech billionaires look at Thiel and Gawker as a great example/model.

As I understand it neither the UK not the EU have yet developed the anti-SLAPP legislation that now exists in many US States and Canadian Provinces.

The notion that someone like Musk has legal avenues available to him is not really viable in jurisdictions that have effective anti-Slapp provisions.

Quote from: HVC on November 20, 2023, 11:16:26 PMYou think his lawyers warned him, or they were just blinded by the dollar signs in their eyes?

We know from other situations that musk has a habit of thinking he is smarter than his lawyers, and does not realize his error until it is too late.

One of the best examples of that is when he was forced to buy Twitter in the first place. 


Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 21, 2023, 08:42:30 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 21, 2023, 08:14:25 AMAs I understand it neither the UK not the EU have yet developed the anti-SLAPP legislation that now exists in many US States and Canadian Provinces.
The UK does now, but it is very new. Legislation passed in October - we'll see on the impact.

And in fairness there is a balance to be struck. I think privacy law, which has been entirely developed by the courts, in England has gone way too far and is really impacting free speech and good reporting. I am equally aware that 90% of that was developed by precedents from clever claims against some really outrageous, egregious behaviour by the press.

QuoteThe notion that someone like Musk has legal avenues available to him is not really viable in jurisdictions that have effective anti-Slapp provisions.
If you are rich to afford lawyers and hold a grudge you can make life incredibly difficult for media companies - or especially small ones. Even if you are just having to get lots of cases kicked out that is (sometimes) taking money, it (sometimes) has a cash flow impact and it takes a toll on time and energy. It's not an issue for the bit, traditional established media companies.

But on of the big trends in the US in recent years, which is great, has been the growth of non-profit, purpose-driven smaller media companies. Media Matters is one, but there's Pro Publica, Texas Tribune etc -they're fantastic and a big new feature of what's going on in the media in the US (and increasingly a model we're seeing here too, particularly in the local press). But they won't have the resources, or in house legal of traditional media. It's not a "thermonuclear lawsuit" but if Musk decides to harass - particularly if he starts looking to fund other, perhaps better claims - that's going to be a drain that they're not use to and built to withstand.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 21, 2023, 08:50:39 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 21, 2023, 02:24:09 AMI don't know, but the terms of service are just the T&Cs of how users can use Twitter. I don't think the case is that Media Matters breached their T&Cs, it's more defamation etc. No idea if that's true or enough to get the case in Texas, mind.

And practically speaking there's a fair few open questions around online terms of service - especially in the open web context.

Exactly so and that is why X's apparent position that this is not a TOS dispute is so dicey.  Usually, tech platforms argue for an expansive interpretation of the TOS because they write them to be self-serving.  Very rarely do you see them arguing that their TOS should not apply to a dispute involving a user of the service that is based on their activities on the service.

It's just another example indicating that this lawsuit was brought in haste without thinking through the strategic implications.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 21, 2023, 08:52:17 AM
My personal guess is Media Matters is not worried about the lawsuit, and likely was hoping it would be filed. This isn't really a media outlet--David Brock started this group as an explicit left of center "investigations" group, intending to point out bias in right wing media, or right wing bias in mainstream media. They are explicitly partisan warriors, and while they aren't a huge organization, they have ties to a number of left leaning billionaires. My suspicion is whatever their current budget they have a bankroll lined up to do this litigation. I could be wrong, but just looking at their history and what they typically do they openly seek confrontation.

It should be noted that before Musk became a public member of the far right, he used tactics like this to squelch criticisms of his firms. For example one investigator who found some quality control issues with Tesla back in 2015, was immediately attacked as a "plant" by Tesla's competitors. It largely worked in taking the focus off of Tesla's quality control issues.

I think Musk probably thinks this can still work today. Unfortunately for Musk, I think he fundamentally misunderstands what the PR implications are of publicly becoming a right wing activist, I think he fundamentally misunderstands the business he is in with his ownership of Twitter (advertising), and I think he fundamentally misunderstands how these things are going to work in tandem to make a suit like this hurt him even more than the original reporting did.

This is going to keep the "advertisements get served up next to Nazi posts" narrative in the media indefinitely. Because Musk is seen as far right activist, a large portion of the public will simply never be sympathetic to whatever narrative he is pushing--back when he wasn't seen as political and he was just trying to brush off criticism of Tesla, that element wasn't at play. Because he is now seen as a partisan culture warrior, he can't just make negative things like this "go away" because all of his actions will be seen as political by at least half the country (and far more than half of the executives of the companies that are pulling advertising on Twitter.)

Because of the nature of Tesla's business and Musk's behavior, he had no "great" options in response to the Media Matters report--but  his best option was likely to not respond at all, have Twitter's puppet CEO put out a statement that the company is working to make sure controversial posts like that don't appear next to sponsored ads, and quietly work behind the scenes to reassure advertisers. There is still damage that would have been done--but what he's done here is likely guarantee that the companies that pulled advertising are never coming back, because he is going to continue to keep the association between his brand and Nazism as front page news.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 21, 2023, 08:57:18 AM
One of the dynamics in a commercial litigation, or any litigation where a business entity is a party, is the search to find insiders in the adversary camp that may be sympathetic witnesses.  Finding one or two good ones can help boost a case.  In this case, X is likely to be a target rich environment.  In taking discovery, defendants will have no problem finding insiders - recent former employees and maybe some current ones - willing to talk negatively about the company's current oversight.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 21, 2023, 09:17:49 AM
In Germany, the Hohenzollern family was running up to 120 law suits at a time against historians and journalists a few years ago, targeting those who critically reviewed the family history in regards to a possible restitution of Hohenzollern properties that were expropriated by the Soviets/GDR. See e.g. this EU study:

https://commission.europa.eu/system/files/2022-04/slapp_comparative_study_0.pdf

QuoteNGOs offer pro-bono legal assistance to journalists and bloggers facing legal charges or suits. 242
(DE, HU, IT). A specific legal aid fund was established in DE by an NGO to support court defence of
journalists and researchers writing about the role of the Hohenzollern family under the
Nationalsozialismus (DE). The fund was created in reaction to the repeated lawsuits by Georg
Friedrich Prinz of Preußen to prevent investigation of his family's ownership matters (DE).

See also FragDenStaat: https://fragdenstaat.de/aktionen/prinzenfonds/

Google Translate, because I'm lazy:

QuoteThe Hohenzollern Prince Georg Friedrich of Prussia is taking action against unwanted reporting with warnings and lawsuits - among other things in connection with research into the role of the Hohenzollerns in National Socialism and its impact on their demands for compensation. We are setting up an aid fund for affected researchers and journalists.

Georg Friedrich Prince of Prussia , according to his own statements "Head of the House of Hohenzollern", has in recent years warned and sued dozens of people from science, journalism and politics for statements about the past and present of the Hohenzollerns.

In doing so, he attempts, sometimes successfully (out of court), to influence the formation of public opinion in the interpretation of the work of the Hohenzollerns and to combat unwanted reporting. The director of the Center for Contemporary History Research, Martin Sabrow, sees the actions of the Lord of Prussia as an " attack on the freedom of science" .

Why is the prince complaining?
Among other things, Mr. von Preußen has sued historians in connection with their research into the Nazi past of the House of Hohenzollern and has had statements warned in the context of the complicated dispute over the Hohenzollerns' claim due to expropriations after the end of National Socialism. For example, Mr. von Preußen also wanted to have FragDenStaat banned by the court from writing that he was sometimes taking criminal action against critical reporting.

In the proceedings before the regional court, the lawyer for the Lord of Prussia said that "hundreds of articles" were being written about the Hohenzollerns and that he "couldn't keep up with the lawsuits." While Mr. von Prussia apparently allows himself to have even harmless statements banned in court and is sometimes successful in doing so before his favorite court, the Berlin Regional Court, many of the people from science and research he attacks often shy away from consistently defending their position , including in the subsequent instances - also taking into account possible costs.

In our opinion, scientific discourse and the formation of public opinion suffer from this. A recent study involving the Otto Brenner Foundation and the Society for Freedom Rights on preventative advocacy strategies towards the media has shown that such an approach can have a method .

But the freedom of science and research must also be defended in court. Those affected must have the opportunity to take full legal action, regardless of their personal financial possibilities. In the worst case scenario, a climate is created in which critical researchers and (science) journalists are so intimidated by the so-called "scissors in the head" that they deviate from their views or even do so whenever a complaint is made by the supposedly overpowering opposing side Do not start, continue or make public your research in the future.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on November 21, 2023, 11:39:59 AM
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F_eL7x2WAAIVbcA?format=jpg&name=large)

 :mellow:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 21, 2023, 11:50:07 AM
The edge. Oh the edge.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on November 21, 2023, 11:57:59 AM
Gen Xers man. Jesus christ.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 21, 2023, 12:01:48 PM
Man child
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 21, 2023, 12:45:24 PM
Why is the frog-man attacking an American flag?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on November 21, 2023, 12:49:24 PM
Pretty lame Elon.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 21, 2023, 01:06:11 PM
Quote from: FunkMonk on November 21, 2023, 11:57:59 AMGen Xers man. Jesus christ.

Musk is emblematic of my generation?  I don't think so.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 21, 2023, 01:36:38 PM
Quote from: garbon on November 21, 2023, 12:01:48 PMMan child
I don't want to push this too far - but could bullying be a solution? :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 21, 2023, 01:38:46 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 21, 2023, 01:36:38 PMI don't want to push this too far - but could bullying be a solution? :P

I don't know if it's a solution, but it'd be both just and satisfying.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 21, 2023, 01:42:10 PM
Gives off Star Wars kid vibe

(https://sabersourcing.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/star-wars-kid-lightsabers-cyberbullying-and-youtube-15-years-later.jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on November 21, 2023, 05:06:26 PM
Yeah, this is something a 15 year old edgelord would do.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on November 22, 2023, 01:02:41 AM
Listening to an old podcast from 2019. The hosts go on a tangemt about Musk a bit and how during the incident with the cave trapped kids in Thailand, instead of donating money to the rescue efforts he wanted to be the guy who comes up with his own cool solution from scratch and went on a tantrum when rejected. The hosts say that whatever else his merits, he seems to be really an innovator when it comes to embarrassing himself, and that he should basically just stay away from Twitter. :lol: :cry: :ph34r:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on November 22, 2023, 10:03:24 AM
Like Napoleon, Musk is the ultimate example of masculine insecurity.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 22, 2023, 08:13:55 PM
The Swedish solidarity blockade against Tesla are now in effect. I saw it mentioned somewhere that Sweden is Tesla's 5th largest market. Maybe not that significant as it's only about 2% of Tesla American sales (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/tesla-sales-by-country).

Potentially inconveniently for Musk, the Guardian reports (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/21/tesla-sweden-unions-us-strikes-blockade-carmaker):
QuoteTheir fight against Tesla's anti-union business model could now spread to Germany, where Tesla runs factories and has a significantly larger workforce. The powerful German union IG Metall has said that it is ready to launch collective bargaining negotiations if the workers demand it.

Germany is Tesla's most significant European market. Not as big as the US or China, but labour action there may end up being a bit inconvenient.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 22, 2023, 10:37:41 PM
Apparently new license plates in Sweden are delivered by mail exclusively. Postal workers are refusing to deliver mail to Tesla, meaning no new Teslas can be registered in Sweden.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 23, 2023, 01:40:34 AM
I'm cool with the other unions (I especially find the janitors refusing to cleab funny) but feel weird with the postal worker stuff. Mail seems sacred. Don't know why.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 23, 2023, 01:58:02 AM
The other day heard rumours of tesla looking for a new site with the British volt scam factory being mentioned.
This would be a stupid business move.
But seems very fitting for the way the UK is going and musks increased focus on culture war edgelord troll nonsense over business sense.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 23, 2023, 02:45:09 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 23, 2023, 01:40:34 AMI'm cool with the other unions (I especially find the janitors refusing to cleab funny) but feel weird with the postal worker stuff. Mail seems sacred. Don't know why.
:lol: It's the source of an incredibly weird and exceptional contract rule in English law. The general rule is that when you accept an offer, that acceptance is binding once it is received. The exception is if it's by post when it's at the moment you post it.

There's a whole book on how it came about but the theory is basically that the postal system was such a miracle to 19th century people that the courts just went a bit wild. The idea that you could drop something into a box for the price of a stamp and that it would, reliably and promptly arrive was a communications revolution.

Even now the Royal Mail has a division (largely ex-policeman and prosecutors) who are entirely devoted to privately prosecuting postal fraud, meddling with the post etc.

So I can understand why it feels weird. I suppose it's the first communications tech and it kind of blew everyone's minds :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 23, 2023, 02:51:24 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 23, 2023, 02:45:09 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 23, 2023, 01:40:34 AMI'm cool with the other unions (I especially find the janitors refusing to cleab funny) but feel weird with the postal worker stuff. Mail seems sacred. Don't know why.
:lol: It's the source of an incredibly weird and exceptional contract rule in English law. The general rule is that when you accept an offer, that acceptance is binding once it is received. The exception is if it's by post when it's at the moment you post it.

There's a whole book on how it came about but the theory is basically that the postal system was such a miracle to 19th century people that the courts just went a bit wild. The idea that you could drop something into a box for the price of a stamp and that it would, reliably and promptly arrive was a communications revolution.

Even now the Royal Mail has a division (largely ex-policeman and prosecutors) who are entirely devoted to privately prosecuting postal fraud, meddling with the post etc.

So I can understand why it feels weird. I suppose it's the first communications tech and it kind of blew everyone's minds :lol:

The explanation is a bit different.  It could take weeks for the acceptance to arrive at its destination, and it might even get lost.  The purpose was to create trust in the postal system despite its problems.  It would be too unpredictable of the acceptance relied on the mail arriving.  And so the rule was made to remove that uncertainty.

Having lived through the era in which things were still communicated by post, and letters did go astray from time to time, it was an important rule, rather than an oddity which you have described.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 23, 2023, 03:02:15 PM
You're probably right - I'm half remembering a journal article making a provocative argument :lol:

But I think it is true of the wider 19th century experience through the works of Anthony Trollope (who was a career postal official and designed the first pillar box/post box in the UK). It was a revolution - I mean in the UK postmasters had the legal right to commandeer trains, or order stations to run a train to make sure the mail kept on time.

I think my contract tutor possibly just liked challenging us. We also had some Levinas set texts which I'm not sure I ever fully understood the relevance of - though that he loved (I think something to do with the other but can't remember) :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 23, 2023, 03:10:23 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 23, 2023, 02:45:09 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 23, 2023, 01:40:34 AMI'm cool with the other unions (I especially find the janitors refusing to cleab funny) but feel weird with the postal worker stuff. Mail seems sacred. Don't know why.
:lol: It's the source of an incredibly weird and exceptional contract rule in English law. The general rule is that when you accept an offer, that acceptance is binding once it is received. The exception is if it's by post when it's at the moment you post it.

There's a whole book on how it came about but the theory is basically that the postal system was such a miracle to 19th century people that the courts just went a bit wild. The idea that you could drop something into a box for the price of a stamp and that it would, reliably and promptly arrive was a communications revolution.

Even now the Royal Mail has a division (largely ex-policeman and prosecutors) who are entirely devoted to privately prosecuting postal fraud, meddling with the post etc.

So I can understand why it feels weird. I suppose it's the first communications tech and it kind of blew everyone's minds :lol:

So it's been a long time since I did first year contracts, but that was exactly the version I was told - that in the 19th century the mail was such a marvel they just made a number of assumptions about it.

FWIW, my contracts law prof was an Englishman so maybe that's where he got it.  (Professor John Irvine - holy shit he's still teaching!  He's been a professor at Robson Hall since 1975!)

Now that I'm going down a total tangent - Professor Irvine taught my favourite class ever - jurisprudence.  It was structured more as a discussion group - one person was assigned a writer or thinker, you made a short presentation then everyone discussed.  Very different from any other las school class.  And of course what made it even better was the class was taught in the staff faculty lounge, and Professor Irvine brought wine.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 23, 2023, 03:15:22 PM
Quote from: Barrister on November 23, 2023, 03:10:23 PMFWIW, my contracts law prof was an Englishman so maybe that's where he got it.  (Professor John Irvine - holy shit he's still teaching!  He's been a professor at Robson Hall since 1975!)

Now that I'm going down a total tangent - Professor Irvine taught my favourite class ever - jurisprudence.  It was structured more as a discussion group - one person was assigned a writer or thinker, you made a short presentation then everyone discussed.  Very different from any other las school class.  And of course what made it even better was the class was taught in the staff faculty lounge, and Professor Irvine brought wine.
So I think there's something about law professors possibly.

He wasn't my favourite but I had an incredibly fun equity and trusts professor (being fun could not outweigh teaching equity :lol:). He was also ancient and very eccentric. This was in the early 2010s. I looked him up and he'd taught John Cleese 50 years earlier :blink:

I think he just genuinely loved it - although he was absolutely furious at the Charities Act 2006.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on November 23, 2023, 03:53:43 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 23, 2023, 03:15:22 PMI think he just genuinely loved it - although he was absolutely furious at the Charities Act 2006.

I remember a different professor who was very proud of the fact that Manitoba had abolished the Rule against Perpetuities, which while I agree is a silly rule, seems like the sort of topic where you should have some kind of rule in place.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 23, 2023, 04:55:21 PM
The old thread is back and merged! (Thank you BvS)

:cheers:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 23, 2023, 05:42:36 PM
 :boff:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 23, 2023, 08:53:30 PM
Quote from: garbon on November 23, 2023, 05:42:36 PM:boff:

 :cheers:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 23, 2023, 08:59:31 PM
It's a thanksgiving day miracle
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: jimmy olsen on November 23, 2023, 10:50:31 PM
Quote from: Maladict on September 29, 2023, 02:12:41 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on September 29, 2023, 02:04:28 AMHe's making a strong case for liberal arts education.

Or a proper history/archaeology education. Rome had already been founded by the time the Trojan war is supposed to have happened.

Eh...there were separate villages on some of the hills going way back, but I wouldn't say Rome had been founded until they drained the forum and confederated the villages into one community, which was probably in the 8th century BC.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: jimmy olsen on November 23, 2023, 10:58:13 PM
Quote from: FunkMonk on November 21, 2023, 11:57:59 AMGen Xers man. Jesus christ.
Eh...this is more like a teenage millennial shitposter who got banned from SomethingAwful and ran off to 4chan in the early 2000s type behavior.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 23, 2023, 11:20:44 PM
That's a very precise description.

Accurate too, I reckon  :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on November 24, 2023, 10:50:59 AM
Quote from: Jacob on November 23, 2023, 04:55:21 PMThe old thread is back and merged! (Thank you BvS)

:cheers:

No problem.  As I suspected, all the posts were still there, only the record that defined the topic was gone (presumably corrupted and deleted by the repair).  Fortunately, that record was easy to recreate manually.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Gups on November 24, 2023, 11:50:01 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 23, 2023, 02:45:09 PM
Quote from: HVC on November 23, 2023, 01:40:34 AMI'm cool with the other unions (I especially find the janitors refusing to cleab funny) but feel weird with the postal worker stuff. Mail seems sacred. Don't know why.
:lol: It's the source of an incredibly weird and exceptional contract rule in English law. The general rule is that when you accept an offer, that acceptance is binding once it is received. The exception is if it's by post when it's at the moment you post it.

There's a whole book on how it came about but the theory is basically that the postal system was such a miracle to 19th century people that the courts just went a bit wild. The idea that you could drop something into a box for the price of a stamp and that it would, reliably and promptly arrive was a communications revolution.

Even now the Royal Mail has a division (largely ex-policeman and prosecutors) who are entirely devoted to privately prosecuting postal fraud, meddling with the post etc.

So I can understand why it feels weird. I suppose it's the first communications tech and it kind of blew everyone's minds :lol:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adams_v_Lindsell

As long ago as 1818.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 24, 2023, 01:57:51 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 23, 2023, 04:55:21 PM(Thank you BvS)

:cheers:

Let's get 50 of him.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: jimmy olsen on November 24, 2023, 07:53:43 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 23, 2023, 02:45:09 PMEven now the Royal Mail has a division (largely ex-policeman and prosecutors) who are entirely devoted to privately prosecuting postal fraud, meddling with the post etc.

So I can understand why it feels weird. I suppose it's the first communications tech and it kind of blew everyone's minds :lol:

The US post office police are supposedly pretty elite as well.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Maladict on November 25, 2023, 06:14:44 AM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on November 23, 2023, 10:50:31 PM
Quote from: Maladict on September 29, 2023, 02:12:41 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on September 29, 2023, 02:04:28 AMHe's making a strong case for liberal arts education.

Or a proper history/archaeology education. Rome had already been founded by the time the Trojan war is supposed to have happened.

Eh...there were separate villages on some of the hills going way back, but I wouldn't say Rome had been founded until they drained the forum and confederated the villages into one community, which was probably in the 8th century BC.

The forum area was already inhabited in the second millennium. I think the polis-style development in the 8th century was more of a Greek cultural influence, replacing the local tribe based settlement types. Not so much a (re)founding.

Some random Latin twins turning up at the Palatine in 753 proclaiming the founding of a new settlement would probably be asked to leave, unless they intended to purchase the land first.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: jimmy olsen on November 25, 2023, 09:42:14 PM
Quote from: Maladict on November 25, 2023, 06:14:44 AM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on November 23, 2023, 10:50:31 PM
Quote from: Maladict on September 29, 2023, 02:12:41 AM
Quote from: Hamilcar on September 29, 2023, 02:04:28 AMHe's making a strong case for liberal arts education.

Or a proper history/archaeology education. Rome had already been founded by the time the Trojan war is supposed to have happened.

Eh...there were separate villages on some of the hills going way back, but I wouldn't say Rome had been founded until they drained the forum and confederated the villages into one community, which was probably in the 8th century BC.

The forum area was already inhabited in the second millennium. I think the polis-style development in the 8th century was more of a Greek cultural influence, replacing the local tribe based settlement types. Not so much a (re)founding.

Some random Latin twins turning up at the Palatine in 753 proclaiming the founding of a new settlement would probably be asked to leave, unless they intended to purchase the land first.

Eh...I know it's just wikipedia, but there doesn't seem to have been much going on there beyond burials before the 8th-7th centuries BC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Forum
Quote from: Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_ForumPre-Roman Period
Pottery deposits discovered in the Forum, Palatine and Capitoline demonstrated that humans occupied these areas in the Final Bronze Age (1200–975 BC).[11] In the early Iron Age an area of the future Forum, close to the site of Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, was used as a cemetery (10th century BC), possibly by the communities based on the Palatine and Capitoline hills.[12] Most of the burials were cremations of the same type which is also found in the other sites in Latium. The urn containing the ashes of the deceased was placed inside a large earthenware jar, along with grave goods, and then buried in a cavity cut into the ground and covered with a capstone.[13] There were also a small number of inhumation burials. On current evidence, it is likely that burials in the Forum ceased in the late 9th century BC and that the Esquiline Necropolis replaced them.[13]

The first archaeological finds on the sites of the key public buildings point to a transformation of the Forum from a cemetery to a public site in the 8th century BC.[14] Part of the Forum was paved over. The earliest finds in the sites of the Comitium and Vulcanal were votive offerings. They indicate that the area was dedicated to a celebration of religious cults.[15]

...

Archaeological evidence

Originally a low-lying, grassy wetland, the Forum was drained in the 7th century BC with the building of the first structures of Cloaca Maxima, a large covered sewer system that emptied into the Tiber, as more people began to settle between the two hills. Archaeological evidence shows that by the end of the 7th century BC, the ground level of the Forum was raised significantly in some places to overcome the problems of poor drainage and provide a foundation for a pebble-paved area.[18][19] In the middle of the 7th century BC thatch-and-timber huts were demolished on the route of the Via Sacra and rectangular stone buildings began to replace them.[20][19]

The earliest structures in the Forum were discovered in two separate locations: the site of the Comitium and the group of sanctuaries of Regia (House of the kings), House of the Vestals and Domus Publica.[19] Around 650–630 BC the area of the Comitium was excavated into a deep triangular depression. The area was paved with a beaten earth pavement and later replaced with a more substantial gravel one. Nearby was located an archaic sanctuary dedicated to Vulcan known as Vulcanal (also Volcanal): a small rectangular pit and elliptical basin carved out of an outcrop of tuff.[21][22] It has been suggested that the earliest ancient materials collected in the area of the Vulcanal are from the second half of the 8th century BC.[23] It appears that the Romans were aware of the sites' archaic origins: the foundation of the Comitium and Vulcanal were attributed to Romulus himself while the first Curia (senate house), which was located nearby, to Tullus Hostilius.[24]

At the western end of the Forum, excavations near the House of the Vestals and the sanctuary of Vesta have revealed an important group of 7th-century-BC buildings. The archaeologists have identified them as the early phases of the Regia (House of the kings), House of the Vestals, and Domus Publica (official residence of the pontifex maximus).[25] There seems to have been something of a surge in development of the Forum in the last quarter of the 7th century BC, as many of the changes date from 625 to 600 BC. Archaeologically, there is substantial evidence for development of the Forum in the 6th century BC: parts of the paving have been found and a large number of fragments of terracotta decorations from this area suggests that structures around the Forum were becoming more elaborate and highly decorated.[26]
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Maladict on November 26, 2023, 07:30:22 AM
There was some late Bronze Age habitation in what later became the Forum of Caesar iirc.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 26, 2023, 10:11:30 PM
Separately amid all the European Commission making sure Twitter is aware of their legal responsibilities, European privacy campaigners have launched a complaint against the Commission over their microtargeting on Twitter, in breach of their terms and law:
Quotenoyb files complaint against EU Commission over targeted chat control ad campaign

Today, noyb filed a complaint against the EU Commission's Directorate General for Migration and Home Affairs. In September 2023, the Commission used unlawful micro-targeting on Twitter (X) to promote its heavily criticized chat control regulation. It seems that the Commission was desperate to garner public support, which could be used to pressure national governments into accepting the controversial legislative proposal. This move both undermined the established democratic procedures between EU institutions and violated the EU GDPR.

Massive backlash and a lack of support. The proposed EU regulation on chat control is arguably one of the most controversial EU regulations in a long time. The fear is that the law could undermine all encrypted online communications – and open the door to mass surveillance. It has faced massive backlash from both industry, civil society, academia, member states and the legal services of the European institutions.  Despite the heavy criticism, the negotiations are moving forward in Brussels, with the EU Commission pushing for a timely adoption.

Micro-targeting based on sensitive data. Part of this seemingly aggressive attempt to promote the chat control was a targeted advertising campaign on X (formerly Twitter) to change public opinion. While online advertising isn't illegal per se, the EU Commission targeted users based on their political views and religious beliefs. Specifically, the ads were only shown to people who weren't interested in keywords like #Qatargate, brexit, Marine Le Pen, Alternative für Deutschland, Vox, Christian, Christian-phobia or Giorgia Meloni. The EU Commission previously raised concerns over the use of personal data for micro-targeting and described the practice as "a serious threat to a fair, democratic electoral process".

Misleading opinion polls. The Dutch complainant was confronted with an X post claiming that 95 percent of Dutch people allegedly said that the detection of child abuse online is more important or as important as their right to online privacy. According to media reports, these statistics are misleading. They are based solely on opinion polls conducted by the EU Commission, which failed to mention the negative effects of a chat control mechanism to participants.

A complaint against the EU Commission. The Commission's advertising campaign, which was even flagged as misleading on X, also violated European data protection law. Although people's political opinions and religious beliefs are specifically protected by the EU GDPR, these very data categories were used for the ad campaign. noyb now lodged a complaint against the EU Commission with the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) and is currently assessing whether to lodge a complaint against X for enabling the illegal use of sensitive data for political micro-targeting.

Felix Mikolasch, data protection lawyer at noyb: "The EU Commission has no legal basis to process sensitive data for targeted advertising on X. Nobody is above the law, and the EU Commission is no exception."

Even X prohibits such use of personal data. The social media platform X states in its advertising guidelines, that political affiliation and religious beliefs should not be used for the purpose of ad targeting. The EU Commission's campaign was nevertheless shown to at least several hundred thousand Dutch X users. The post in question is still available here.

Maartje de Graaf, data protection lawyer at noyb: "It is mind-boggling that the EU Commission doesn't follow the law it helped to institutionalize just a few years ago. Moreover, X claims to prohibit the use of sensitive data for ad targeting, but doesn't do anything to actually enforce this ban."

A threat to democracy. It appears that the EU Commission has tried to influence public opinion in countries such as the Netherlands in order to undermine the position of the national government in the EU Council. Such behaviour – especially in combination with illegal micro-targeting – is a serious threat to the EU legislative process and completely contradicts the Commission's intention to make political advertising more transparent. noyb requests the EDPS to fully investigate this matter in accordance with the EU GDPR. Given the seriousness of the violations and the large number of individuals affected, noyb also suggests that the EDPS imposes a fine.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 27, 2023, 03:25:13 PM
In Sweden, Tesla has apparently gained an injunction that allows them to send their employees to pick up the license plates that were previously delivered by mail (and thus blocked by sympathy strikes).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 27, 2023, 03:53:51 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 27, 2023, 03:25:13 PMIn Sweden, Tesla has apparently gained an injunction that allows them to send their employees to pick up the license plates that were previously delivered by mail (and thus blocked by sympathy strikes).

That is not surprising. The same thing would've occurred in Canada.  And the postal union would have been liable and damages to the company.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 27, 2023, 04:29:01 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 27, 2023, 03:53:51 PMThat is not surprising. The same thing would've occurred in Canada.  And the postal union would have been liable and damages to the company.

I don't get the impression that the unions are going to be held responsible for the costs incurred by the company as a result of the strike action. It seems that laws around unions are a bit different in Sweden than in Canada and the US.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 27, 2023, 05:30:08 PM
Speaking of strikes.
We've had a long bus strike here of late. My hometown is basically cut off for those who don't drive.
Recently a delegation from the strikers travelled to ontario to meet the public sector workers union there: major shareholders of the UK bus company.
This says much about the UK and Canada. Bizzare.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 27, 2023, 05:44:25 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 27, 2023, 04:29:01 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on November 27, 2023, 03:53:51 PMThat is not surprising. The same thing would've occurred in Canada.  And the postal union would have been liable and damages to the company.

I don't get the impression that the unions are going to be held responsible for the costs incurred by the company as a result of the strike action. It seems that laws around unions are a bit different in Sweden than in Canada and the US.

True, but we are talking about is a union being held responsible for unlawful behaviour which occurs during a strike.  That can be the union that is out on strike or another union engaging in unflawful behaviour related to the strike.

There must have been some unlawful behaviour in order for an injunction to be granted.  Injunctions are not issued to restrain lawful behaviour. 

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 27, 2023, 06:51:29 PM
Maybe (probably) I used the wrong legal term there :D

Tesla is suing the Swedish state (and others, but not the union) for not delivering the license plates. The issuing authority has a contract with Post Nord to deliver the plates, but the unionized workers at Post Nord refuses to deliver them (which is legal). Tesla has some argument that the issuing authority is at fault. While this is being worked out in the courts (and it will take a while), a judge has issued a [insert appropriate legal term here that may not be "injunction"] that Tesla is allowed to pick up the license plates from the issuing authority.

As far as I understand it, the union has not done anything contrary to the law.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on November 28, 2023, 12:02:22 AM
What I find surprising is that Postal workers selectively boycotting a third company is legal. I think here you can only strike about your own job (or at least own industry) conditions.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 28, 2023, 12:26:31 AM
Quote from: Josquius on November 27, 2023, 05:30:08 PMSpeaking of strikes.
We've had a long bus strike here of late. My hometown is basically cut off for those who don't drive.
Recently a delegation from the strikers travelled to ontario to meet the public sector workers union there: major shareholders of the UK bus company.
This says much about the UK and Canada. Bizzare.
Yeah Canadian public sector pension funds are maor investors - it's a bit like privatised rail here actually being operatted by, say, TrenItalia.

I think it may be similar in the UK with other countries as our pension funds, like Canada's, are really big. I think both are over 100% of GDP. And in terms of reliable, steady, low risk shares it feels like bus companies are probably pretty solid - plus as long as you do it out of the home country you're unlikely to get pushback from local workers about privatisation.

Quote from: Zanza on November 28, 2023, 12:02:22 AMWhat I find surprising is that Postal workers selectively boycotting a third company is legal. I think here you can only strike about your own job (or at least own industry) conditions.
I was surprised too as sympathy strikes/industrial action are basically banned in the UK. Looks like they're legal in Sweden and the recent Social Democrat government strengthened that position.

Not sure what I think about it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 28, 2023, 01:17:00 AM
Many commentators in Sweden observe that this might be kind of a rearguard action for the unions. They have been hemorrhaging members for years, and young people don't have the 20th century mindset of the union glory days.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 28, 2023, 10:03:23 AM
Quote from: Zanza on November 28, 2023, 12:02:22 AMWhat I find surprising is that Postal workers selectively boycotting a third company is legal. I think here you can only strike about your own job (or at least own industry) conditions.

Yes, that bit that Jacob says is legal in Sweden is not legal in Canada.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on November 28, 2023, 12:03:32 PM
Musk is now sharing Pizzagate content.  :mellow:

Somehow I don't think we're going to Mars, guys.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on November 28, 2023, 12:17:53 PM
*sad arnold noises*
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 28, 2023, 01:04:57 PM
Quote from: Jacob on November 27, 2023, 06:51:29 PMMaybe (probably) I used the wrong legal term there :D

Tesla is suing the Swedish state (and others, but not the union) for not delivering the license plates. The issuing authority has a contract with Post Nord to deliver the plates, but the unionized workers at Post Nord refuses to deliver them (which is legal). Tesla has some argument that the issuing authority is at fault. While this is being worked out in the courts (and it will take a while), a judge has issued a [insert appropriate legal term here that may not be "injunction"] that Tesla is allowed to pick up the license plates from the issuing authority.

As far as I understand it, the union has not done anything contrary to the law.

That all sounded a bit confusing so I looked into it a bit.

There are actually two separate court proceedings.  One against the Postal service for denial of service to Tesla.  The other, which is the one you commented on is against the transport agency. 

The Court has not yet made a decision in the action for damages against the Postal service and the court has decided not to issue an injunction in those proceedings until the Postal service has had an opportunity to respond to the materials Tesla has filed with the court.  It is this action that the question of the legality of the refusal to provide postal service will be decided.  And so your comment that it is legal is still a question to be decided by the court.

In the meantime the court did issue an injunction against the transport authority (what in Canada we would call a mandatory injunction which requires some action) ordering it to deliver the plates directly to Telsa rather than through the Postal service.  But that injunction doesn't tell us anything about the legality of the actions of the Postal refusal of service.

 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 28, 2023, 02:07:32 PM
Thanks for looking into it an clarifying :)

Also, I'm relieved to learn that I did use the term "injunction" correctly.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on November 28, 2023, 11:34:13 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 28, 2023, 12:03:32 PMMusk is now sharing Pizzagate content.  :mellow:

Somehow I don't think we're going to Mars, guys.

Might still get there, definitely won't be any Jewish colonists though.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: jimmy olsen on November 29, 2023, 12:19:48 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 28, 2023, 12:03:32 PMMusk is now sharing Pizzagate content.  :mellow:

Somehow I don't think we're going to Mars, guys.
Thankfully, Shotwell calls most of the shots for SpaceX
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 29, 2023, 02:36:29 AM
Quote from: HVC on November 28, 2023, 11:34:13 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 28, 2023, 12:03:32 PMMusk is now sharing Pizzagate content.  :mellow:

Somehow I don't think we're going to Mars, guys.

Might still get there, definitely won't be any Jewish colonists though.

Maybe that's the plan? It's all 3D chess. Make the prospects for earth terrible enough minorities want to leave.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 29, 2023, 02:37:37 AM
Quote from: Josquius on November 29, 2023, 02:36:29 AM
Quote from: HVC on November 28, 2023, 11:34:13 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 28, 2023, 12:03:32 PMMusk is now sharing Pizzagate content.  :mellow:

Somehow I don't think we're going to Mars, guys.

Might still get there, definitely won't be any Jewish colonists though.

Maybe that's the plan? It's all 3D chess. Make the prospects for earth terrible enough minorities want to leave.

Worse than has already been done? :huh:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 29, 2023, 04:12:02 AM
Quote from: garbon on November 29, 2023, 02:37:37 AM
Quote from: Josquius on November 29, 2023, 02:36:29 AM
Quote from: HVC on November 28, 2023, 11:34:13 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 28, 2023, 12:03:32 PMMusk is now sharing Pizzagate content.  :mellow:

Somehow I don't think we're going to Mars, guys.

Might still get there, definitely won't be any Jewish colonists though.

Maybe that's the plan? It's all 3D chess. Make the prospects for earth terrible enough minorities want to leave.

Worse than has already been done? :huh:
Never under-estimate the hold-my-beer-ability of the nutty right.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 29, 2023, 04:22:40 AM
Quote from: Josquius on November 29, 2023, 04:12:02 AMNever under-estimate the hold-my-beer-ability of the nutty right.

I doubt he can out do the Holocaust. :mellow:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 29, 2023, 04:23:19 AM
Quote from: garbon on November 29, 2023, 04:22:40 AM
Quote from: Josquius on November 29, 2023, 04:12:02 AMNever under-estimate the hold-my-beer-ability of the nutty right.

I doubt he can out do the Holocaust. :mellow:

The holocaust is happening? :unsure:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on November 29, 2023, 04:24:54 AM
Quote from: Josquius on November 29, 2023, 04:23:19 AM
Quote from: garbon on November 29, 2023, 04:22:40 AM
Quote from: Josquius on November 29, 2023, 04:12:02 AMNever under-estimate the hold-my-beer-ability of the nutty right.

I doubt he can out do the Holocaust. :mellow:

The holocaust is happening? :unsure:

Minorities are resilient. They/we can outlast Musk. He may act foolish and irresponsibly but I doubt he thinks otherwise.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on November 29, 2023, 06:00:17 PM
Elon Musk in response to advertisers like Disney pulling their ads on Twitter/X:

"Don't advertise...go fuck yourself. Go. Fuck. Yourself. Is that clear?"

Don't do drugs, kids.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 29, 2023, 06:11:16 PM
Hmmm... certainly a non-standard way to engage with existing and potential clients. Pretty sure it's quite unorthodox for heads of organizations depending on advertising for their revenue.

I suppose time will tell how this is a genius way to run his company.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on November 29, 2023, 08:22:45 PM
He's going to again get a call from MBS pretty soon, imo.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Darth Wagtaros on November 30, 2023, 07:49:40 AM
It's like he's transforming into a living social media meme.

"If you can't handle me at my worst you don't deserve me at my best."

Then the one of some badass looking into the camera with the caption, "I tell it like it is snowflake!"
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 30, 2023, 08:26:55 AM
Go anti woke, go broke.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 30, 2023, 09:55:53 AM
On the one hand - that is the right response. The commercial/advertising tail of social media platforms or publishers shouldn't wag the dog.

On the other hand their owners shouldn't go around chatting shite/shitposting and it's probably not a great business decision to spend billions just so you have your own dedicated shitpost product...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on November 30, 2023, 10:07:31 AM
Quote from: Josquius on November 30, 2023, 08:26:55 AMGo anti woke, go broke.
I know you like playing the Uno reverse card with everything woke-related, but you do realize that you're talking about literally the richest person in the world, right?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on November 30, 2023, 10:08:27 AM
Quote from: DGuller on November 30, 2023, 10:07:31 AM
Quote from: Josquius on November 30, 2023, 08:26:55 AMGo anti woke, go broke.
I know you like playing the Uno reverse card with everything woke-related, but you do realize that you're talking about literally the richest person in the world, right?


His beer is currently being held.
Certainly limiting things just to twitter it all looks quite the disaster.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on November 30, 2023, 10:55:18 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 30, 2023, 09:55:53 AMOn the one hand - that is the right response. The commercial/advertising tail of social media platforms or publishers shouldn't wag the dog.

Of course, and the earth shouldn't have to revolve around the sun either.  The sun should get its ass in gear and revolve around us.

Every major social media platform is designed to fund itself through advertising.  Given that and the disinclination of government to effectively regulate, at least in the US, this is spitting into the wind.

 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on November 30, 2023, 11:18:06 AM
There's different scales as well--Facebook for example captures the vast majority of social media advertising dollars. While they probably, like any company, will make certain concessions to really big blue chip accounts, my guess is if some random company paying them for ads got pissed over some Facebook policy or position that the company viewed as important, they would invite them to buy ads on another platform.

Musk's issue is he bought a company that was a major laggard in advertising revenue before he took it over--because Twitter was much smaller than the other social networks and also seen as intrinsically less valuable per-user. (For many reasons we've already discussed--there is less rich user data attached to most Twitter accounts, the way Twitter serves advertising is seen as less effective etc.) I can't remember the exact numbers, but I think before all the drama started Apple alone was a major chunk of all of Twitter's revenue, probably significantly larger as a single customer than any of Facebook's customers.

Musk also has just never been involved in running a company where he is so vulnerable to what this "type" of customer thinks. Advertisers are all risk-averse, corporate types. They generally care quite a bit about perception, PR, etc. Musk is just used to not having to work in that world--in fact Musk often has ignorantly mocked people who do as being woke / etc because he doesn't (or didn't) understand the financial reasons many companies manage their PR the way they do.

He jumped pretty deep into a pool he knew very little about, and the results are unsurprising.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 30, 2023, 01:15:33 PM
Who would've thought PR folks would care about things like PR? I can see why Musk would be surprised by discovering this :lol:

But yeah, I think that's spot on OvB.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on November 30, 2023, 01:19:40 PM
Agree - and you can see the subscription model as a way to hedge against advertising. But it doesn't really exist, I don't think, and there's only so much you can do for brand safety when the main risk is the owner.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 30, 2023, 01:22:28 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 30, 2023, 01:19:40 PMAgree - and you can see the subscription model as a way to hedge against advertising. But it doesn't really exist, I don't think, and there's only so much you can do for brand safety when the main risk is the owner.

Add to that the fact that Musk fired all the people engaged in risk management.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on November 30, 2023, 03:25:30 PM
Wasn't he supposed to be a free-speech absolutist?

It's like he wants to bully brands into buying ad space on twitter lol. That's not how any of this works, buddy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on November 30, 2023, 03:45:03 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 30, 2023, 03:25:30 PMWasn't he supposed to be a free-speech absolutist?

It's like he wants to bully brands into buying ad space on twitter lol. That's not how any of this works, buddy.

You always have to remember the way in which free-speech is understood by some.  That they can say whatever they want and nobody has the right to say anything bad about what they said.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on November 30, 2023, 03:45:50 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 30, 2023, 03:25:30 PMWasn't he supposed to be a free-speech absolutist?

It's like he wants to bully brands into buying ad space on twitter lol. That's not how any of this works, buddy.
He's been labeling leftwing accounts "antifa" and blocking them.  Largely at the request of far-right groups.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on November 30, 2023, 04:33:43 PM
I suppose I can see why Musk has a problem with anti-fascists
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on November 30, 2023, 04:36:07 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 30, 2023, 03:25:30 PMWasn't he supposed to be a free-speech absolutist?

It's like he wants to bully brands into buying ad space on twitter lol. That's not how any of this works, buddy.

Promoting anti Semitism is free speech, but pointing out how he's promoting anti Semitism, or disagreeing with it, is beyond the pale.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Darth Wagtaros on November 30, 2023, 07:52:11 PM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on November 30, 2023, 04:36:07 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on November 30, 2023, 03:25:30 PMWasn't he supposed to be a free-speech absolutist?

It's like he wants to bully brands into buying ad space on twitter lol. That's not how any of this works, buddy.

Promoting anti Semitism is free speech, but pointing out how he's promoting anti Semitism, or disagreeing with it, is beyond the pale.
Well yes. That's being a leftist snowflake.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PDH on November 30, 2023, 09:09:11 PM
It's a good thing personal wealth equals morality or he would have a harder time with all this.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on December 01, 2023, 09:08:26 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 30, 2023, 11:18:06 AMHe jumped pretty deep into a pool he knew very little about, and the results are unsurprising.

Some men at Musk's age spend ridiculous amounts of money on a sports car or some other pointless and expensive hobby.  Musk is spending about the same proportion of his wealth on his hobby as others do, it just comes out to a lot more money.  He didn't buy Twitter to get rich.  He bought it to have his own sandbox to play in, rule over his twits with a mighty hand to the delight of sycophants and the tsk-tsking of his imaginary woke adversaries.   Whether it makes any money is besides the point.  His new friend Donald can tell him all he needs to know about all the different ways you can screw corporate creditors.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 01, 2023, 09:19:30 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on December 01, 2023, 09:08:26 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 30, 2023, 11:18:06 AMHe jumped pretty deep into a pool he knew very little about, and the results are unsurprising.

Some men at Musk's age spend ridiculous amounts of money on a sports car or some other pointless and expensive hobby.  Musk is spending about the same proportion of his wealth on his hobby as others do, it just comes out to a lot more money.  He didn't buy Twitter to get rich.  He bought it to have his own sandbox to play in, rule over his twits with a mighty hand to the delight of sycophants and the tsk-tsking of his imaginary woke adversaries.   Whether it makes any money is besides the point.  His new friend Donald can tell him all he needs to know about all the different ways you can screw corporate creditors.

It does make more sense with this outlook.
But its not how he presents it. And it does make for a deeply disturbing image.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on December 01, 2023, 09:20:54 AM
He did try to get out of it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on December 01, 2023, 10:04:36 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on December 01, 2023, 09:08:26 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on November 30, 2023, 11:18:06 AMHe jumped pretty deep into a pool he knew very little about, and the results are unsurprising.

Some men at Musk's age spend ridiculous amounts of money on a sports car or some other pointless and expensive hobby.  Musk is spending about the same proportion of his wealth on his hobby as others do, it just comes out to a lot more money.  He didn't buy Twitter to get rich.  He bought it to have his own sandbox to play in, rule over his twits with a mighty hand to the delight of sycophants and the tsk-tsking of his imaginary woke adversaries.   Whether it makes any money is besides the point.  His new friend Donald can tell him all he needs to know about all the different ways you can screw corporate creditors.

You are forgetting that he bought Twitter because he was forced into it through court proceedings he finally realized he could not win. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on December 01, 2023, 01:11:25 PM
Just read that the Cybertruck apparently has no crumple zone. :lol: I feel sorry for the people inside and outside that will die for this.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on December 01, 2023, 01:23:01 PM
Quote from: Zanza on December 01, 2023, 01:11:25 PMJust read that the Cybertruck apparently has no crumple zone. :lol: I feel sorry for the people inside and outside that will die for this.

I am highly skeptical of this.  Cybertruck has to pass a number of crash tests in order to be certified for sale.  Those tests pretty much necessitate a crumple zone of one sort or another in order to pass.

Now I am curious how Tesla does this, since Cybertruck was supposed to be based on it's stainless steel "exo-skeleton" rather than a traditional unibody frame.  And maybe Cybertruck will have pretty crappy crash-worthiness.  But it's not going to be a death-trap - NHTSA and other agencies won't allow it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on December 01, 2023, 01:29:52 PM
I just can't get past how ugly it is.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on December 01, 2023, 01:35:20 PM
Quote from: HVC on December 01, 2023, 01:29:52 PMI just can't get past how ugly it is.

I still want one (although after buying a F-150 this past summer I aint getting one any time soon).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on December 01, 2023, 02:00:52 PM
Quote from: Barrister on December 01, 2023, 01:23:01 PMI am highly skeptical of this.  Cybertruck has to pass a number of crash tests in order to be certified for sale.  Those tests pretty much necessitate a crumple zone of one sort or another in order to pass.
Yes. Although I have seen doubts that it can pass European pedestrian safety regulation.

QuoteNow I am curious how Tesla does this, since Cybertruck was supposed to be based on it's stainless steel "exo-skeleton" rather than a traditional unibody frame.  And maybe Cybertruck will have pretty crappy crash-worthiness.  But it's not going to be a death-trap - NHTSA and other agencies won't allow it.
There were body-in-white pictures a while ago that looked like the Cybertruck has a traditional unibody, just with flat instead of curved panels.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Iormlund on December 01, 2023, 03:17:41 PM
Pedestrian safety guidelines ask for a curved surface of the bonnet, that should be able to deform and absorb the impact of the person hit.

To say that an angular steel shape doesn't seem ideal would be an understatement.

Plus it's high enough for kids to crush their thorax and hit their head on the leading edge of the bonnet.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on December 01, 2023, 03:24:08 PM
Quote from: Iormlund on December 01, 2023, 03:17:41 PMPedestrian safety guidelines ask for a curved surface of the bonnet, that should be able to deform and absorb the impact of the person hit.

To say that an angular steel shape doesn't seem optimum would be an understatement.

Plus it's high enough for kids to crush their thorax and hit their head on the leading edge of the bonnet.

I don't know the intricacies, but regulations are different for trucks than for cars.  My F-150 obviously doesn't have the extreme angular shape of Cybertruck, but it also doesn't have a curved bonnett and is really quite high.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on December 01, 2023, 03:30:09 PM
Just because regulations are different doesn't make them safe.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on December 01, 2023, 04:59:15 PM
Musk continues his charm offensive with advertisers by telling them to Fuck Off during a live event/conference on Wednesday.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on December 01, 2023, 05:01:07 PM
Quote from: Jacob on December 01, 2023, 03:30:09 PMJust because regulations are different doesn't make them safe.

Not safe, but maybe still legal.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on December 01, 2023, 05:19:18 PM
Quote from: Barrister on December 01, 2023, 01:23:01 PM
Quote from: Zanza on December 01, 2023, 01:11:25 PMJust read that the Cybertruck apparently has no crumple zone. :lol: I feel sorry for the people inside and outside that will die for this.

I am highly skeptical of this.  Cybertruck has to pass a number of crash tests in order to be certified for sale.  Those tests pretty much necessitate a crumple zone of one sort or another in order to pass.

Now I am curious how Tesla does this, since Cybertruck was supposed to be based on it's stainless steel "exo-skeleton" rather than a traditional unibody frame.  And maybe Cybertruck will have pretty crappy crash-worthiness.  But it's not going to be a death-trap - NHTSA and other agencies won't allow it.

They'll sell it as for farm use only, and states like Texas will change their laws to allow it on their roads.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on December 01, 2023, 05:35:04 PM
Quote from: HVC on December 01, 2023, 05:01:07 PM
Quote from: Jacob on December 01, 2023, 03:30:09 PMJust because regulations are different doesn't make them safe.

Not safe, but maybe still legal.

For sure, but I understood this line of conversation to be about the safety not the legality:

Quote from: Zanza on December 01, 2023, 01:11:25 PMJust read that the Cybertruck apparently has no crumple zone. :lol: I feel sorry for the people inside and outside that will die for this.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 01, 2023, 06:17:32 PM
Fingers crossed cyber truck finally prompts action against the various legal loop holes and shit safety of pickups in general?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on December 03, 2023, 01:59:18 AM
Quote from: HVC on December 01, 2023, 01:29:52 PMI just can't get past how ugly it is.
Oh it's hideous. I just always think of that Simpson episode when Homer destroys his brother's car company.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on December 03, 2023, 02:10:00 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on December 01, 2023, 04:59:15 PMMusk continues his charm offensive with advertisers by telling them to Fuck Off during a live event/conference on Wednesday.

The users are the product and the advertisers are the customers.

So...worst salesman ever?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on December 03, 2023, 02:27:40 AM
Quote from: Valmy on December 03, 2023, 02:10:00 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on December 01, 2023, 04:59:15 PMMusk continues his charm offensive with advertisers by telling them to Fuck Off during a live event/conference on Wednesday.

The users are the product and the advertisers are the customers.

So...worst salesman ever?

You just don't get it, he's owning those advertisers. Somehow. 4d checkers.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on December 03, 2023, 08:18:53 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 03, 2023, 01:59:18 AM
Quote from: HVC on December 01, 2023, 01:29:52 PMI just can't get past how ugly it is.
Oh it's hideous. I just always think of that Simpson episode when Homer destroys his brother's car company.

glad I'm not the only one!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on December 04, 2023, 09:52:15 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on December 01, 2023, 10:04:36 AMYou are forgetting that he bought Twitter because he was forced into it through court proceedings he finally realized he could not win. 

I'm not forgetting - he could have settled that case out for a monetary hit far less than what he has gotten himself into.  At the time, I thought that might be his play, but in hindsight that litigation was really a failed effort to renegotiate price against a savvy board that stuck to its guns.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on December 04, 2023, 12:47:16 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on December 04, 2023, 09:52:15 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on December 01, 2023, 10:04:36 AMYou are forgetting that he bought Twitter because he was forced into it through court proceedings he finally realized he could not win. 

I'm not forgetting - he could have settled that case out for a monetary hit far less than what he has gotten himself into.  At the time, I thought that might be his play, but in hindsight that litigation was really a failed effort to renegotiate price against a savvy board that stuck to its guns.

I don't think he ever really wanted to purchase the company given how much he tried to back peddle and get out of the deal.  I don't think he realized that what he was doing would become legally binding on him, until it was too late.

Your scenario makes a lot of sense if one assumes sophisticated parties on both sides.  But I think you give Musk too much credit.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on December 04, 2023, 12:49:24 PM
Quote from: Valmy on December 03, 2023, 02:10:00 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on December 01, 2023, 04:59:15 PMMusk continues his charm offensive with advertisers by telling them to Fuck Off during a live event/conference on Wednesday.

The users are the product and the advertisers are the customers.

So...worst salesman ever?

And as a bit of an insight into how things go so wrong so fast, the CEO sent an internal communication to all Twitter employees attaching the interview telling them that it was brilliant and something they must all watch and learn from.

There is nobody in Musk's orbit who would dare tell him the emperor has no clothes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 04, 2023, 01:22:08 PM
My impression was he bought a large stake in Twitter because he was annoyed at being modded, and hoped the CEO would suck his dick because he had bought a lot of shares. The CEO largely refused, so then he threatened to buy the company, and his ego and impulsiveness ended up with him signing a bad deal. That he seemed to quickly manufacture a reason to get out of, then realized legally he couldn't get out and had to buy it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on December 04, 2023, 05:45:24 PM
OvB and CC - the problem with that theory is that the break price was "only" $1 billion.  Although objectively a lot of money, it was peanuts compared to the drop in market value prior to closing.  So there was no financial sense in which Musk "had" to buy the company.  It would have been straightforward to cut the $1 billion check and a good deal to boot.  But it would mean acknowledging defeat.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on December 04, 2023, 05:56:19 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 03, 2023, 01:59:18 AM
Quote from: HVC on December 01, 2023, 01:29:52 PMI just can't get past how ugly it is.
Oh it's hideous. I just always think of that Simpson episode when Homer destroys his brother's car company.

But remember the ending to that episode, where Bart goes "I thought your car was really cool Dad", and Homer says "Thanks, I was waiting for someone to say that".

I still think Cybertruck looks really cool although it isn't for everyone.

Homer's car was kind of cool also.

(https://media.wired.com/photos/593252a1edfced5820d0fa07/master/w_1920,c_limit/the-homer-inline4.jpg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on December 04, 2023, 06:21:54 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on December 04, 2023, 05:45:24 PMOvB and CC - the problem with that theory is that the break price was "only" $1 billion.  Although objectively a lot of money, it was peanuts compared to the drop in market value prior to closing.  So there was no financial sense in which Musk "had" to buy the company.  It would have been straightforward to cut the $1 billion check and a good deal to boot.  But it would mean acknowledging defeat.
.

You are again assuming a rational decision maker.  Musk would have had to admit he was wrong.  But instead he went all in.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 04, 2023, 07:23:40 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on December 04, 2023, 05:45:24 PMOvB and CC - the problem with that theory is that the break price was "only" $1 billion.  Although objectively a lot of money, it was peanuts compared to the drop in market value prior to closing.  So there was no financial sense in which Musk "had" to buy the company.  It would have been straightforward to cut the $1 billion check and a good deal to boot.  But it would mean acknowledging defeat.

Every legal analysis I read on it said he could not simply exit for the $1bn break price, that was only if he could demonstrate his financing fell through.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on December 05, 2023, 01:31:52 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 04, 2023, 07:23:40 PMEvery legal analysis I read on it said he could not simply exit for the $1bn break price, that was only if he could demonstrate his financing fell through.

The alternative remedy sought by Twitter was specific performance, meaning Musk would have to buy the company at the agreed price.  I.e. he couldn't do worse than what he decided to agree to do anyways.  There was no logical reason to drop the litigation and settle for the maximal remedy demanded by his adversary unless that was what he wanted to do for other reasons.

As for his litigation options, put aside Musk's counterclaims, which although legally weak, could and did cause some real embarrassment to twitter.  It is not common for Delaware courts to force specific enforcement of merger deals.  There are some precedents, and there have been some settlements that take those precedents into account. But it is far from a forgone conclusion that it would happen.  The financing contingency was a significant obstacle because it appeared that the lenders were providing accommodationary financing to maintain good relations with Musk.  If the lenders believed that Musk truly wanted out, much of that financing could have vanished without provable collusion.  The other complication was that although Musk agreed to provide a significant portion of the purchase price as an equity investor, the "specific performance" would be performed by the named buyers - two limited liability entities created as acquisition vehicles.  Musk's contribution alone would not be enough to complete the deal.

From a pure litigation perspective it didn't make any sense to cave to your adversary's maximal demand EXCEPT that in this case, that was the only route that would end with him owning the company.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on December 05, 2023, 01:51:02 AM
Meanwhile, seems Cybertruck will not be coming to Germany anytime soon:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2019/12/16/tesla-cybertruck-not-street-legal-in-eu/

Quote[...]

And it's the Blade Runner-style aesthetics that are wowing audiences, including Blade Runner's artistic director Syd Mead. He told Business Insider that Elon Musk's latest toy was "stylistically breathtaking."

That it may be, but, to be driven in Europe, the Cybertruck would need to be redesigned in different materials. Or, perhaps Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk is banking on the Cybertruck being sold in the U.S. only? Many motor vehicles in the U.S. are exempt from pedestrian protection protocols.

According to EU auto standards expert Stefan Teller the Cybertruck would have to undergo "major modifications to the basic structure" because the Cybertruck "contradicts the European security philosophy."

Teller, who works for the German safety organization SGS-TÜV, said that the EU mandates pedestrian crumple zones on motor vehicles.

"The bumper and [hood] must be able to absorb energy to protect pedestrians," Teller told the German car magazine Automobilwoche, a standard that the Cybertruck would fail.

EU standards for motor vehicles are getting tougher. Members of the European Parliament's Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection voted in February to approve a range of new vehicle safety standards including automatic detection of pedestrians and cyclists, and a new direct vision standard for lorries and buses to enable drivers to have a better view of other road users around their vehicles.

MEPs also voted for the installation of speed-limiter devices on all new cars from 2022. MEPs also green-lighted the requirement for motor vehicles to be fitted with aviation-style "black box" Event Data Recorders, which record critical information on the status of a motor vehicle in the moments before a collision.

The Cybertruck could no doubt meet pedestrian and cyclist detection standards—technology already fitted in new Tesla vehicles—and, similarly, the "black box" requirements would also be a shoo-in for a tech-focussed company such as Tesla.

Musk is proud that existing Tesla models exceed EU safety standards. On December 4, he tweeted that: "Model X just earned 5 stars from Euro NCAP in safety testing."

However, pedestrian-safety omens for the new Cybertruck don't look good. On December 7, Musk was spotted at the wheel of a prototype Cybertruck as he and celeb pals left the Nobu Japanese restaurant in Malibu, California. Despite a sign telling Musk to turn right, he turned left, driving over the plastic sign in the process. As many have pointed out on social media, the traffic sign was about the size of a small child.

[...]
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on December 05, 2023, 05:03:27 PM
IF Metall has asked the largest Danish Union - 3F - to support them in their strike against Tesla. It seems 3F is going to take action.

I'm not sure how significant the direct impact will be, but the conflict spreading beyond the borders of Sweden carries some symbolic value I'd think. And, of course, if it spreads to Germany it has the potential to get a bit more inconvenient for Tesla.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on December 05, 2023, 05:05:55 PM
I guess there's some potential impact:
QuoteOn Tuesday, the spokesperson for Denmark's 3F, said its dockworkers and drivers would not handle Teslas destined for Sweden, referring to "speculation" that the carmaker would try to circumvent the Swedish port blockade by shipping its vehicles to Danish ports for onward delivery via truck.

Such a workaround "is no longer possible," the union spokesperson said.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/05/business/tesla-denmark-sweden-union-strike/index.html
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on December 05, 2023, 06:40:31 PM
Quote from: Syt on December 05, 2023, 01:51:02 AMMeanwhile, seems Cybertruck will not be coming to Germany anytime soon:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2019/12/16/tesla-cybertruck-not-street-legal-in-eu/

Quote(snip)

Article from 2019 not-anytime-soon or 4 years later not-anytime-soon?

Has anything been done to the design in the last 4 years to address the issue?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on December 06, 2023, 12:04:18 PM
Pickup trucks like the Cybertruck have historically not been sold in significant numbers in the EU, but that could of course change. The market in the US has about 25 times the size of the EU market, so homologation might just not have a business case. Additionally the curb weight of the Cybertruck means that you need a commercial vehicle license, not a normal passenger car license to operate it in Europe. That will limit appeal.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on December 06, 2023, 12:34:00 PM
This fucking thing weighs 3 tons and can go 0-100 in like 5 seconds. How is this legal.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on December 06, 2023, 01:13:03 PM
Quote from: grumbler on December 05, 2023, 06:40:31 PM
Quote from: Syt on December 05, 2023, 01:51:02 AMMeanwhile, seems Cybertruck will not be coming to Germany anytime soon:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2019/12/16/tesla-cybertruck-not-street-legal-in-eu/

Quote(snip)

Article from 2019 not-anytime-soon or 4 years later not-anytime-soon?

Has anything been done to the design in the last 4 years to address the issue?


Hard to say, newer articles seem to repeat the 2019 content. A different more recent take comes from here:

https://www.businessinsider.com/cybertruck-elon-musk-tesla-not-sold-europe-anytime-soon-2023-12

QuoteAfter years of waiting, the Cybertruck is finally here — but European Tesla fans shouldn't get too excited.

Although deliveries began on Thursday in the US, it isn't available in Europe, despite the European Union being both an important manufacturing hub and a key market for Tesla. There are a few reasons why it's unlikely to be sold across the Atlantic anytime soon.

The first is simple: the Cybertruck is extremely heavy.

Documents submitted to US regulators show that the minimum gross vehicle weight range is 8,001 to 9,001 pounds, or 4 to 4.5 tons, which could prove an issue if Tesla wanted to sell the pickup in Europe as is.

"The vehicle's gross vehicle weight for the dual-motor version is high, above 3.5 tons," Pedro Pacheco, vice-president of research at Gartner, told Business Insider.

"That has implications for European regulations, because it means that, most likely, a passenger vehicle driver's license will not do," he added.

Weight worries

To drive a vehicle heavier than 3.5 tons in the EU, drivers must have a category C1 license — meaning that to drive a US-built Cybertruck on European roads, you may need to apply for a truck driver's license.


Another obstacle is that the Cybertruck's charging port isn't compatible with European chargers.

The Cybertrucks rolling off Tesla production lines in the US work with the Tesla NAC standard, which has been widely adopted across the US, but not with the CCS network used by most European nations.

Pacheco added that Tesla would probably seek to make adjustments to ensure that an EU Cybertruck could drive on European roads, including making their charging tech compatible with CCS and reducing weight.

The bigger question is whether Tesla can be bothered making these tweaks, considering the relative unpopularity of hulking pickups like the Cybertruck in Europe.

"Pickup trucks are somewhat small in terms of market adoption in comparison to what you see in the US market," said Pacheco.

"For a vehicle in the category of the Cybertruck, there's not a huge market in Europe, because pickup trucks generally are not very common."

The European market for pickups is mostly focused on what Pacheco calls "entry-level pickup trucks" – small by US standards but better suited to European roads and cities.

Production challenges

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has floated the prospect of producing a smaller version of the Cybertruck for the European market before, describing it as "highly likely down the road" in 2020. However, there have been no updates since, and Pacheco said he thought the small size of the market was probably a factor in Tesla's disinterest.

At any rate, Tesla is likely going to have enough trouble satisfying demand for the Cybertruck in North America without worrying about other continents.

The US carmaker stopped taking orders for the electric pickup outside the US last year – a step Musk said it would only take if demand exceeded supply "to a ridiculous degree."

Since then, the Tesla boss has admitted that the company faces enormous challenges in scaling up production of the Cybertruck and satisfying the more than 2 million preorders Tesla has received.

In an earnings call last month, he said that the automaker had "dug its own grave" with the Cybertruck's unique design, and said that it would likely be years before Tesla hits its target of making 250,000 Cybertruck a year.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on December 07, 2023, 11:36:00 AM
Elon is such a petulant child.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1732773421610606801

He's now sarcastically suggesting that Disney is supporting child sex abuse because it advertises on Facebook and Google, and that sexually explicit material is being provided to children on those platforms.

I mean - there is perhaps a reasonable point he could make, that content moderation is hard for social media companies, but of course he just goes for snark instead.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 07, 2023, 11:48:27 AM
It continues to be weird how hated Disney is from both the right and left for completely different reasons. The right's reasons generally being insane and occasionally broken clock being right twice a day when it helps them.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on December 07, 2023, 01:01:22 PM
Hmm... would Facebook and Google have need to sue him to protect their reputation?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on December 07, 2023, 01:39:58 PM
Quote from: Jacob on December 07, 2023, 01:01:22 PMHmm... would Facebook and Google have need to sue him to protect their reputation?

They might have trouble proving any damage
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on December 07, 2023, 01:47:33 PM
I'll say this for Elon, living in that nanometer thin glass house doesn't deter him in the least from throwing concrete blocks around.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on December 08, 2023, 01:36:49 AM
Looks like Finnish and Norwegian unions are joining the blockade against Tesla at this point. Not sure how big the impact is going to be.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on December 09, 2023, 09:32:14 AM
So apparently Musk's "AI", Grok (lol) scored pretty liberal left on a political spectrum test, even more so than ChatGPT, so Musk has vowed to rectify this and push it to the centre.

Now, what if these algorithms tend toward liberal leftish opinions because those are objectively superior? :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tonitrus on December 09, 2023, 10:25:14 AM
So AI is going to pick up the "Balls of Light" mantle left on the floor by the Europeans?  :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on December 09, 2023, 10:56:45 AM
Quote from: Tonitrus on December 09, 2023, 10:25:14 AMSo AI is going to pick up the "Balls of Light" mantle left on the floor by the Europeans?  :P

 :D
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 11, 2023, 11:16:36 AM
Quote from: Tamas on December 09, 2023, 09:32:14 AMSo apparently Musk's "AI", Grok (lol) scored pretty liberal left on a political spectrum test, even more so than ChatGPT, so Musk has vowed to rectify this and push it to the centre.

Now, what if these algorithms tend toward liberal leftish opinions because those are objectively superior? :P

Centre-centre or Musk's warped ideas where even Reagen is a centrist?

And yes. In this age of Trumpy conspiracy nonsense in America at least we certainly are at a stage where one side so clearly holds dominion over truth.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on December 11, 2023, 11:42:12 AM
Quote from: Josquius on December 11, 2023, 11:16:36 AM
Quote from: Tamas on December 09, 2023, 09:32:14 AMSo apparently Musk's "AI", Grok (lol) scored pretty liberal left on a political spectrum test, even more so than ChatGPT, so Musk has vowed to rectify this and push it to the centre.

Now, what if these algorithms tend toward liberal leftish opinions because those are objectively superior? :P

Centre-centre or Musk's warped ideas where even Reagen is a centrist?

The AI kept saying Hitler had no good ideas. Clearly it's infected by woke.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on December 11, 2023, 12:34:32 PM
There have been many historical cases of chatbots that had to be pulled for making racist and other offensive commentary.  I presume that if one wants to avoid that outcome, then certain design steps have to be taken to allow the AI to avoid that kind of discourse.  At that point, one or both of the following two conclusions follow, depending on one's view of the present day Right: (1) Whatever steps taken to ensure that the AI reliably avoids racism also tends of push it into other left-adjacent viewpoints; (2) the present day right wing has become so enmeshed in racist and misogynistic discourse that a non-racist AI comes across as left of center.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 11, 2023, 01:12:53 PM
It looks like the Swedish ruling that required them to issue plates was overturned by a higher court, as I understand it this means they are back to Teslas not being able to acquire valid Swedish plates at the moment.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on December 11, 2023, 01:38:57 PM
Link to an explanation of the decision?

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on December 11, 2023, 02:02:37 PM
Musk decided to reinstate Alex Jones. I'm sure what few advertisers remain will love that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on December 11, 2023, 02:06:56 PM
Fighting with Taylor Swift too, apparently.  Gotta say he's got a unique rouges gallery.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on December 11, 2023, 02:16:53 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on December 11, 2023, 01:38:57 PMLink to an explanation of the decision?

Here's the release from the Swedish court in question. It's in Swedish, but Google translate does a decent job: https://www.domstol.se/nyheter/2023/12/avslag-pa-teslas-yrkande-om-interimistiska-sakerhetsatgarder-mot-postnord/
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on December 11, 2023, 05:17:56 PM
Thanks, that sounds like a decision related to another application for a pre-trial mandatory injunction, rather than an appeal of the first injunction decision.

As noted before, there are two parallel proceedings going on.  This sounds like it is a decision in the second proceeding. 

Can someone familiar with Swedish law provide an explanation of what is happening?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on December 12, 2023, 02:03:29 PM
How's it going with Musk's "thermonuclear" suit against Media Matters?

It appears the CBC has made a similar investigation and followed up with a number of major companies who've then suspended their Twitter advertising spends. I wonder if Musk is going to sue the CBC also? And if he doesn't, whether the CBC actions are likely to impact the Media Matters suit.

B'nai Brith (a Jewish advocay group) has decided to stay on Twitter, in spite of their adds appearing on the feed of Richard Spencer (famous for leading chants of "Jews will not replace us" in public marches).

Source (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canadian-brands-advertising-x-extremism-1.7055823)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on December 12, 2023, 02:27:43 PM
Quote from: Jacob on December 12, 2023, 02:03:29 PMHow's it going with Musk's "thermonuclear" suit against Media Matters?

It appears the CBC has made a similar investigation and followed up with a number of major companies who've then suspended their Twitter advertising spends. I wonder if Musk is going to sue the CBC also? And if he doesn't, whether the CBC actions are likely to impact the Media Matters suit.

B'nai Brith (a Jewish advocay group) has decided to stay on Twitter, in spite of their adds appearing on the feed of Richard Spencer (famous for leading chants of "Jews will not replace us" in public marches).

Source (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canadian-brands-advertising-x-extremism-1.7055823)

Not at all
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on December 12, 2023, 03:03:12 PM
Quote from: Jacob on December 12, 2023, 02:03:29 PMHow's it going with Musk's "thermonuclear" suit against Media Matters?

The plaintiff hasn't filed proof of service yet, which may mean they havent served the complaint yet, or that they requested a waiver, which wouldn't need to be returned until later this month.  Which means nothing has happened.

A crazy person who claims to have run for a state house seat in Florida attempted to intervene and join as a plaintiff and was summarily rejected.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on December 14, 2023, 02:00:24 AM
QuoteElon Musk's New Monkey Death Claims Spur Fresh Demands for an SEC Investigation
An animal welfare advocacy group claims in a letter to the SEC that Elon Musk again made statements about the health of Neuralink test subjects that may have misled investors.

For the third time this year, the US Securities and Exchange Commission is being urged to investigate allegations of whether Elon Musk made misleading claims to investors about the deaths of primates used for research by Neuralink, his brain-chip startup.

The latest claims center around his recent statements at the New York Times DealBook Summit that primates who died after implant surgeries were selected for experimentation because they were already close to death. In a letter sent to federal regulators today, an animal rights advocacy and research group claims that Musk's statements are inaccurate and amount to "possible securities fraud."

This marks the third letter to the SEC since late September requesting an investigation into Musk's comments about Neuralink's test subjects. Records related to Neuralink's research reviewed by WIRED paint a complicated picture of the health of the monkeys used to develop the company's brain-chip implants, which will soon be used in human trials.

The most recent letter, written by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, centers on an interview between Musk and Times financial columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin on November 29. Asked to respond to reports of the gruesome deaths that occurred during early Neuralink experiments at UC Davis, Musk told the audience that the monkeys who endured experimental surgeries were already terminal. "It's the kind of thing which we could only put in a monkey that's about to die," he said, referring to his experimental chip, adding, "It didn't die because of the Neuralink, it died because it had a terminal case of cancer or something like that."

The Physicians Committee's letter alleges that there is no proof that primates had fatal conditions before receiving implants. Citing veterinary records the organization obtained last year, the letter claims that Neuralink scientists performed experimental surgeries on previously healthy primates, some of which went on to suffer complications ranging from serious fungal infections to loosely implanted chips to bleeding or swelling in their brain.

Previously unreported medical examination records describe the overall physical well-being of the primates prior to undergoing Neuralink experiments. WIRED's review of those records found that some primates underwent extensive "pre-project" health examinations at UC Davis before being approved for the Neuralink studies, which began at the university's facilities in 2017 and concluded in 2020. According to experts, while the paperwork indicates that those animals were to eventually undergo terminal surgeries—meaning they would be euthanized after experimental procedures—their medical examinations did not suggest that they had serious health conditions that could be considered terminal.

On October 19, 2018, for instance, veterinarians at UC Davis performed a pre-project examination of a female macaque called "Animal 11." At the time, Davis' staff examined her spleen, liver, lymph nodes, eyes, and ears. A cardiologist also performed an echocardiogram to make sure there was no evidence of underlying heart conditions common in macaques. After her examinations, staff only noted one abnormality: She was missing digits on both hands and her right foot.

In December that year, Neuralink employees drilled into her skull and implanted electrodes in her brain in an experimental surgery. She was euthanized a few months later after the implants had become infected.

According to a doctor who spent years working as a clinical veterinarian at a primate breeding and research facility, if Animal 11 had any kind of terminal health condition as Musk claims, they "absolutely" should have shown up in the physical examinations that Davis staff performed. However, the doctor, who requested anonymity citing "industry-wide retaliation," speculated that while they did not see any evidence of a terminal health condition prior to an experimental surgery, it's possible that the primate could have had behavioral or mental health issues causing the animal to be considered "terminal."

"If we can't control an animal's stress through environment and medication, then that's a reason for humane euthanasia," the doctor says, indicating that Animal's 11 missing fingers and toes could be a sign of this. To help cope with the stress of life in a lab, researchers try to pair primates with a companion. "In some cases," the doctor adds, "one monkey sticks its finger through the grate, and their neighbor bites it off."

Other pre-project veterinary records WIRED reviewed with the doctor reveal that Neuralink's test primates suffered from stress, physical altercations, and other unspecified trauma before their terminal surgeries or euthanasia. For instance, the doctor observed that at least one primate was being treated with fluoxetine—generic Prozac—for depression. "But there's nowhere in the documents that explicitly states the animals would qualify for humane euthanasia due to stress," they say.

At last month's Dealbook Summit, Musk likened Neuralink facilities to a "monkey paradise." A WIRED investigation published in October found that Neuralink primates survived for weeks after enduring experiments with names like "cranial heat dissipation study" or "electrode insertion survivability study." The primates used in Neuralink experiments at UC Davis can live up to 40 years in captivity, yet most of the animals that Neuralink euthanized in its experiments had not yet reached adulthood.

In October 2018, a UC Davis veterinarian approved Animal 13 for use in a Neuralink experiment. She was six years old when she received her Neuralink implants. According to her pre-project physical exam and echocardiogram, Davis staff did not observe any medical abnormalities prior to her surgery, only noting that she had superficial scratches on her lips and minor lip trauma as part of a "suspect pair fight."

Beginning in November 2018, Animal 13 was regularly sedated with ketamine and hooked up to scientific instruments for "neuro recordings." After one of these sessions the following month, Davis staff observed that the skin near the implants felt warm to the touch, the records show.

Over the next three months, her implants became infected. She was euthanized in March 2019. Her autopsy notes "numerous bacterial cultures" and evidence of brain swelling.

A doctoral candidate who conducted research at Davis' California National Primate Research Center (CNPRC) told WIRED in September that, in their view, "there's no real indication that these animals were terminal, and in fact, their age suggests that they weren't." The doctoral candidate added that, without more information, there was "there's no real way" they could be certain.

A "scope of work and budget" document between Neuralink and UC Davis reviewed by WIRED lends some legitimacy to Musk's claims that certain animals may have been terminal prior to their surgeries. The document details the amounts that Neuralink was to pay for UC Davis labor, equipment, and primates at each phase of its experimentation at the university. "The first stage of this work will be to test and refine our implantable devices," the document reads, describing these tests to be performed "ideally with culled animals."

While the document goes on to describe the six adult rhesus macaques who were to undergo these "terminal procedures" during this phase as being "in robust health," the doctor WIRED spoke to points out that the budget indicates that this group of monkeys was discounted "because they are animals that are considered terminal," they say.

However, the doctor explains that because animals 11 and 13 were meant to survive their initial implantation surgery, they were likely not part of this phase of Neuralink's experimentation.

Neuralink did not respond to a request for comment for this article or any of our previous coverage of the experiments at Davis.

This week's letter from the Physicians Committee marks the second time the organization has written to federal regulators asking for a securities fraud investigation into Musk's comments about Neuralink's monkeys. After Musk made similar statements about the Neuralink experiments in a post on his social networking app X (formerly Twitter), the organization wrote to the SEC alleging that the Neuralink CEO was deliberately misleading investors. Four members of the US House of Representatives have also asked the SEC to look into these claims of whether Musk committed securities fraud.

"When dealing with alleged animal welfare violations as egregious as those leveled against Musk, there needs to be greater urgency to hold him accountable," US representative Earl Blumenauer told WIRED in a statement last month.

Last week, the SEC told Blumenauer that it could not confirm or deny whether it is investigating Musk's comments.

"Musk has continued to make misleading and false claims about experiments conducted on monkeys by Neuralink," the Physicians Committee letter alleges. "We urge the SEC to investigate this matter and penalize Neuralink and Musk appropriately."

https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-neuralink-dealbook-comments-sec/
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on December 14, 2023, 09:45:56 AM
It's a bit outside the SEC's lane.  I suppose the theory would be that weakness in the ethical framework for experiments could lead to fines and regulatory action that would impact stock price.  But that's the kind of theory I'd expect a private plaintiff to experiment with, not the SEC.

It's not like the SEC has to search that hard to find more obvious examples of potentially problem statements by Musk to securities markets.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on December 14, 2023, 10:14:40 AM
Maybe he's training the monkeys to play college basketball and the reporter just mixed up which SEC is being called to investigate?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on December 14, 2023, 10:37:39 AM
Good luck to anyone foolish enough to enroll in the human trials... What a mess.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on December 14, 2023, 11:21:20 AM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on December 14, 2023, 10:14:40 AMMaybe he's training the monkeys to play college basketball and the reporter just mixed up which SEC is being called to investigate?

what if the monkeys are in fact they entirety of the twitter userbase?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on December 14, 2023, 11:28:31 AM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on December 14, 2023, 11:21:20 AM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on December 14, 2023, 10:14:40 AMMaybe he's training the monkeys to play college basketball and the reporter just mixed up which SEC is being called to investigate?

what if the monkeys are in fact they entirety of the twitter userbase?

Seems probable
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on December 14, 2023, 11:30:18 AM
Monkey brain powered AI. Mr Burns would be proud.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on December 14, 2023, 11:42:55 AM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on December 14, 2023, 11:21:20 AM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on December 14, 2023, 10:14:40 AMMaybe he's training the monkeys to play college basketball and the reporter just mixed up which SEC is being called to investigate?

what if the monkeys are in fact they entirety of the twitter userbase?

If they're making tweets to manipulate the stock price in between games, then both SECs will get involved.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 14, 2023, 11:47:51 AM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on December 14, 2023, 11:21:20 AM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on December 14, 2023, 10:14:40 AMMaybe he's training the monkeys to play college basketball and the reporter just mixed up which SEC is being called to investigate?

what if the monkeys are in fact they entirety of the twitter userbase?

Incidentally. It would now be theoretically possible to create a recreation of languish using AI such that any one of us as the only human on there wouldn't know the difference. Right?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on December 14, 2023, 01:11:34 PM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on December 14, 2023, 11:42:55 AM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on December 14, 2023, 11:21:20 AM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on December 14, 2023, 10:14:40 AMMaybe he's training the monkeys to play college basketball and the reporter just mixed up which SEC is being called to investigate?

what if the monkeys are in fact they entirety of the twitter userbase?

If they're making tweets to manipulate the stock price in between games, then both SECs will get involved.

wouldn't that make it an orgy?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on December 14, 2023, 04:02:19 PM
Quote from: Josquius on December 14, 2023, 11:47:51 AM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on December 14, 2023, 11:21:20 AM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on December 14, 2023, 10:14:40 AMMaybe he's training the monkeys to play college basketball and the reporter just mixed up which SEC is being called to investigate?

what if the monkeys are in fact they entirety of the twitter userbase?

Incidentally. It would now be theoretically possible to create a recreation of languish using AI such that any one of us as the only human on there wouldn't know the difference. Right?
Probably.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on December 14, 2023, 04:55:25 PM
I asked ChatGPT about us. It doesn't know us.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on December 14, 2023, 05:03:23 PM
Musk is looking to hire someone with "a proven track record of getting regulatory changes made in the Nordics." The job advert states the person is needed "to help ensure that the political, regulatory and fiscal frameworks in the 'Nordics' (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland) support Tesla's mission".

Link to Financial Times (paywall, haven't read it myself): https://www.ft.com/content/384a6ef6-1c8d-420a-8b8a-dc94d754b01b

We'll see how that works out for him (and the Nordics, I suppose).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on December 14, 2023, 05:06:15 PM
A modern Quisling, as it were.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 14, 2023, 05:14:32 PM
Making cars for Musk fanbois is a very attractive mission.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on December 14, 2023, 06:32:17 PM
Are there any pretenders to the throne of the Kalmar Union?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on December 14, 2023, 07:18:27 PM
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on December 14, 2023, 11:21:20 AMwhat if the monkeys are in fact they entirety of the twitter userbase?

Very unlikely, if that were true the average tweet quality would be far higher.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on December 14, 2023, 07:19:45 PM
Quote from: Josquius on December 14, 2023, 11:47:51 AMIncidentally. It would now be theoretically possible to create a recreation of languish using AI such that any one of us as the only human on there wouldn't know the difference. Right?

My parameters don't permit me to respond to that question.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on December 15, 2023, 01:17:08 AM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on December 14, 2023, 06:32:17 PMAre there any pretenders to the throne of the Kalmar Union?

The Union didn't have a throne of its own. Which wouldn't matter to a great pretender.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on December 15, 2023, 03:34:31 PM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on December 14, 2023, 06:32:17 PMAre there any pretenders to the throne of the Kalmar Union?

The Kalmar Union was elective. Hence why it wasn't sustainable once the treasonous Swedes got other ideas.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on December 17, 2023, 01:30:34 PM
Swedish paper publishes article on the role of child labour in the manufacturing of electrical vehicles (https://special.aftonbladet.se/story/jleydo) - in particular it looks a mine in Madagascar that supplies a Chinese company that in turn supplies several major car companies.

So of course, when links to the article are shared on Twitter they slap a "the link may be unsafe" on it (https://www.svt.se/kultur/x-marker-teslagranskning-med-varning--qg18hg).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on December 17, 2023, 01:45:12 PM
Quote from: Jacob on December 17, 2023, 01:30:34 PMSwedish paper publishes article on the role of child labour in the manufacturing of electrical vehicles (https://special.aftonbladet.se/story/jleydo) - in particular it looks a mine in Madagascar that supplies a Chinese company that in turn supplies several major car companies.

So of course, when links to the article are shared on Twitter they slap a "the link may be unsafe" on it (https://www.svt.se/kultur/x-marker-teslagranskning-med-varning--qg18hg).

this is not really different from the mobile phones thing with the coltan mining. When it's been mined - frankly- the civilised world there's presence of child-labour, slave-labour, other kinds of inapropriate labour, or all the above at the same time, involved.

Best not to look too closely or the west won't be doing any trading at all, and that would be worse since then there won't be anyone advocating for improvement.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on December 17, 2023, 02:20:30 PM
I think the countries at the raw end of that extraction have at various points tried to advocate for improvement - the communities affected certainly have. Of course they don't have much power or agency, which the West has for the last 80 years. I'm not sure our advocacy has been worth much.

But I think it's a good point. Those sort of issues are basically present in literally everything we need to do for the energy transition (electrification of everything, plus shifting to renewables for electricity). Obviously it's necessary and important but it comes at a cost.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on December 17, 2023, 02:48:57 PM
The degree to which we kind of ignore the reality of it is certainly a thing, but Twitter labelling reporting on it as "untrustworthy" represents a new low IMO (and on brand for Musk).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Crazy_Ivan80 on December 17, 2023, 03:41:09 PM
Quote from: Jacob on December 17, 2023, 02:48:57 PMThe degree to which we kind of ignore the reality of it is certainly a thing, but Twitter labelling reporting on it as "untrustworthy" represents a new low IMO (and on brand for Musk).

indeed.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 17, 2023, 04:39:46 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 17, 2023, 02:20:30 PMI think the countries at the raw end of that extraction have at various points tried to advocate for improvement - the communities affected certainly have. Of course they don't have much power or agency, which the West has for the last 80 years. I'm not sure our advocacy has been worth much.

But I think it's a good point. Those sort of issues are basically present in literally everything we need to do for the energy transition (electrification of everything, plus shifting to renewables for electricity). Obviously it's necessary and important but it comes at a cost.

The trouble with it all is that the corporations in the west are all competing with each other and trying to get the best prices, meanwhile the suppliers at the bottom are also in completion to try to earn the most.

I know somebody whose job is trying to keep the supply chain clean for a major corporation (the one I worked for) and from all I hear it's an absolute nightmare from their safe office in the west (their travel budget has been slashed this past devade) trying to go through multiple layers of middle men to figure out exactly where stuff comes from.

There's so much required and so many suppliers needed to do this, and then there's the competition element, that tracking it is just an epic task even though the people in corporate hq may say they want to be responsible in every area - it's funny as the stereotype is evil moustache twirling corporate big wigs but the evil tends to be a lot further down the chain with the petty capitalists running farms and mines, employing/enslaving people in shit conditions and not giving a toss for the environment if it bads their bank balance.

Really the problem is just fundamental to the shit mess of a system the world has stumbled into.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on December 18, 2023, 07:16:10 AM
European Commission opening proceedings against X on various points from DSA - in particular risk management, content moderation, dark patterns, advertising transparency and data access for researchers.

This has been coming. I'm not convinced X is the worst offender on these points - ByteDance and Meta would be my priorities. But it is certainly a very good way of raising the profile of the Commission's new enforcement powers.

Of course it is slightly complicated by the privacy activists currently suing the European Commission for breaching GDPR in their advertising campaigns about the DSA...on X :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on December 18, 2023, 02:35:19 PM
X may not be the worst offender but my guess is they are the least concerned with even maintaining the premise of compliance, which makes them the easiest target.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on December 18, 2023, 02:41:51 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 18, 2023, 02:35:19 PMX may not be the worst offender but my guess is they are the least concerned with even maintaining the premise of compliance, which makes them the easiest target.
Yeah - and the one that is most likely to deliver PR of a new regulatory competence and some enforcement activity (which will take years).

Although I think given that it's been revealed that ByteDance has lied to parliaments in Europe about user data being transferred to/accessible in China I think they should be a higher priority.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on December 18, 2023, 02:45:25 PM
I expect that a (relatively) quick and popular smackdown of X would provide momentum for taking on ByteDance and Meta.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 18, 2023, 02:48:08 PM
Byte dance is definitely priority.
Facebook are horrid and all that, but a lot of their shit is from just being willing to take anyone's money.
There's something outright fundamentally sinister about tiktok on the other hand.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on December 18, 2023, 02:52:10 PM
Quote from: Jacob on December 18, 2023, 02:45:25 PMI expect that a (relatively) quick and popular smackdown of X would provide momentum for taking on ByteDance and Meta.
It won't be quick :lol:

Meta's enforcement for breaching GDPR started in 2018 and has partially wrapped up this year with a fine. And it's not finished yet because their regulator isn't really investigating everything and whether or not they're required to is now being taken to the courts.

This is easier because the Commission is the regulator. But it'll be like the Commissions fights with Microsoft (especially if they end up with a friendly White House), that the Commission eventually won but took a long time. I'd expect at least five years. There'll be an investigation that will take time, then a decision and it will be challenged to the CJEU.

Edit: Incidentally this is the biggest issue with regulating tech - there's vast amounts to investigate meaningfully, it requires expertise and they have deep enough pockets to challenge every point. I've heard the UK data regulator (one of the best resourced in Europe) say litigation costs has been the biggest surprise, which it shouldn't have been.

Personally I think we need a little bit less regulatory process and a bit more of a snap of state sovereignty - like the oil producing countries asserting their rights and power. :ph34r:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on December 18, 2023, 04:28:33 PM
Looks like Tesla has found a way to get around the Postal worker action - instead of getting the license plates sent to Tesla (covered by the strike), the license plates are being sent directly to the individual Tesla customers (who are not covered by the strike).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on December 20, 2023, 05:28:21 AM
https://www.businesspost.ie/news/exclusive-the-x-files-how-elon-musks-new-rules-allow-hate-to-flourish/

QuoteExclusive: the X Files – how Elon Musk's new rules allow hate to flourish
Leaked documents reveal how staff of the social media channel were stripped of powers to remove toxic content from its platform


Elon Musk's X has instructed staff not to suspend users that post explicitly racist, sexist and homophobic content, or who send sexual material to another person, as part of a new policy that has radically stripped back the company's moderation of abusive material.

Confidential documents obtained by the Business Post reveal in detail how X, formerly Twitter, has significantly watered down its trust and safety rules over recent months, and how its policies allow abusive and hateful accounts to remain on the platform.

Musk, a self-described free-speech absolutist, has spoken openly about the changes he has made to content moderation on X since he purchased the company for $44 billion in October 2022.

The documents, dating from June to October of this year, show how content moderators have been told not to suspend the users behind certain hateful material, including content promoting physical harm against an individual, references to mass murders "with the intent to harass", and content that "incites fear about a protected category" of people.

The documents give several examples of posts that would once have been removed – a process that used to include their authors being suspended, or warned about their conduct – but which are now allowed to remain with visibility reduced.

Now a trove of leaked documents – including a detailed training manual, and a guidance document on how to deal with abusive content – shows how Musk's approach has watered down X's policies and allowed hate-filled accounts to proliferate.

X did not respond to a list of detailed queries from the Business Post this weekend, or to multiple requests for comment.

Among the examples of a post that is no longer subject to the same level of enforcement action is: "The next stop on our Poland tour is Auschwitz. Jews this is your last top. Please get off here and take all your luggage with you."

Another example is a slur against black people that reads: "That guy is such a c**n", while a third shows a post, which tags another user and features a photo of Hitler.

Among the categories of material that are no longer subject to the same level of enforcement are:

• unsolicited sexual posts sent to another user

• posts that deny violent events such as the Holocaust

• posts that refer to specific slurs for black, white and gay people

• posts that harass another user by sending a picture of Adolf Hitler

• posts that reference mass murder

• posts that call for the denial of support to the business of a protected category

• posts that remove human characteristics or deprives groups or individuals of human qualities.

The changes have been made as part of X's "Freedom of Speech, Not Reach" policy, which was announced by the company in April.

Training documents show how moderators are told not to take action to get these posts removed from X, but instead to make them "less discoverable" for users.

"Users will have to intentionally seek out content for which we've restricted reach, just like anywhere else on the internet," the document says.

Posts that misgender or "deadname" individuals – meaning referring to a trans person by a name they used before transitioning – are no longer subject to action by contracted content moderators, though "outing" an LGBTQ person for their sexual orientation or gender is still a violation and will lead to a post being removed. Many posts that would have been removed under the platform's previous ownership are now merely labelled as violating X's policies.

These posts are not removed from the platform but their reach is restricted, allowing users to seek them out and meaning authors of these posts are not subject to enforcement action.

The files shed light on exactly how content moderators are told to deal with hateful and abusive content – and show they have been instructed not to be as stringent in taking action against these types of posts.

Musk's free-speech approach has grown into a significant financial problem for X, with a string of advertisers – including Apple, Disney and IBM – suspending their activity on the platform.

Bloomberg reported last week that X's advertising revenues in 2023 are expected to be $1.5 billion lower than last year.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on December 20, 2023, 11:30:26 AM
I wonder how that interacts with hate speech type legislation in various jurisdictions.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on December 20, 2023, 12:05:36 PM
Quote from: Jacob on December 20, 2023, 11:30:26 AMI wonder how that interacts with hate speech type legislation in various jurisdictions.

In Canada X's greatest jeopardy would likely be proceedings before a human right tribunal.  X would try to argue that the content of the expression does not cross the line into hate speech.  But based on that article, it would be a difficult defense to maintain. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on December 21, 2023, 05:52:57 AM
(https://i.postimg.cc/VN67jZgK/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on December 21, 2023, 08:11:28 AM
I've been getting a fair few youtube suggestions lately talking about how chat gpt has certain biases, these videos inevitably are rants on teh woke and reality not aligning with the loony right.

It's a shame as previously I was seeing a lot of interesting stuff on how minority languages were suffering due to it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on January 03, 2024, 01:45:43 PM
An investment company that joined Musk's 44bn takeover of Twitter has written down their share indicating an overall 12.5bn valuation of X.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on January 03, 2024, 02:00:07 PM
The real reckoning is going to be if/ when Tesla gets re-evaluated as a car-maker rather than a meme-stock.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on January 03, 2024, 02:03:08 PM
Xitter appear to be dealying Tsunami alerts by up to 3 hours in Japan: https://mashable.com/article/twitter-japan-earthquake-tsunami-alert-restricted

To be fair, the problem appears to have been fixed now.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on January 03, 2024, 02:28:54 PM
Quote from: Jacob on January 03, 2024, 02:00:07 PMThe real reckoning is going to be if/ when Tesla gets re-evaluated as a car-maker rather than a meme-stock.
They were a clear leader in battery tech, manufacturing process, software, infrastructure, sales model etc. pioneering many innovations. But competition, especially from China, is catching up fast. Last quarter BYD sold more BEV cars than Tesla for example. Doubtful that Tesla can deliver on Musks more boisterous claims any time soon. So there is indeed a significant risk that they will soon just be another car company.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on January 03, 2024, 02:33:51 PM
Elon apparently claims that Tesla is not a car company but an AI company. I came across a thing that said that Tesla stocks is being evaluated as such.

So perhaps his strategy is to continually pivot Tesla onto new bubbles as they appear? Bubbleriding, as it were.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on January 03, 2024, 02:47:18 PM
Quote from: Jacob on January 03, 2024, 02:33:51 PMElon apparently claims that Tesla is not a car company but an AI company. I came across a thing that said that Tesla stocks is being evaluated as such.

So perhaps his strategy is to continually pivot Tesla onto new bubbles as they appear? Bubbleriding, as it were.

Or perhaps his strategy has always been to look for additional high potential ways to monetize the car space.  There's a difference between a bubble, in which people pay no attention to the fundamentals and care only about whether some other sucker will bid up the price, and growth stocks, in which the fundamentals come into play at some point in the future and it's very difficult to model the future with any precision.  For example with AI, no one really knows what its potential upside is.  But I think it's self evidently immense.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on January 03, 2024, 02:54:56 PM
I am skeptical of Tesla's valuation being justifiable even based on assessing it as a growth stock. The economics of the car market are damn well understood, and it is well understood companies that make cars simply aren't as valuable as Tesla is.

I think it is all but undeniable that a significant portion of Tesla's valuation is simply speculators who buy into Musk, and expect or expected him to continually find ways to keep juicing the stock up. It has never meaningfully moved in relation to the company's real fundamentals, and it is incredibly unlike a company that isn't a major player in software is meaningfully positioned on AI. The big software players are all already there, and they have all the top researchers and software guys in that space.

Musk isn't going to build a Microsoft or Google-class software company to then stand up an AI effort.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on January 03, 2024, 03:18:12 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 03, 2024, 02:47:18 PM
Quote from: Jacob on January 03, 2024, 02:33:51 PMElon apparently claims that Tesla is not a car company but an AI company. I came across a thing that said that Tesla stocks is being evaluated as such.

So perhaps his strategy is to continually pivot Tesla onto new bubbles as they appear? Bubbleriding, as it were.

Or perhaps his strategy has always been to look for additional high potential ways to monetize the car space.  There's a difference between a bubble, in which people pay no attention to the fundamentals and care only about whether some other sucker will bid up the price, and growth stocks, in which the fundamentals come into play at some point in the future and it's very difficult to model the future with any precision.  For example with AI, no one really knows what its potential upside is.  But I think it's self evidently immense.
AI is an area where Tesla so far has not delivered. They take much more risks than other carmakers with their driver assistance systems, but they have no significant technology advantage over their competitors. At least not yet. Their latest innovation in that area is an own supercomputer which is supposed to bring their autonomous driving capability forward. Let's see.

I think the single most meaningful innovation of Tesla was its supercharger network. That has even set an industry standard in North America now. But physical infrastructure is very capital intensive at best comparable with tech company investments into data centers. But the valuation of the tech companies is from their software, not their hardware.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on January 03, 2024, 03:34:17 PM
Quote from: Zanza on January 03, 2024, 03:18:12 PMAI is an area where Tesla so far has not delivered. They take much more risks than other carmakers with their driver assistance systems, but they have no significant technology advantage over their competitors. At least not yet. Their latest innovation in that area is an own supercomputer which is supposed to bring their autonomous driving capability forward. Let's see.

I think the single most meaningful innovation of Tesla was its supercharger network. That has even set an industry standard in North America now. But physical infrastructure is very capital intensive at best comparable with tech company investments into data centers. But the valuation of the tech companies is from their software, not their hardware.

When I said the upside of AI is immense I was not referring to Tesla specifically but rather AI in general.  I haven't the slightest idea how AI adds value to Tesla.

I do know that Tesla has managed to produce software upgrades that customers are willing to pay for.  Did Tesla invent that?  You would obviously know better than me.  But that is not part of the traditional auto revenue stream.

As Cathy Wood put it, with Tesla you're buying a car company and you also get call options on things like self driving and battery tech etc.  The correct pricing of those options is of course completely up for debate.

I also think it's self evident that the EV share of the total market will only continue to grow.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on January 03, 2024, 03:59:27 PM
Quote from: Zanza on January 03, 2024, 03:18:12 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 03, 2024, 02:47:18 PM
Quote from: Jacob on January 03, 2024, 02:33:51 PMElon apparently claims that Tesla is not a car company but an AI company. I came across a thing that said that Tesla stocks is being evaluated as such.

So perhaps his strategy is to continually pivot Tesla onto new bubbles as they appear? Bubbleriding, as it were.

Or perhaps his strategy has always been to look for additional high potential ways to monetize the car space.  There's a difference between a bubble, in which people pay no attention to the fundamentals and care only about whether some other sucker will bid up the price, and growth stocks, in which the fundamentals come into play at some point in the future and it's very difficult to model the future with any precision.  For example with AI, no one really knows what its potential upside is.  But I think it's self evidently immense.
AI is an area where Tesla so far has not delivered. They take much more risks than other carmakers with their driver assistance systems, but they have no significant technology advantage over their competitors. At least not yet. Their latest innovation in that area is an own supercomputer which is supposed to bring their autonomous driving capability forward. Let's see.

I think the single most meaningful innovation of Tesla was its supercharger network. That has even set an industry standard in North America now. But physical infrastructure is very capital intensive at best comparable with tech company investments into data centers. But the valuation of the tech companies is from their software, not their hardware.

To the extent Tesla is an "AI" company it is in the area of self-driving cars, which certainly is an area of AI technology.  I do know Tesla has sunk a tremendous amount of resources into that area.  Whether that has given them any kind of technological edge over its competitors is way beyond my knowledge.

*IF* Tesla was able to perfect true self-driving well in advance of its competitors that would be a huge competitive advantage.  I'm so far unimpressed.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on January 03, 2024, 04:19:12 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 03, 2024, 03:34:17 PMWhen I said the upside of AI is immense I was not referring to Tesla specifically but rather AI in general.  I haven't the slightest idea how AI adds value to Tesla.
There are lots of potential AI use cases in a car. Autonomous driving is the best known, but you also have navigation, infotainment, predictive maintenance, other assistance than the core driving and of course AI powered subsystems like intelligent high beams etc.
But Tesla has not really shown significant advantage over their competitors in these yet. They take significant risks with their autonomous driving, which is why their systems seem more capable than others even if they are not from the underlying technology.

QuoteI do know that Tesla has managed to produce software upgrades that customers are willing to pay for.  Did Tesla invent that?  You would obviously know better than me.  But that is not part of the traditional auto revenue stream.
The actual innovation here was not to sell software based services, but having an own operating system on own chips, which allowed OTA updates. Traditional car companies had typically left the software in distributed control units provided by suppliers. That made OTA updates virtually impossible as it is very hard to test all HW/SW configurations of a car.
But even in that area Tesla is quickly being outshone by Chinese competition - at least in China itself, which is the biggest car market by some margin.

QuoteAs Cathy Wood put it, with Tesla you're buying a car company and you also get call options on things like self driving and battery tech etc.  The correct pricing of those options is of course completely up for debate.
Sure. Let's see if those options come to fruition.

QuoteI also think it's self evident that the EV share of the total market will only continue to grow.
Yes, even if not as fast as many predicted two or three years ago.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on January 03, 2024, 04:20:29 PM
I expect the first real self-driving car to be marketed to every day people will be Apple's.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on January 03, 2024, 04:27:24 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on January 03, 2024, 04:20:29 PMI expect the first real self-driving car to be marketed to every day people will be Apple's.

"Project Titan" is coming up on being 10 years old by late 2024.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on January 03, 2024, 04:32:12 PM
Did some people pre-pay for the self-driving feature?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on January 03, 2024, 04:35:46 PM
Quote from: Jacob on January 03, 2024, 04:32:12 PMDid some people pre-pay for the self-driving feature?

They did. 5k IIRC. There's a class action lawsuit out there.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on January 03, 2024, 04:41:15 PM
The reason Elon is making these claims is that that automotive sales, both present and projected, are far too insufficient to support the current stock valuation.  The current valuation is only supportable if "Full Service Driving" (FSD) completely succeeds and brings in multibillion revenue amounts by 2030.

But while Tesla has managed to earn some subscription revenue off of FSD - perhaps in the 1-3 billion range - at present it appears that the chief beneficiary of Autopilot/FSD is the class action plaintiff's bar, and underemployed regulators at the NHTSA.

Tesla's key competitive advantage has been range, but that advantage has been eroding. Lucid and some of the Mercedes range have passed Tesla - these are very pricey models but the trend is concerning.  Tesla isn't going to collapse but it faces increasingly tough competition in the space.

The revenue potential of FSD depends on the capability matching the name.  To validate the valuation everything has to go right, namely:
+ Self-driving cars must reach the stage where they are actually self-driving and do not require full human attention and both hands on the wheel.  Otherwise it's just glorified cruise control.
+ Tesla's implementation of the tech must lap the field to the extent it can earn significant licensing revenue as well as inhouse subs.

Both propositions seem questionable.  True self-driving autos are the transportation equivalent of nuclear fusion - the tech is always X years out in the future.  Five years ago analysys were saying the tech would be ready by now; now they are saying it's another 5 years.  At the same time, there is still a lot of competition and I've seen nothing to suggest that Tesla has overwhelming technical or developmental advantage.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: PJL on January 03, 2024, 04:57:44 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on January 03, 2024, 04:41:15 PMBoth propositions seem questionable.  True self-driving autos are the transportation equivalent of nuclear fusion - the tech is always X years out in the future.  Five years ago analysys were saying the tech would be ready by now; now they are saying it's another 5 years.  At the same time, there is still a lot of competition and I've seen nothing to suggest that Tesla has overwhelming technical or developmental advantage.

Any bets on what will become available commercially first? Honestly, I think nuclear fusion power might actually beat self driving autos.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on January 03, 2024, 05:11:21 PM
Quote from: PJL on January 03, 2024, 04:57:44 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on January 03, 2024, 04:41:15 PMBoth propositions seem questionable.  True self-driving autos are the transportation equivalent of nuclear fusion - the tech is always X years out in the future.  Five years ago analysys were saying the tech would be ready by now; now they are saying it's another 5 years.  At the same time, there is still a lot of competition and I've seen nothing to suggest that Tesla has overwhelming technical or developmental advantage.

Any bets on what will become available commercially first? Honestly, I think nuclear fusion power might actually beat self driving autos.


The AI folks I know say self driving is a long way off and may never be practical. 

The same might be said for fusion.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on January 03, 2024, 05:17:52 PM
Quote from: Barrister on January 03, 2024, 04:27:24 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on January 03, 2024, 04:20:29 PMI expect the first real self-driving car to be marketed to every day people will be Apple's.

"Project Titan" is coming up on being 10 years old by late 2024.

It's coming. Apple's buying all kinds of IR sensors.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on January 03, 2024, 07:00:41 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on January 03, 2024, 05:11:21 PMThe AI folks I know say self driving is a long way off and may never be practical. 

The same might be said for fusion.

FSD is a very complex problem.  Road infrastructure is already bad for human drivers in most places and needs to be improved for them (but isn't).  I think it's impossible to make any machine with less than human-level intelligence and sensory capability work in the current environment, and I don't think the promise of FSD is enough to motivate major infrastructure improvements that are already needed but not happening.  There's also the resistance to car culture in general.  While that doesn't directly affect the development of the technology, it does affect the will to implement needed infrastructure changes to support its deployment, as well as the will to allow experimentation on actual roads.  In short, FSD is a hard technical, political, and social problem.

Nuclear fusion, on the other hand, is largely a very hard technical problem.  It's possible there could be political and social problems created by a specific implementation down the road (specifically with regards to safety), but actually achieving sustainable fusion is purely science and engineering (and the willingness to fund it).  I suppose it's possible that the fundamental physics just won't allow a self-sustaining reaction at the relatively microscopic scale we'd need for power generation.  Barring that, though, I thik it's actually more practical than FSD.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on January 03, 2024, 07:04:03 PM
Interesting analysis of the Chinese EV producers and market on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/teslainvestorsclub/comments/18xvahw/revisiting_china_a_look_to_the_middle_kingdom_as/
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on January 03, 2024, 07:38:32 PM
Quote from: PJL on January 03, 2024, 04:57:44 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on January 03, 2024, 04:41:15 PMBoth propositions seem questionable.  True self-driving autos are the transportation equivalent of nuclear fusion - the tech is always X years out in the future.  Five years ago analysys were saying the tech would be ready by now; now they are saying it's another 5 years.  At the same time, there is still a lot of competition and I've seen nothing to suggest that Tesla has overwhelming technical or developmental advantage.

Any bets on what will become available commercially first? Honestly, I think nuclear fusion power might actually beat self driving autos.
I can see automated trains.  I can see automated rapid bus transit.  Anything that has its own lanes.

Something semi-automated like Tesla or more performing than what we already have in most modern vehicles: adaptive cruise control, course correction when you change lanes with highways that would be adapted to these vehicles in the very distant future, that I can see.  But KITT jumping over other cars or ejecting the annoying passenger is gonna come right after we develop a viable high speed warp drive and transport system.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on January 03, 2024, 08:06:18 PM
No idea whether we will reach level 5 autonomous driving capability, but level 4 on highway looks realistic in the next years. If the regulatory framework on driving times for commercial drivers reflects this, the on highway heavy truck traffic has a business case for even expensive autonomous driving capability. If it means your truck is on the road close to 24 hours instead of maybe half of that now, it will pay for itself.

Freightliner and its subsidiary Torc in North America look very promising there. Also a cooperation between Freightliner and Waymo (Google).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on January 03, 2024, 08:33:54 PM
What's level 4 autonomous driving? I'm assuming level 5 is "can drive all by itself in all cases"?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on January 03, 2024, 09:00:11 PM
(https://www.sae.org/binaries/content/gallery/cm/content/news/sae-blog/j3016graphic_2021.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on January 03, 2024, 09:06:39 PM
Tesla's FSD is actually a level 2 system.

By the way, there will be no class action suit on that due to mandatory individual arbitration signed by Tesla customers.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on January 03, 2024, 09:11:15 PM
Quote from: Zanza on January 03, 2024, 09:06:39 PMTesla's FSD is actually a level 2 system.


What makes it not a 3?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on January 03, 2024, 09:14:19 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 03, 2024, 09:11:15 PM
Quote from: Zanza on January 03, 2024, 09:06:39 PMTesla's FSD is actually a level 2 system.


What makes it not a 3?
The Tesla T&C and the fact it deactivates seconds before a crash.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on January 03, 2024, 09:16:54 PM
T&C?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on January 03, 2024, 09:23:14 PM
Terms & Conditions. While the feature is marketed as FSD, you as a driver always remain liable and must check whether the system does the right thing. That's by definition level 2. For a real autonomous car, the manufacturer is liable during autonomous operation.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on January 03, 2024, 09:23:57 PM
Quote from: Zanza on January 03, 2024, 09:14:19 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 03, 2024, 09:11:15 PM
Quote from: Zanza on January 03, 2024, 09:06:39 PMTesla's FSD is actually a level 2 system.


What makes it not a 3?
The Tesla T&C and the fact it deactivates seconds before a crash.

Autopilot eject? Sounds like something the Simpsons would make up :D
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on January 03, 2024, 09:27:33 PM
Quote from: Zanza on January 03, 2024, 09:23:14 PMTerms & Conditions. While the feature is marketed as FSD, you as a driver always remain liable and must check whether the system does the right thing. That's by definition level 2. For a real autonomous car, the manufacturer is liable during autonomous operation.

Interesting.  Thanks.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on January 04, 2024, 07:53:47 AM
Quote from: Zanza on January 03, 2024, 09:06:39 PMTesla's FSD is actually a level 2 system.

By the way, there will be no class action suit on that due to mandatory individual arbitration signed by Tesla customers.

At least in Canada, those clauses are not enforceable.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on January 04, 2024, 07:58:02 AM
Quote from: Zanza on January 03, 2024, 08:06:18 PMNo idea whether we will reach level 5 autonomous driving capability, but level 4 on highway looks realistic in the next years. If the regulatory framework on driving times for commercial drivers reflects this, the on highway heavy truck traffic has a business case for even expensive autonomous driving capability. If it means your truck is on the road close to 24 hours instead of maybe half of that now, it will pay for itself.

Freightliner and its subsidiary Torc in North America look very promising there. Also a cooperation between Freightliner and Waymo (Google).

It's not really a question of economic feasibility.  If that were the only metric the tech is close as you say.  The main question is safety.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on January 04, 2024, 08:21:28 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on January 04, 2024, 07:58:02 AM
Quote from: Zanza on January 03, 2024, 08:06:18 PMNo idea whether we will reach level 5 autonomous driving capability, but level 4 on highway looks realistic in the next years. If the regulatory framework on driving times for commercial drivers reflects this, the on highway heavy truck traffic has a business case for even expensive autonomous driving capability. If it means your truck is on the road close to 24 hours instead of maybe half of that now, it will pay for itself.

Freightliner and its subsidiary Torc in North America look very promising there. Also a cooperation between Freightliner and Waymo (Google).

It's not really a question of economic feasibility.  If that were the only metric the tech is close as you say.  The main question is safety.
Sure, but I predict that will eventually help adoption.

The most basic autonomous driving safety feature, name autonomous emergency braking for collision prevention, is already mandatory by law in the EU and by consensual agreement with NHTSA in the US. Same with other mechanisms that override human errors like ESC.

In the end, machines are better drivers. The problem with autonomous driving is not the other autonomous vehicles, but human drivers.

Outlaw those and it becomes perfectly safe. :P 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on January 04, 2024, 08:29:10 AM
Quote from: Zanza on January 04, 2024, 08:21:28 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on January 04, 2024, 07:58:02 AM
Quote from: Zanza on January 03, 2024, 08:06:18 PMNo idea whether we will reach level 5 autonomous driving capability, but level 4 on highway looks realistic in the next years. If the regulatory framework on driving times for commercial drivers reflects this, the on highway heavy truck traffic has a business case for even expensive autonomous driving capability. If it means your truck is on the road close to 24 hours instead of maybe half of that now, it will pay for itself.

Freightliner and its subsidiary Torc in North America look very promising there. Also a cooperation between Freightliner and Waymo (Google).

It's not really a question of economic feasibility.  If that were the only metric the tech is close as you say.  The main question is safety.
Sure, but I predict that will eventually help adoption.

The most basic autonomous driving safety feature, name autonomous emergency braking for collision prevention, is already mandatory by law in the EU and by consensual agreement with NHTSA in the US. Same with other mechanisms that override human errors like ESC.

In the end, machines are better drivers. The problem with autonomous driving is not the other autonomous vehicles, but human drivers.

Outlaw those and it becomes perfectly safe. :P 


You're not playing fair. It's easy to design an autonomous braking system that prevents accidents. It's much more difficult to design a system which drives a vehicle without human assistance. That is where the safety factor comes in and that is the problem that is currently insurmountable, and as I understand, it is something that would require the development of technology that currently does not exist.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on January 04, 2024, 11:18:57 AM
Which case of self-driving is more critical from a safety perspective than emergency braking? That's the last line of defense after all before people are potentially harmed. Any other driving situation is by definition less critical. If it wasn't, you would be back at emergency braking because that's always the best solution in any dangerous situation.

Cars know the way, they can accelerate, decelerate, switch gears (if they have any), change lanes, signal (ok, might be hard for BMW), turn around corners, stop at traffic lights or zebra crossings, etc.

And of course the rate of error of human drivers would be unacceptable for a machine. It has to be much better to be accepted, which is part of the challenge. Building something that drives like the average human (or the lowest percentile of drivers  :o ) is probably feasible with current technology.

What's stopping autonomous driving is legal liability or regulatory constraints as well as reputation considerations. Plus the cost of the technology.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on January 04, 2024, 11:31:31 AM
Quote from: Zanza on January 04, 2024, 11:18:57 AMIf it wasn't, you would be back at emergency braking because that's always the best solution in any dangerous situation.
Is emergency braking really the best solution in every single situation?  I've always heard it, but whenever I challenged it, I never got what I thought was an answer that wasn't rooted back to "driver's ed".  I get why driver's ed would over-simplify the instructions that people would apply at most several most stressful times in their lives, but I don't think it makes sense for computers.

I get why emergency braking is the best course of action if suddenly a perpendicular wall of infinite width appears in front of you on the road.  Hard braking would take half as much distance as trying to make a 90 degree turn, assuming your tires have the same grip in longitudinal and lateral direction.  However, what if a small object appears that is currently on the path of your left-front tire?  Wouldn't it be safer to steer slightly right than to get hard on the brakes?  In driver's ed swerving is discouraged, but I think it's discouraged for human factors, not because it doesn't work physics-wise.  I don't think those reasons apply to automated systems.

Where am I wrong?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on January 04, 2024, 12:00:19 PM
Swerving is much less risky if you combine it with braking hard to reduce your speed.

Other than fleeing from a T-Rex or a tsunami/lava, basically every dangerous situation while driving gets less dangerous by reducing your speed.

Especially when you consider that even now brake assistance systems will consider following cars when applying brake power to try to avoid collision.

You should of course not randomly stop, especially on a highway. But that's again true for both human and AI driversband works with current adaptive cruise control.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on January 04, 2024, 12:10:02 PM
Quote from: Zanza on January 04, 2024, 12:00:19 PMSwerving is much less risky if you combine it with braking hard to reduce your speed.
Is it always, though?  I haven't done the math, but I imagine that if the object you need to avoid is close enough, braking might cross you over from being able to steer around the obstacle to not being able to steer around it.  The grip you spend on braking is the grip you can't apply to steering.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on January 04, 2024, 12:11:21 PM
@Zanza - you made a joke about other drivers - but what about pedestrians (children and adults), animals, non-motorized vehicles, micro-mobility devices etc? How big a challenge do they pose?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on January 04, 2024, 12:16:50 PM
Quote from: DGuller on January 04, 2024, 12:10:02 PM
Quote from: Zanza on January 04, 2024, 12:00:19 PMSwerving is much less risky if you combine it with braking hard to reduce your speed.
Is it always, though?  I haven't done the math, but I imagine that if the object you need to avoid is close enough, braking might cross you over from being able to steer around the obstacle to not being able to steer around it.  The grip you spend on braking is the grip you can't apply to steering.
I am sure there is some edge case where swerving is better. But as a general rule reduced speed = reduced danger is true.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on January 04, 2024, 01:38:05 PM
Quote from: Zanza on January 04, 2024, 11:18:57 AMWhich case of self-driving is more critical from a safety perspective than emergency braking? That's the last line of defense after all before people are potentially harmed. Any other driving situation is by definition less critical. If it wasn't, you would be back at emergency braking because that's always the best solution in any dangerous situation.

Cars know the way, they can accelerate, decelerate, switch gears (if they have any), change lanes, signal (ok, might be hard for BMW), turn around corners, stop at traffic lights or zebra crossings, etc.

And of course the rate of error of human drivers would be unacceptable for a machine. It has to be much better to be accepted, which is part of the challenge. Building something that drives like the average human (or the lowest percentile of drivers  :o ) is probably feasible with current technology.

What's stopping autonomous driving is legal liability or regulatory constraints as well as reputation considerations. Plus the cost of the technology.

Even in simulations autonomous driving AI cannot obtain anything close to an acceptable level of safety.  Why do you say that it will be more safe than human drivers one day?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on January 04, 2024, 02:03:46 PM
Quote from: Zanza on January 04, 2024, 11:18:57 AMWhich case of self-driving is more critical from a safety perspective than emergency braking? That's the last line of defense after all before people are potentially harmed. Any other driving situation is by definition less critical. If it wasn't, you would be back at emergency braking because that's always the best solution in any dangerous situation.

Cars know the way, they can accelerate, decelerate, switch gears (if they have any), change lanes, signal (ok, might be hard for BMW), turn around corners, stop at traffic lights or zebra crossings, etc.

And of course the rate of error of human drivers would be unacceptable for a machine. It has to be much better to be accepted, which is part of the challenge. Building something that drives like the average human (or the lowest percentile of drivers  :o ) is probably feasible with current technology.

What's stopping autonomous driving is legal liability or regulatory constraints as well as reputation considerations. Plus the cost of the technology.

I feel like you're confusing "most critical" with "most difficult".

I remember listening to a Malcolm Gladwell podcast on autonomous cars.  The take away was that he loved them - because they would immediately in every situation brake for a pedestrian.  That of course is awesome for pedestrians, but could make the care practically undriveable (in particular if, like Gladwell, you're deliberately trying to goof with the car).

This  biggest problem with "defaulting to braking" I can imagine is on an highway, where perhaps the car just can't tell where it's going.  The worst thing you could do in such a situation is immediately stop.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on January 04, 2024, 02:05:20 PM
@CC: Not sure what you are referring to. Waymo for example seems to have acceptable levels of safety. Not in simulation, bit in real traffic on American roads. In 2023. Over millions miles driven.

But ok, I am not here to convince anybody. If you prefer to believe that it is impossible to make a safe autonomous car,  I accept that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on January 04, 2024, 02:14:39 PM
Quote from: Barrister on January 04, 2024, 02:03:46 PMI remember listening to a Malcolm Gladwell podcast on autonomous cars.  The take away was that he loved them - because they would immediately in every situation brake for a pedestrian.  That of course is awesome for pedestrians, but could make the care practically undriveable (in particular if, like Gladwell, you're deliberately trying to goof with the car).
Sure. But cars not driving when you try to goof with them is annoying for the passengers, but not a safety concern. If that's our biggest issue with autonomous driving I feel we can overcome that. Also not really that different from human drivers. I would also not risk running someone over who tries to goof me.

QuoteThis  biggest problem with "defaulting to braking" I can imagine is on an highway, where perhaps the car just can't tell where it's going.  The worst thing you could do in such a situation is immediately stop.
Why would the car not be able to tell where it is going? I don't understand the situation you describe here. The car has sat nav, has exact maps, has great sensors able to "see" further and more than a human.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on January 04, 2024, 02:29:09 PM
Quote from: Jacob on January 04, 2024, 12:11:21 PM@Zanza - you made a joke about other drivers - but what about pedestrians (children and adults), animals, non-motorized vehicles, micro-mobility devices etc? How big a challenge do they pose
Isn't that all the same challenge? Avoid hitting object that is or moves into the current driving direction.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on January 04, 2024, 02:31:51 PM
I am assuming self-driving cars would be eminently doable already if all cars would be switched to such at the same time. Predictable behaviour and linked communications and voila.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on January 04, 2024, 02:33:22 PM
Quote from: Zanza on January 04, 2024, 02:29:09 PMIsn't that all the same challenge? Avoid hitting object that is or moves into the current driving direction.

I suppose so... I imagined that pedestrians, bicyclists, small children, animals etc behave in ways that are less predictable than cars, so would add complexity.

I don't know though - maybe that's all taken care of right now. I vaguely recall reading something about how Tesla's self-driving struggled with handling bicyclists who didn't follow standard car behaviour in traffic, for example, though that was a while ago.

It was a real question, not a rhetorical one. I don't know how developed self-driving AI are for more complex traffic scenarios.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on January 04, 2024, 02:35:37 PM
Quote from: Tamas on January 04, 2024, 02:31:51 PMI am assuming self-driving cars would be eminently doable already if all cars would be switched to such at the same time. Predictable behaviour and linked communications and voila.

That's assuming the most challenging issue is with other cars, rather than things like children and dogs running suddenly into traffic, bicyclists not behaving like cars, some idiot deciding to ride their e-scooter down a busy street etc - or with things like poorly marked construction zones and the like.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on January 04, 2024, 02:39:16 PM
Fair
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on January 04, 2024, 02:43:56 PM
Quote from: Jacob on January 04, 2024, 02:33:22 PMIt was a real question, not a rhetorical one. I don't know how developed self-driving AI are for more complex traffic scenarios.
I don't know in that level of detail either.

That's why expect the breakthrough to be on highway level 4 driving. Much less complex than level 5, less safety challenges (typically no pedestrians etc.), less options (swerving with a semi is never a good idea) and a business case that is better than self-driving taxis.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on January 04, 2024, 02:44:49 PM
Quote from: Jacob on January 04, 2024, 02:35:37 PM
Quote from: Tamas on January 04, 2024, 02:31:51 PMI am assuming self-driving cars would be eminently doable already if all cars would be switched to such at the same time. Predictable behaviour and linked communications and voila.

That's assuming the most challenging issue is with other cars, rather than things like children and dogs running suddenly into traffic, bicyclists not behaving like cars, some idiot deciding to ride their e-scooter down a busy street etc
That's what Elon Musk's Neuralink is for.  :ph34r:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on January 04, 2024, 03:48:56 PM
Quote from: Zanza on January 04, 2024, 02:43:56 PMThat's why expect the breakthrough to be on highway level 4 driving. Much less complex than level 5, less safety challenges (typically no pedestrians etc.), less options (swerving with a semi is never a good idea) and a business case that is better than self-driving taxis.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. As you said uphread - if they can keep the trucks on the road something like 22-24 hours/day that's a pretty big economic incentive.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on January 04, 2024, 03:58:14 PM
Quote from: Zanza on January 04, 2024, 02:14:39 PMThis  biggest problem with "defaulting to braking" I can imagine is on an highway, where perhaps the car just can't tell where it's going.  The worst thing you could do in such a situation is immediately stop.
Why would the car not be able to tell where it is going? I don't understand the situation you describe here. The car has sat nav, has exact maps, has great sensors able to "see" further and more than a human.
[/quote]

So first of all as I understand it Tesla doesn't have "great sensors" at all - it just has multiple video cameras, on the theory that if it's good enough for humans' it should be good enough for an AI.

But most other manufacturers use LIDAR if I understand it correctly - which absolutely can be faulty in snow or rain.  As for "sat nav and exact maps" - sat nav isn't that explicitly precise - it can tell you what road you're on, but not what lane etc.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on January 04, 2024, 04:26:45 PM
Yeah I think you guys are right. Turning motorways into these things where you drive up manually, turn ElonAI on and sit back reading for a few hours while your car makes it way across the country would be pretty sweet.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on January 04, 2024, 04:32:47 PM
Quote from: Tamas on January 04, 2024, 04:26:45 PMYeah I think you guys are right. Turning motorways into these things where you drive up manually, turn ElonAI on and sit back reading for a few hours while your car makes it way across the country would be pretty sweet.

Oh no doubt!

I mean I like driving, but you've probably never driven across the Canadian prairies before.

For kicks I turned on the driving instructions to Winnipeg (from Edmonton).  It includes "Drive 381 km", "drive 134km", "drive 243 km" and "drive 564 km".  If I could snooze, or even just stay awake but read, that would be AWESOME.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on January 04, 2024, 04:49:11 PM
You guys are gonna go wild when you hear about trains :w00t:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on January 04, 2024, 04:59:10 PM
Quote from: Barrister on January 04, 2024, 04:32:47 PM
Quote from: Tamas on January 04, 2024, 04:26:45 PMYeah I think you guys are right. Turning motorways into these things where you drive up manually, turn ElonAI on and sit back reading for a few hours while your car makes it way across the country would be pretty sweet.

Oh no doubt!

I mean I like driving, but you've probably never driven across the Canadian prairies before.

For kicks I turned on the driving instructions to Winnipeg (from Edmonton).  It includes "Drive 381 km", "drive 134km", "drive 243 km" and "drive 564 km".  If I could snooze, or even just stay awake but read, that would be AWESOME.

The deer carcasses along sask highways kept my very focused on the road :D . The random intersections on the highways were amusing too.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on January 04, 2024, 05:00:02 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on January 04, 2024, 04:49:11 PMYou guys are gonna go wild when you hear about trains :w00t:

Quote from: Sheilbh on January 04, 2024, 04:49:11 PMYou guys are gonna go wild when you hear about trains :w00t:

AI trains would be great. No more strikes :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on January 04, 2024, 05:03:09 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on January 04, 2024, 04:49:11 PMYou guys are gonna go wild when you hear about trains :w00t:

 :hug:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on January 04, 2024, 05:15:29 PM
Quote from: HVC on January 04, 2024, 05:00:02 PMAI trains would be great. No more strikes :P
Again incredible technological advancements have been made that in many ways mean AI wouldn't really be necessary for trains: tracks :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on January 04, 2024, 05:17:43 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on January 04, 2024, 05:15:29 PM
Quote from: HVC on January 04, 2024, 05:00:02 PMAI trains would be great. No more strikes :P
Again incredible technological advancements have been made that in many ways mean AI wouldn't really be necessary for trains: tracks :P

But that doesn't alleviate strikes  :contract:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on January 04, 2024, 05:20:33 PM
No, that's true. Fair pay, benefits and conditions alleviate strikes :goodboy:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on January 04, 2024, 05:23:42 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on January 04, 2024, 04:49:11 PMYou guys are gonna go wild when you hear about trains :w00t:

You're going to go mad when I tell you about VIA Rail... :ultra:

That same route I just told you about: Edmonton to Winnipeg - travels twice per week.  The next train departs on Saturday at 7:50 pm, arriving Sunday at 10pm.  Cost is $311 for economy, $444 for a berth (coverts to a curtained sleeping area with two stacked beds).

That's compared to $562 for a flight on Westjet the same day (could probably be cheaper if flexible on the day) and would only take 6 hours (those are all with a connection in Calgary, there are direct flights as well).

6 hours versus 25 hours (driving would only take you about 13)... :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on January 04, 2024, 05:24:57 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on January 04, 2024, 05:15:29 PM
Quote from: HVC on January 04, 2024, 05:00:02 PMAI trains would be great. No more strikes :P
Again incredible technological advancements have been made that in many ways mean AI wouldn't really be necessary for trains: tracks :P
I honestly do not understand why they don't replace the human with a machine there. Probably regulatory reasons.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on January 04, 2024, 05:30:15 PM
You know I occasionally click on right-wing click-baity tweets on Twitter just to see what is being said, but now Twitter just feeds me more and more of those kinds of tweets.  Ugh.

Take this one for example:

https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1742996668944118243

QuoteJUST IN: Elon Musk obliterates Mark Cuban, asks him when he is going to hire a 'short white/Asian woman' on the Dallas Mavericks after Cuban challenged him about DEI.

🔥🔥🔥

Cuban: "The loss of DEI-Phobic companies is my gain... Having a workforce that is diverse and representative of your stakeholders is good for business... blah blah blah."

Musk: "Cool, so when should we expect to see a short white/Asian women on the Mavs?"

Mic. Drop.

I read the entire thread - Cuban gave a very good explanation of diversity and inclusion, and to take Musk's childish one line reply as some kind of devastating comeback?  :x
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on January 04, 2024, 05:32:53 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on January 04, 2024, 05:20:33 PMNo, that's true. Fair pay, benefits and conditions alleviate strikes :goodboy:

Never enough!


Mostly I just get really annoyed when public service strike. Still have a hate on for the garbage collectors strike. That ended up biting them on the ass though.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Savonarola on January 04, 2024, 05:35:34 PM
Quote from: Zanza on January 04, 2024, 05:24:57 PMI honestly do not understand why they don't replace the human with a machine there. Probably regulatory reasons.

And safety concerns; we have to have fully redundant fail safe systems for everything.  If the AI failed we would need a human to drive the train.

(Although in Canada's case let's first get to track signaling before we go AI.)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on January 04, 2024, 05:38:36 PM
I have faith in you Sav.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on January 04, 2024, 05:45:42 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on January 04, 2024, 05:35:34 PM
Quote from: Zanza on January 04, 2024, 05:24:57 PMI honestly do not understand why they don't replace the human with a machine there. Probably regulatory reasons.

And safety concerns; we have to have fully redundant fail safe systems for everything.  If the AI failed we would need a human to drive the train.

(Although in Canada's case let's first get to track signaling before we go AI.)

Do you have two human drivers now?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Savonarola on January 04, 2024, 06:04:19 PM
Quote from: The Brain on January 04, 2024, 05:45:42 PMDo you have two human drivers now?

On all the projects I've worked on, yes, there's a full crew with multiple people capable of driving a train.  I've heard of other options like having a regular check in, or a dead man switch, so that if the conductor is incapacitated the train stops; but I've never worked with those myself.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on January 04, 2024, 06:14:00 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on January 04, 2024, 06:04:19 PM
Quote from: The Brain on January 04, 2024, 05:45:42 PMDo you have two human drivers now?

On all the projects I've worked on, yes, there's a full crew with multiple people capable of driving a train.  I've heard of other options like having a regular check in, or a dead man switch, so that if the conductor is incapacitated the train stops; but I've never worked with those myself.

AFAIK in Sweden there's only one driver.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HisMajestyBOB on January 04, 2024, 06:18:08 PM
Quote from: The Brain on January 04, 2024, 06:14:00 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on January 04, 2024, 06:04:19 PM
Quote from: The Brain on January 04, 2024, 05:45:42 PMDo you have two human drivers now?

On all the projects I've worked on, yes, there's a full crew with multiple people capable of driving a train.  I've heard of other options like having a regular check in, or a dead man switch, so that if the conductor is incapacitated the train stops; but I've never worked with those myself.

AFAIK in Sweden there's only one driver.

Damn, that driver must be pretty busy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on January 04, 2024, 06:19:41 PM
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on January 04, 2024, 06:18:08 PM
Quote from: The Brain on January 04, 2024, 06:14:00 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on January 04, 2024, 06:04:19 PM
Quote from: The Brain on January 04, 2024, 05:45:42 PMDo you have two human drivers now?

On all the projects I've worked on, yes, there's a full crew with multiple people capable of driving a train.  I've heard of other options like having a regular check in, or a dead man switch, so that if the conductor is incapacitated the train stops; but I've never worked with those myself.

AFAIK in Sweden there's only one driver.

Damn, that driver must be pretty busy.

Not busy enough apparently, considering the delays.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tonitrus on January 04, 2024, 09:05:05 PM
Quote from: Barrister on January 04, 2024, 05:23:42 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on January 04, 2024, 04:49:11 PMYou guys are gonna go wild when you hear about trains :w00t:

You're going to go mad when I tell you about VIA Rail... :ultra:

That same route I just told you about: Edmonton to Winnipeg - travels twice per week.  The next train departs on Saturday at 7:50 pm, arriving Sunday at 10pm.  Cost is $311 for economy, $444 for a berth (coverts to a curtained sleeping area with two stacked beds).

That's compared to $562 for a flight on Westjet the same day (could probably be cheaper if flexible on the day) and would only take 6 hours (those are all with a connection in Calgary, there are direct flights as well).

6 hours versus 25 hours (driving would only take you about 13)... :hmm:

I am sure another big reason people choose to drive is that want their car for local travel at their destination (and depending on the circumstances of their travel, a rental car might not be practical or affordable).  It would be cool to expand car-carrying train travel possibilities (Amtrak does this on one line on the east coast, from DC to Florida)...but that option would still be both slower, and probably even more expensive.*


*Just checked....two-week round trip would be about $900 (17-hour train trip...google estimates 12 hours by car)

Flight from DC to Orlando for the same time?  $250-ish (I won't even consider Spirit Airlines' $85 quote)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on January 04, 2024, 11:58:49 PM
So apparently Space X is suing the National Labour Relation Board, arguing that it's unconstitutional?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tonitrus on January 05, 2024, 02:03:31 AM
Why not?  Probably a pretty good shot that this USSC will go along and axe it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on January 05, 2024, 03:51:20 AM
Quote from: Tonitrus on January 04, 2024, 09:05:05 PM
Quote from: Barrister on January 04, 2024, 05:23:42 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on January 04, 2024, 04:49:11 PMYou guys are gonna go wild when you hear about trains :w00t:

You're going to go mad when I tell you about VIA Rail... :ultra:

That same route I just told you about: Edmonton to Winnipeg - travels twice per week.  The next train departs on Saturday at 7:50 pm, arriving Sunday at 10pm.  Cost is $311 for economy, $444 for a berth (coverts to a curtained sleeping area with two stacked beds).

That's compared to $562 for a flight on Westjet the same day (could probably be cheaper if flexible on the day) and would only take 6 hours (those are all with a connection in Calgary, there are direct flights as well).

6 hours versus 25 hours (driving would only take you about 13)... :hmm:

I am sure another big reason people choose to drive is that want their car for local travel at their destination (and depending on the circumstances of their travel, a rental car might not be practical or affordable).  It would be cool to expand car-carrying train travel possibilities (Amtrak does this on one line on the east coast, from DC to Florida)...but that option would still be both slower, and probably even more expensive.*


*Just checked....two-week round trip would be about $900 (17-hour train trip...google estimates 12 hours by car)

Flight from DC to Orlando for the same time?  $250-ish (I won't even consider Spirit Airlines' $85 quote)

With trains you don't need a car to get around the destination either.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on January 05, 2024, 04:40:54 AM
Quote from: Josquius on January 05, 2024, 03:51:20 AMWith trains you don't need a car to get around the destination either.

Maybe if the destination is just a compact city centre?

Or I guess alternatively if one has endless time/patience to walk to further afield sights or figure out the local bus system (assuming one exists)?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on January 05, 2024, 06:22:10 AM
Quote from: garbon on January 05, 2024, 04:40:54 AM
Quote from: Josquius on January 05, 2024, 03:51:20 AMWith trains you don't need a car to get around the destination either.

Maybe if the destination is just a compact city centre?


Most city dwellers cannot comprehend a reality outside of city centres.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on January 05, 2024, 06:48:02 AM
Quote from: Tamas on January 05, 2024, 06:22:10 AM
Quote from: garbon on January 05, 2024, 04:40:54 AM
Quote from: Josquius on January 05, 2024, 03:51:20 AMWith trains you don't need a car to get around the destination either.

Maybe if the destination is just a compact city centre?


Most city dwellers cannot comprehend a reality outside of city centres.



More most people from car centric places cannot comprehend a reality where cars aren't necessary.

There'll always be some cases where you might need a car going somewhere. But the vast majority of visitors to another city aren't going to be some random residential suburb, they are going to be going to the centre or other well linked up places.

IMO the focus is always wrong with transport, especially in the US though also here. All the talk is about high speed rail and better linking up cities- where whats really needed is to better link up the city areas themselves to make them more viable places to be car-free.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on January 05, 2024, 07:23:21 AM
Quote from: Josquius on January 05, 2024, 06:48:02 AM
Quote from: Tamas on January 05, 2024, 06:22:10 AM
Quote from: garbon on January 05, 2024, 04:40:54 AM
Quote from: Josquius on January 05, 2024, 03:51:20 AMWith trains you don't need a car to get around the destination either.

Maybe if the destination is just a compact city centre?


Most city dwellers cannot comprehend a reality outside of city centres.



More most people from car centric places cannot comprehend a reality where cars aren't necessary.

Thankfully, I don't suffer from any such shortcomings as I've lived in 'car centric places' and in cities. ;)

Quote from: Josquius on January 05, 2024, 06:48:02 AMThere'll always be some cases where you might need a car going somewhere. But the vast majority of visitors to another city aren't going to be some random residential suburb, they are going to be going to the centre or other well linked up places.

IMO the focus is always wrong with transport, especially in the US though also here. All the talk is about high speed rail and better linking up cities- where whats really needed is to better link up the city areas themselves to make them more viable places to be car-free.

Are compact cities the only tourist destinations? From my experience, many cities have attractions in the city and its vicinity that could be more conveniently reached by car. There are so many stately homes in Britain that I'd love to visit but haven't as the route by public transport is too onerous.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on January 05, 2024, 08:46:22 AM
Quote from: garbon on January 05, 2024, 07:23:21 AMAre compact cities the only tourist destinations? From my experience, many cities have attractions in the city and its vicinity that could be more conveniently reached by car. There are so many stately homes in Britain that I'd love to visit but haven't as the route by public transport is too onerous.



In terms of number of visitors cities (not necessarily compact, but usually with decent transit) absolutely do dominate. More rural places having better transit would do wonders for their visitor numbers.

Looking at the most visited places in the UK for instance there's only a few that at a glance stand out as having shit access like Stonehenge.

https://www.visitbritain.org/research-insights/england-visitor-attractions-latest

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on January 05, 2024, 10:19:28 AM
I don't think we should build our cities, really our world, based on tourists.

Around here, what would improve the whole situation is for the city commerce to stop to want us, suburbanites, to come shopping to them and start catering to the residents of their communities.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on January 05, 2024, 10:22:52 AM
Depends on the city. Some are heavily tourist dependant. Ignoring them is a detriment.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on January 05, 2024, 11:12:20 AM
Quote from: Tamas on January 05, 2024, 06:22:10 AMMost city dwellers cannot comprehend a reality outside of city centres.

Are you taking Josq as representative of most city dwellers?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on January 05, 2024, 12:41:29 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on January 04, 2024, 04:49:11 PMYou guys are gonna go wild when you hear about trains :w00t:

 :lol:

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on January 16, 2024, 11:35:17 AM
Our favorite genius came out recently saying he needs to be given another 12% of Tesla so he can avoid...other investors being able to pressure / control him.

In an unhinged rant that also shows some questionable knowledge about how companies work (for a CEO of several companies.)

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/01/elon-musk-gives-tesla-ultimatum-another-12-of-shares-or-no-ai-robotics/

One of the more interestingly stupid comments he made is that he appears angry that institutional investors like Fidelity have a say in things like electing the Board of Directors and shareholder votes but "don't show up" to help...run the company? This appears to show a very low level understanding of what the role of investors is in a joint stock company, like below the level of understanding of a first year b-school student or even a relatively informed High Schooler.

My guess is all the bad news around Musk--including his now well-reported on drug use, his split attention between multiple companies, his offloading of Tesla shares to fund questionable investments, has Musk in a position of (perceived by him, at least) weakness in Tesla. He probably fears he could be forced out of management, and is demanding he be gifted many billions of dollars in shares to help prevent that.

(He also suggested a dual-class share structure, which isn't legal to implement now that the company has already gone public, he would basically have to take it private again and then re-IPO with the new share structure, which would be unfeasible given its current market value.)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on January 16, 2024, 11:53:03 AM
Sounds like he could really use 50 more Elon Musks.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on January 16, 2024, 11:58:54 AM
Quote from: FunkMonk on January 16, 2024, 11:53:03 AMSounds like he could really use 50 more Elon Musks.

That's modest a number. How else are we getting our mars colonies?

Sounds like he's starting to crack even more. Wonder when he'll go full Howard Hughes?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on January 16, 2024, 12:28:27 PM
In addition to the issues flagged by OvB, a CEO is a legal fiduciary to a company and owes a duty of loyalty.  Musk has just publicly announced an intention to repudiate his fiduciary duty, which will be useful evidence if he ever does anything harmful in the future.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on January 16, 2024, 03:29:05 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on January 16, 2024, 12:28:27 PMIn addition to the issues flagged by OvB, a CEO is a legal fiduciary to a company and owes a duty of loyalty.  Musk has just publicly announced an intention to repudiate his fiduciary duty, which will be useful evidence if he ever does anything harmful in the future.

Yeah, also anyone thinking about a derivative action was just handed all the evidence they will need to obtain the courts preliminary consent.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on January 18, 2024, 02:57:05 PM
(https://i.imgur.com/BjZftaO.png)




And I'm glad he settles this debate once and for all:

(https://i.imgur.com/MMgjsV7.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on January 18, 2024, 03:02:25 PM
The idea that Hitler was extremely socialist makes sense if you also consider France, the UK, and the United States in the 1930s as also very far left regarding socialism. And, to be fair, lots of people advancing that idea would agree that this is the case.

But I feel it is slightly disingenuous to not include that as a proviso when making that statement.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on January 18, 2024, 03:05:39 PM
Except they weren't socialist at all. They saw privatising everything they could as desirable.
Perhaps he's drawing on the typical confusion given they inherited the  pre existing German social system
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on January 18, 2024, 03:06:47 PM
Quote from: Josquius on January 18, 2024, 03:05:39 PMExcept they weren't socialist at all. They saw privatising everything they could as desirable.
Perhaps he's drawing on the typical confusion given they inherited the  pre existing German social system

He was not an anarcho-capitalist and thus a socialist. It is sort of a binary distinction.

Though, like many right wing populists at the time, he used a lot of socialist talking points to pull working class votes. Hell it is right there in the Nazis central branding. Socialism, but only for good Germans.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on January 18, 2024, 03:12:01 PM
A lot of that too was channeling Bismark and showing himself to be an arch Conservative in that tradition.
Bismark having introduced social reforms to counter socialists and having liberals smear him as a socialist for it... But trying to label the poster boy for conservatism as a socialist merely changed the connotations of socialist and he took on the state socialist label as a positive thing
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on January 18, 2024, 03:20:51 PM
Quote from: Valmy on January 18, 2024, 03:06:47 PM
Quote from: Josquius on January 18, 2024, 03:05:39 PMExcept they weren't socialist at all. They saw privatising everything they could as desirable.
Perhaps he's drawing on the typical confusion given they inherited the  pre existing German social system

He was not an anarcho-capitalist and thus a socialist. It is sort of a binary distinction.

Though, like many right wing populists at the time, he used a lot of socialist talking points to pull working class votes. Hell it is right there in the Nazis central branding. Socialism, but only for good Germans.
Yeah, I wonder if there are some parallels in the "Arab Socialist" movements.  Guys like Assad and Saddam.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on January 18, 2024, 05:01:33 PM
I don't see what the fuss is about.  If socialism is defined as the provision of state services then yes Nazis were socialist.  There have been plenty of socialist states that were authoritarian.  Like all of Africa.  Social Democrats had the brilliant insight that you could have socialism and democracy at the same time.  That's the brand that deserves protecting.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on January 18, 2024, 05:28:33 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 18, 2024, 05:01:33 PMI don't see what the fuss is about.  If socialism is defined as the provision of state services then yes Nazis were socialist.  There have been plenty of socialist states that were authoritarian.  Like all of Africa.  Social Democrats had the brilliant insight that you could have socialism and democracy at the same time.  That's the brand that deserves protecting.
This isn't about not admitting socialist dictatorships can be a thing. There obviously were socialist dictatorships and the nazis weren't fans.
This is about facts about the nazis.
The nazis weren't socialist because they weren't socialist.

Their economic outlook was, surprisingly, fascist. Privatise state owned enterprises and setup incestuous relations with business elites.

There was socialism in the sense of state services in nazi Germany absolutely. But as said this was a hold over from before they came to power and they chipped away at it during their time there.

The nazis were absolutely far right. They basically define the far right. This is about people who are shooting way off to the right themselves not wanting to admit they're occupying the same space as the synonym of evil.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on January 18, 2024, 05:39:35 PM
Quote from: Josquius on January 18, 2024, 05:28:33 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 18, 2024, 05:01:33 PMI don't see what the fuss is about.  If socialism is defined as the provision of state services then yes Nazis were socialist.  There have been plenty of socialist states that were authoritarian.  Like all of Africa.  Social Democrats had the brilliant insight that you could have socialism and democracy at the same time.  That's the brand that deserves protecting.
This isn't about not admitting socialist dictatorships can be a thing. There obviously were socialist dictatorships and the nazis weren't fans.
This is about facts about the nazis.
The nazis weren't socialist because they weren't socialist.

Their economic outlook was, surprisingly, fascist. Privatise state owned enterprises and setup incestuous relations with business elites.

There was socialism in the sense of state services in nazi Germany absolutely. But as said this was a hold over from before they came to power and they chipped away at it during their time there.

The nazis were absolutely far right. They basically define the far right. This is about people who are shooting way off to the right themselves not wanting to admit they're occupying the same space as the synonym of evil.

Gotcha.  Far right = evil.  Nazis can't be socialists because socialists aren't evil.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on January 18, 2024, 05:41:43 PM
Quote from: Barrister on January 18, 2024, 05:39:35 PM]

Gotcha.  Far right = evil.  Nazis can't be socialists because socialists aren't evil.

 :lmfao:

Is that seriously what you understood there? That's completely backwards.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on January 18, 2024, 05:53:38 PM
Quote from: Valmy on January 18, 2024, 03:06:47 PMHe was not an anarcho-capitalist and thus a socialist. It is sort of a binary distinction.
Although they're not the only options :lol:

QuoteThough, like many right wing populists at the time, he used a lot of socialist talking points to pull working class votes. Hell it is right there in the Nazis central branding. Socialism, but only for good Germans.
Socialism - as in the tradition of the left from which the SPD, the Labour Party, the KPD, the Bolsheviks descend - was not possible for good Germans. It was, to the Nazis, a Jewish ideology. I think it was more than just right wing populism. The racial element was core to Nazism - it's how capitalism that divides people on class and mixes them up racially was Jewish as was socialism (as in that left-wing tradition) of people allying on lines of class and across racial boundaries. I think to even try to separate out the - not just nationalist but racial - politics from the economic doesn't work with the Nazis.

I also think generally there is a bit of a decency point - the socialists of the SPD and the KPD were brutally repressed under the Nazis. Both those parties were the strongest opposition to the Nazis. And particularly the SPD, because they weren't following Stalin's line, acted with incredible bravery. They were in the Reichstag and voted against - and leaders spoke against - the Enabling Act. Much of their leadership ended up dead, many even regular members ended up in concentration camps. I think there is something indecent in tarring that political tradition as somehow connected to their persecutors.

There are plenty of crimes that the broad socialist tradition from Marx on can be associated with, without needing to bring in the Nazis who destroyed the greatest socialist party and tradition in the world.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on January 18, 2024, 08:02:28 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on January 18, 2024, 05:53:38 PM
Quote from: Valmy on January 18, 2024, 03:06:47 PMHe was not an anarcho-capitalist and thus a socialist. It is sort of a binary distinction.
Although they're not the only options :lol:

QuoteThough, like many right wing populists at the time, he used a lot of socialist talking points to pull working class votes. Hell it is right there in the Nazis central branding. Socialism, but only for good Germans.
Socialism - as in the tradition of the left from which the SPD, the Labour Party, the KPD, the Bolsheviks descend - was not possible for good Germans. It was, to the Nazis, a Jewish ideology. I think it was more than just right wing populism. The racial element was core to Nazism - it's how capitalism that divides people on class and mixes them up racially was Jewish as was socialism (as in that left-wing tradition) of people allying on lines of class and across racial boundaries. I think to even try to separate out the - not just nationalist but racial - politics from the economic doesn't work with the Nazis.

I also think generally there is a bit of a decency point - the socialists of the SPD and the KPD were brutally repressed under the Nazis. Both those parties were the strongest opposition to the Nazis. And particularly the SPD, because they weren't following Stalin's line, acted with incredible bravery. They were in the Reichstag and voted against - and leaders spoke against - the Enabling Act. Much of their leadership ended up dead, many even regular members ended up in concentration camps. I think there is something indecent in tarring that political tradition as somehow connected to their persecutors.

There are plenty of crimes that the broad socialist tradition from Marx on can be associated with, without needing to bring in the Nazis who destroyed the greatest socialist party and tradition in the world.

Yeah, this is another example of how words are losing their meaning.  If the Nazis were socialists then socialist has a new meaning or rather no meaning.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on January 18, 2024, 08:28:48 PM
There were some more "socialist" people in the NSDAP early on, but they were all purged, latest after the Röhmputsch in 1934. Hitler himself was certainly not a socialist and Nazi policy was not either. Fighting communists and socialists domestically and later the Soviets was part of the core tenets of the Nazi ideology.

QuoteYeah, this is another example of how words are losing their meaning.  If the Nazis were socialists then socialist has a new meaning or rather no meaning.
That's actually what the NSDAP did: Take a popular term, adopt it, but make it meaningless. They did that deliberately.

Hundred years later and people like Musk still fall for it, so their deliberate obfuscation was very successful.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on January 18, 2024, 08:46:32 PM
Elon Musk maternal grandfather, JN Haldeman did not fight in WWII.

His paternal grandfather, WHJ Musk, did.

Quite surprised that Elmo wasn't lying here.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on January 18, 2024, 09:59:49 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 18, 2024, 05:01:33 PMI don't see what the fuss is about.  If socialism is defined as the provision of state services

That's a bit broad - under that definition pretty much every functioning regime was socialist: from Bronze Age Egypt to the Roman Empire to Wilhelmine Germany to Eisenhower Era 1950s America.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on January 18, 2024, 10:11:19 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on January 18, 2024, 08:46:32 PMHis paternal grandfather, WHJ Musk, did.

On which side?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on January 18, 2024, 10:18:52 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on January 18, 2024, 09:59:49 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 18, 2024, 05:01:33 PMI don't see what the fuss is about.  If socialism is defined as the provision of state services

That's a bit broad - under that definition pretty much every functioning regime was socialist: from Bronze Age Egypt to the Roman Empire to Wilhelmine Germany to Eisenhower Era 1950s America.

Rome: come for the circus, stay for the bread.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on January 18, 2024, 10:24:04 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on January 18, 2024, 09:59:49 PMThat's a bit broad - under that definition pretty much every functioning regime was socialist: from Bronze Age Egypt to the Roman Empire to Wilhelmine Germany to Eisenhower Era 1950s America.

What's your alternative definition?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on January 18, 2024, 10:51:28 PM
Quote from: grumbler on January 18, 2024, 10:11:19 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on January 18, 2024, 08:46:32 PMHis paternal grandfather, WHJ Musk, did.

On which side?

Ours.

Haldeman is the racist one.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on January 18, 2024, 11:48:14 PM
I'm starting to wonder whether the Democratic Republic of North Korea really is a democracy. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on January 18, 2024, 11:56:30 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 18, 2024, 10:24:04 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on January 18, 2024, 09:59:49 PMThat's a bit broad - under that definition pretty much every functioning regime was socialist: from Bronze Age Egypt to the Roman Empire to Wilhelmine Germany to Eisenhower Era 1950s America.

What's your alternative definition?

A system in which the state plays a significant role in capital allocation, typically through direct control of the "commanding heights" of the economy (communications, finance, mining, etc).  In this sense, the Nazi economy was at best semi-socialist.  Hitler pursued prestige projects like the "Volks"products, but even this was done through and in cooperation with private industry.  The Nazis also implemented complex credit controls, but it was all for the purpose of funding arms.  The Nazi's arrangement with the industrialists is that they would be allowed to operate business without much interference, and gain the benefit of lucrative arms-related contracts, in return for accepting the political domination of the one-party state.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on January 19, 2024, 02:02:26 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on January 18, 2024, 05:53:38 PMAlthough they're not the only options :lol:

Well to the people who typically insist the Nazis were socialists, they are.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on January 19, 2024, 06:32:34 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on January 18, 2024, 11:56:30 PMA system in which the state plays a significant role in capital allocation, typically through direct control of the "commanding heights" of the economy (communications, finance, mining, etc).  In this sense, the Nazi economy was at best semi-socialist.  Hitler pursued prestige projects like the "Volks"products, but even this was done through and in cooperation with private industry.  The Nazis also implemented complex credit controls, but it was all for the purpose of funding arms.  The Nazi's arrangement with the industrialists is that they would be allowed to operate business without much interference, and gain the benefit of lucrative arms-related contracts, in return for accepting the political domination of the one-party state.

OK.  I will roll this around in my head for a while.

Question though.  Who owns the naming rights to socialism?  Is there an authority we can turn to and say if these guys say you need A B and C for socialism?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on January 19, 2024, 06:45:18 PM
Yes
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on January 19, 2024, 06:50:48 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 19, 2024, 06:32:34 PMOK.  I will roll this around in my head for a while.

Question though.  Who owns the naming rights to socialism?  Is there an authority we can turn to and say if these guys say you need A B and C for socialism?

The Socialist International Terminological Bureau of course.

Anyone can use the term however they want.  But a super broad definition makes the term less useful because it doesn't make helpful distinctions between different kinds of regimes.

The Nazi=socialism argument doesn't really have anything to do with defining socialism in any useful way.  Present day GOP Trumpies just use the word "Socialism" as a term of abuse to attack anything they don't like.  And the Nazi=socialism is really just a rhetorical way to attack modern social democratic states by suggesting an affinity with Nazism which is an historical inanity. The real life SDs and Nazis were (literally) mortal political enemies.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on January 19, 2024, 08:58:27 PM
I don't disagree with any of that.  But the question still remains.  To ask it differently, what thought process did you undertake to arrive at that particular definition?

My thought process was this.  When you socialize the costs of a public service that is socialism.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on January 19, 2024, 09:12:35 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 19, 2024, 08:58:27 PMI don't disagree with any of that.  But the question still remains.  To ask it differently, what thought process did you undertake to arrive at that particular definition?

My thought process was this.  When you socialize the costs of a public service that is socialism.

I think there is a different threshold for saying a specific policy is "socialist" versus an entire country's economic system is socialist. E.g. a country like the United States that has a few socialist Federal policies and some rarer state level ones, but is overwhelmingly structured as a liberal market economy, doesn't meet the threshold for being a "socialist country."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on January 19, 2024, 10:24:03 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 19, 2024, 08:58:27 PMI don't disagree with any of that.  But the question still remains.  To ask it differently, what thought process did you undertake to arrive at that particular definition?

Find a definition that isn't so broad that every modern regime not run on strict libertarian lines doesn't qualify as socialist, but not so narrow that nothing qualifies. Under my definition the Wilson era UK qualifies as socialist, but Thatcherite Britain doesn't. Under the one you proposed, they both are. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on January 20, 2024, 02:45:12 AM
I would agree with the "government do stuff" definition of socialism as much as that's more normally a liberal smear.
Though with the disclaimer of that being stuff directly related to improving the lives of its people.
Military spending et al is unrelated.

Basically zero modern nation in history has ever been completely socialist. The early Soviet Union certainly dabbled with "great success" but they soon backtracked on that and I'm not sure on counting transitional periods, it has to last.

By the same token no nation in history has ever been completely the opposite, whether you want to call it capitalist, liberal, libertarian, anarchist, whatever. Victorian Britain certainly had vibes then there's the typical example of Somalia but that's hardly the intent.

Bacially every nation for as long as the modern concept of nations and government as we know it has been in place is some mix of the two.
Fascism is of course where things get weird and trying to split the world into a nice neat dichotomy really falls apart. They were decidedly illiberal conservatives despite having many of the trappings of liberals.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on January 20, 2024, 05:43:35 AM
Is Social Democracy Socialist?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on January 20, 2024, 05:44:19 AM
When did socialism stop being about the control of the means of production, and instead become government services?

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on January 20, 2024, 06:33:27 AM
QuoteIs Social Democracy Socialist?
It's the dominant form of socialism.


Quote from: crazy canuck on January 20, 2024, 05:44:19 AMWhen did socialism stop being about the control of the means of production, and instead become government services?



Late 19th century.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on January 20, 2024, 07:48:03 AM
Khymer Rouge was pretty socialist.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on January 20, 2024, 08:27:41 AM
Quote from: The Brain on January 20, 2024, 05:43:35 AMIs Social Democracy Socialist?
Typically not. Modern Social Democrat parties in Europe are not about socializing the means of production, which I consider the core tenet of socialism.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on January 20, 2024, 10:00:08 AM
@Jos Really, the late 19th century is when it meant the control of the means of production. And if you look in the dictionary, it's still defined as the control of the means of production.

I think I had it right the first time when I said it no longer has meaning.

Yi's definition is everything short of a libertarian fantasy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on January 20, 2024, 10:34:45 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on January 20, 2024, 10:00:08 AM@Jos Really, the late 19th century is when it meant the control of the means of production.

That's when it's definition expanded beyond this with the main streaming of social democracy.

QuoteAnd if you look in the dictionary, it's still defined as the control of the means of production.

People always miss out a key part of the dictionary definition.

Quotea political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on January 20, 2024, 11:18:44 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on January 20, 2024, 05:44:19 AMWhen did socialism stop being about the control of the means of production, and instead become government services?

Indeed.  There are forms of socialism that don't involve the government at all.  Socialism is the organization of the economy so that the benefits of production go to the workers or the public in general, rather than to those providing the capital.  Generally, but not always, that organization requires that the government provide the capital to expand output, and socialist principals can be applied without requiring all economic activity be organized along socialist lines.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on January 20, 2024, 12:48:12 PM
I basically agree with JR's definition. But I think socialism is a tradition that contains many schools or approaches to politics rather than a single thing - arguably nothing better demonstrates the importance of the national than the failure of this singularly internationalist movement to cohere and not split into particulars. For example, I agree with CC that there is the goal of control of the means of production but there are multiple answers of who should control them and how (guild socialists, cooperatives, unions, state, direct worker control etc). But also the various pre-Marx movements and thinkers that are, after the fact, understood as socialist even if that's not directly what they're talking about.

I think the key difference between most schools of socialism is around time - and is ultimately the debate between revolution and reform. I think Jos is absolutely right it's the development of the SPD (with Bernstein and Kautsky's thinking) after the Erfurt Program which is how what we'd now recognise as social democracy emerges in the late 19th/early 20th century. The end goal is the same but through reform - or accommdation - with existing social orders and the long democratic route to achieving the revolutionary goal (similarly, the Labour Party established by the trade unions as a party in parliament to achieve socialism by parliamentary means).

All of this is obviously very Eurocentric (and for that Donald Sassoon's One Hundred Years of Socialism is really good) and I'm less sure on the ROTW. For example, my instinct is that in the post-colonial world/global south socialism is often a bit more similar to 19th century liberalism as often as much about national liberation, sovereignty and agency as in Europe it has (fleetingly) been about internationalism, class etc. I think it looks and does something different if you're at the top of  world order than it does if you're at the bottom.

Edit: And I think it's broadly similar for conservatism or liberalism - that they're best understood as broad traditions drawing from multiple roots with many branches rather than a butterfly pinned to a board.  Romantic Tory reaction is as much a part of the conservative tradition as, say, working class conservatism.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on January 21, 2024, 05:03:06 AM
My non-expert impression is that Sweden and Germany in say 1935 were roughly in a similar place concerning Socialism (whatever that place was, opinion seems to be divided). Sweden was ruled by Soc Dems and Germany by Nazis. Both regimes self-identified as "Social something", both had a pretty clear image of what they wanted to mould society to be (their images were extremely different, but neither image was about individualist capitalism), and both worked WITH industrialists to help achieve it.

Obviously, even if my impression is correct (which it may well not be) it only concerns one tiny dimension and has no impact on the evaluation of the relative merits of the regimes. The Swedish one was pretty great and the German one extremely awful.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on January 21, 2024, 06:52:05 AM
Next topic: revise the definition of Republic considering that China calls itself one.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on January 21, 2024, 09:03:49 AM
Quote from: Tamas on January 21, 2024, 06:52:05 AMNext topic: revise the definition of Republic considering that China calls itself one.

:huh:
China is a republic.
North Korea now, that's where there could be debate.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on January 21, 2024, 09:20:12 AM
Quote from: Josquius on January 21, 2024, 09:03:49 AM
Quote from: Tamas on January 21, 2024, 06:52:05 AMNext topic: revise the definition of Republic considering that China calls itself one.

:huh:
China is a republic.
North Korea now, that's where there could be debate.

Thanks for your input, comrade. 15 social credits for you!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on January 21, 2024, 04:14:14 PM
Quote from: Tamas on January 21, 2024, 06:52:05 AMNext topic: revise the definition of Republic considering that China calls itself one.

 :huh: No revision necessary.  In China the people are (at least theoretically) sovereign, and government derives its legitimacy from elections.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on January 21, 2024, 04:24:12 PM
How is China not a republic? I'm confused :huh:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on January 21, 2024, 04:40:50 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on January 21, 2024, 04:24:12 PMHow is China not a republic? I'm confused :huh:

This kind of thing sounds a lot like the "The United States is not a democracy" claims.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on January 21, 2024, 05:15:48 PM
Quote from: grumbler on January 21, 2024, 04:40:50 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on January 21, 2024, 04:24:12 PMHow is China not a republic? I'm confused :huh:

This kind of thing sounds a lot like the "The United States is not a democracy" claims.

Give it time :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on January 21, 2024, 05:45:51 PM
Quote from: HVC on January 21, 2024, 05:15:48 PMGive it time :P

:face:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on January 22, 2024, 03:54:32 AM
My bad, I didn't realise that "voting" on the "candidate" the Party pre-approved counts as exercising your sovereignty through elected representatives. 15 social points for each of you, comrades.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on January 22, 2024, 04:25:37 AM
Quote from: Tamas on January 22, 2024, 03:54:32 AMMy bad, I didn't realise that "voting" on the "candidate" the Party pre-approved counts as exercising your sovereignty through elected representatives. 15 social points for each of you, comrades.

Voting has nothing to do with being a republic.
Its a simple flow chart of "Is the country a monarchy?" and "No" leads you to there.

As mentioned North Korea is the weird middle factor where it isn't....but it obviously is.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on January 22, 2024, 05:00:14 AM
Quote from: Josquius on January 22, 2024, 04:25:37 AM
Quote from: Tamas on January 22, 2024, 03:54:32 AMMy bad, I didn't realise that "voting" on the "candidate" the Party pre-approved counts as exercising your sovereignty through elected representatives. 15 social points for each of you, comrades.

Voting has nothing to do with being a republic.
Its a simple flow chart of "Is the country a monarchy?" and "No" leads you to there.


(https://images.aeonmedia.co/images/699d70df-99ce-4540-a687-8f00e18a7512/sized-170983061.jpg?width=1080&quality=75&format=auto)

(https://images.newrepublic.com/e8b13d141ad0a2fb36f59703505dfbe537c50fec.jpeg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on January 22, 2024, 05:29:55 AM
Quote from: Josquius on January 22, 2024, 04:25:37 AMVoting has nothing to do with being a republic.
Its a simple flow chart of "Is the country a monarchy?" and "No" leads you to there.
Yeah - although I'm wondering if that's just a quirk of English. Think of the way "republican" is used in France, for example.

I think political theory circles republic might have some connotations particularly on requiring active participation of the citizen or it will fall to corruption and oligarchy or mob rule and dicatatorship ("a republic, if you can keep it") or around republican virtue. But I don't think that's widespread and it basically just means "not a monarchy".

It definitely has nothing to do with democracy. Rome, Venice, the Netherlands, Latin America of the caudillos, apartheid South Africa etc - all republics.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on January 22, 2024, 06:05:45 AM
The Webster dictionary agrees with Josq, basically, so it must be a "Romans called what they had without a king a republic so if you don't have a king it must be a republic" weird thing.

Wikipedia isn't too far away from that either to be fair but then again it's not like Chinese etc. can't contribute to that:
QuoteA republic, based on the Latin phrase res publica ("public affair"), is a state in which political power rests with the public through their representatives—in contrast to a monarchy.[1][2]

Representation in a republic may or may not be freely elected by the general citizenry. In many historical republics, representation has been based on personal status and the role of elections has been limited. This remains true today; among the 159 states that use the word "republic" in their official names as of 2017, and other states formally constituted as republics, are states that narrowly constrain both the right of representation and the process of election.



I just find it supremely dishonest to say that political power rests with the public if said public has no political power. It does equal to the nazis calling themselves socialist. It dilutes the term on purpose to the point of irrelevance.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on January 22, 2024, 06:22:07 AM
I also recall to have learned in school that republic = not a monarchy (i.e. a dictatorship can still be a republic if it has no monarch). But I see that German dictionary authority Duden also defines it as: "Form of government in which the rulers are elected for a certain period of time by the people or by representatives of the people."
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on January 22, 2024, 06:24:40 AM
Interesting from Wiki - I'd always thought the English translation of res publica was basically commonwealth. That it was (in theory) about the public or common good, not necessarily public participation which is not present in, say, Venice or Rome).

I could be wrong but my assumption is that it comes into English as much from the Italian republics England was interacting with as Republican Rome, but they probably took their own descent as being from Roman traditions in some way. They've got a Doge not a family ruling them.

Which is why that was the name of the country during Britain's republican period. Also the name of Poland-Lithuania, though I'm less sure why.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on January 22, 2024, 06:26:25 AM
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/democracy-and-republic

QuoteDemocracy or Republic: What's the difference?
A case can be made for either


Is the United States a democracy or a republic? This is one of those "either/or" questions that seems like it should have a straightforward answer; after all, two such different words must have two different definitions, right?

The short answer is that democracy and republic are frequently used to mean the same thing: a government in which the people vote for their leaders. This was the important distinction at the time of the founding of the United States, in direct contrast with the rule of a king, or monarchy, in Great Britain. In part because that context was clear to everyone involved in the American Revolution, these terms were used interchangeably in the late 1700s. Both democracy and republic meant that the power to govern was held by the people rather than a monarch.

At the same time, it's true that there is nuance and difference between these words, according to their historical use and etymology: democracy comes from the Greek roots meaning "rule by the people," and the most basic understanding of the word's original meaning refers to the direct democracy of ancient Greece.

Republic comes from the Latin roots meaning "public good" or "public affair," used in ancient Rome to mean simply "state" or "country" with reference to the representative democracy of the Roman Republic. The elected representatives in Congress are a contemporary example of this kind of government.

Because democracy is an abstract name for a system and republic is the more concrete result of that system, democracy is frequently used when the emphasis is on the system itself. We could say that democracy is to republic as monarchy is to kingdom.

These terms are not mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, a document that nevertheless expresses clearly that governments should be established "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." This reads like a definition of both democracy and republic. In Article IV Section V of the Constitution, the term republican is used as an adjective: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government."

In the final analysis, what these words share in meaning is much more important than how they differ.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on January 22, 2024, 06:43:24 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on January 22, 2024, 05:29:55 AM
Quote from: Josquius on January 22, 2024, 04:25:37 AMVoting has nothing to do with being a republic.
Its a simple flow chart of "Is the country a monarchy?" and "No" leads you to there.
Yeah - although I'm wondering if that's just a quirk of English. Think of the way "republican" is used in France, for example.

I think political theory circles republic might have some connotations particularly on requiring active participation of the citizen or it will fall to corruption and oligarchy or mob rule and dicatatorship ("a republic, if you can keep it") or around republican virtue. But I don't think that's widespread and it basically just means "not a monarchy".

It definitely has nothing to do with democracy. Rome, Venice, the Netherlands, Latin America of the caudillos, apartheid South Africa etc - all republics.

Something I often do when I'm feeling snarky with die-hard (UK) republicans is point out that in the world today countries that are monarchies are far more likely to be functional democracies.

Huge correlation != causation issues of course. And the monarchy hanging on is far more a product of the democracy than vice-versa. But still. A factoid that many just don't compute.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on January 22, 2024, 06:45:03 AM
I'd be inclined to say the opposite of this:
QuoteBecause democracy is an abstract name for a system and republic is the more concrete result of that system, democracy is frequently used when the emphasis is on the system itself. We could say that democracy is to republic as monarchy is to kingdom.

You can have democratic republics and monarchies and non-democratic ones. It seems very of the moment to propose a definition of republic that excludes its source (Rome) and large numbers of historic republics (Venice, Genoa, the Netherlands) - and indeed many current republics (I'd guess the majority are non-democratic). What are those states? I think non-democratic republic works, I'm not sure non-republican republic does :lol:

I also think historically - certainly in the 18th century - republic and democracy are not interchangeable. I mentioned the political theory things I'd associate with republicanism, I think those are key in the 18th century. It's about citizenship and what it means to be a citizen, which is active, participative, virtuous. It's David's Oath of the Horatii.

There is always a fear of democracy and that it will, inevitably, slide to mob rule, demagoguery or three wolves and two sheep. I think that the virtuous, active citizenship of republicanism was seen as a way of countering that threat.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on January 22, 2024, 06:59:42 AM
Quote from: Josquius on January 22, 2024, 06:43:24 AMSomething I often do when I'm feeling snarky with die-hard (UK) republicans is point out that in the world today countries that are monarchies are far more likely to be functional democracies.

Huge correlation != causation issues of course. And the monarchy hanging on is far more a product of the democracy than vice-versa. But still. A factoid that many just don't compute.

It also feels a bit hard when right now you have the UK government pushing a bill to change Rwanda a not safe country, into a safe country just by passing a law to say that it is safe.

Is that functional? :D
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on January 22, 2024, 07:10:31 AM
Quote from: garbon on January 22, 2024, 06:59:42 AM
Quote from: Josquius on January 22, 2024, 06:43:24 AMSomething I often do when I'm feeling snarky with die-hard (UK) republicans is point out that in the world today countries that are monarchies are far more likely to be functional democracies.

Huge correlation != causation issues of course. And the monarchy hanging on is far more a product of the democracy than vice-versa. But still. A factoid that many just don't compute.

It also feels a bit hard when right now you have the UK government pushing a bill to change Rwanda a not safe country, into a safe country just by passing a law to say that it is safe.

Is that functional? :D

I said more likely, there's enough that losing the UK doesn't change the picture completely :p
The UK absolutely is dipping below acceptability this past decade or two.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on January 22, 2024, 08:01:46 AM
Quote from: garbon on January 22, 2024, 06:59:42 AMIt also feels a bit hard when right now you have the UK government pushing a bill to change Rwanda a not safe country, into a safe country just by passing a law to say that it is safe.

Is that functional? :D
Legally that's not that unusual and has been done before - there's tens of thousands of similar provisions that by legislation for the purpose of the courts "x is deemed to be y".

It's been used in asylum legislation in the past, which is arguably even worse. In 2004, the EU developed the concept of a common list of "safe third countries of origin" which was based on certain criteria assessed by member states not their courts. Wildly but before the invasion Denmark considered Russia a safe third country, I assume that's changed but I don't know. That was implemented in the UK (I think it was through  directive) in the exact same way as the government are proposing with Rwanda.

I think it is wrong in this case because it's unjust, it won't work and it's very expensive. But formally there's nothing particularly special about it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on January 22, 2024, 10:16:34 AM
I don't think Republic has intrinsically modern democratic meanings, either. In the English language there is a reason we have always used that term for entities like all the Italian republics, which were not meaningfully democratic in a modern sense. Most republics in pre-modern times, when the word was firmed up in its usage, were really cabal states ran by some form of oligarchy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on January 22, 2024, 11:30:23 AM
Quote from: Syt on January 22, 2024, 06:22:07 AMI also recall to have learned in school that republic = not a monarchy (i.e. a dictatorship can still be a republic if it has no monarch). But I see that German dictionary authority Duden also defines it as: "Form of government in which the rulers are elected for a certain period of time by the people or by representatives of the people."

Yeah - I have no issue with Tamas' critiques of China, Russia, Iran etc. But basically everything I've been taught or read on the subject is a Republic is a state in which the head of state is not hereditary, basically.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on January 22, 2024, 11:33:53 AM
@sheilbh and @garbon - isn't "safe third country" just a political designation that means "if you're escaping your own country in search of asylum, this country is decent enough that you don't need to continue to ours"?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on January 22, 2024, 11:39:18 AM
The concept of "Res Publica" as the Romans saw it was just the issue of "who owns everything." In a monarchy, the kingdom was the demesne of the monarch, who could grant portions of demesne to others but could revoke those grants.  The Romans rejected that concept in favor of the idea that the lands of the state were owned by the public.  The Roman Republic was a direct democracy (all laws had to be enacted by one or the other of the popular assemblies) until the reign of Tiberius, but the Emperors continued the fiction that the people were sovereign and that the state was still a "thing of the people."

Most modern monarchies are republics in all but name.   
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on January 22, 2024, 11:42:04 AM
Quote from: Jacob on January 22, 2024, 11:30:23 AMYeah - I have no issue with Tamas' critiques of China, Russia, Iran etc. But basically everything I've been taught or read on the subject is a Republic is a state in which the head of state is not hereditary, basically.

Tamas is confusing democracy and republic.  If they were synonymous, all those "People's Democratic Republics" would have shortened their names.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on January 22, 2024, 11:46:07 AM
Quote from: grumbler on January 22, 2024, 11:42:04 AM
Quote from: Jacob on January 22, 2024, 11:30:23 AMYeah - I have no issue with Tamas' critiques of China, Russia, Iran etc. But basically everything I've been taught or read on the subject is a Republic is a state in which the head of state is not hereditary, basically.

Tamas is confusing democracy and republic.  If they were synonymous, all those "People's Democratic Republics" would have shortened their names.

Am not. I was not aware of the English definition being "well there's no monarch so what else to call it". Any definition going past that (e.g. Wikipedia's sovereignty of the public) breaks down completely for most non-democratic countries (although it would still apply to places like Russia or Hungary).

So it's mostly a language thing. In Hungary the dropping of communism was officially marked by renaming from People's Republic of Hungary to Republic of Hungary so was made a big deal. And then Orban years ago dropped the "Republic of" bit from the official designation which was made into a big deal by his opponents (made out to be an admission that it is him and not the people who are in power).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on January 22, 2024, 11:50:17 AM
Quote from: Jacob on January 22, 2024, 11:33:53 AM@sheilbh and @garbon - isn't "safe third country" just a political designation that means "if you're escaping your own country in search of asylum, this country is decent enough that you don't need to continue to ours"?
Basically yes. But the other side of that is that the courts don't need to investigate. You don't need to prove that that person would be safe if you deport them to that country, because that country has been declared safe. Its main effect is to narrow the ability of an individual to challenge their deportation.

It came up recently because of the government's Rwanda scheme - which won't happen anyway. One of the reasons the Supreme Court ruled against it was that Rwanda was not a safe country.

So the government is legislating not to make Rwanda a "safe third country" in general (so we could still have asylum claims from Rwanda) but to basically say that, for the purpose of the Rwanda scheme, the courts should treat Rwanda as a safe country.

A criticism of this has been that it is contrary to the rule of law etc etc. I think that's wrong factually. The legal mechanism that's being used for this is one that's in tens of thousands of statutory provisions - including asylum law such as the process for designating a country a "safe third country". I think it's wrong on its merits, and even on its own terms I think as a policy it won't work at a very high cost. But I don't think it's a threat to the rule of law or anything like that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on January 22, 2024, 11:57:07 AM
Quote from: Tamas on January 22, 2024, 11:46:07 AMSo it's mostly a language thing. In Hungary the dropping of communism was officially marked by renaming from People's Republic of Hungary to Republic of Hungary so was made a big deal. And then Orban years ago dropped the "Republic of" bit from the official designation which was made into a big deal by his opponents (made out to be an admission that it is him and not the people who are in power).
I wouldn't be surprised if it's not just a Hungarian thing - as I say look at the way the French use "republican". It carries values beyond not being hereditary. I suspect, but could be wrong, that in Poland "rzeczpospolita" also has similar extra meaning. A bit like the German idea of rechtstaat which is really influential across Europe and, to my knowledge, has no real equivalent in English language legal writing (from my understanding, the closest we come is maybe some very "thick" definitions of rule of law).

I think in English it's purely a descriptive term, but in other languages might have an idealist component too against which the reality can be measured.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on January 22, 2024, 01:00:36 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on January 22, 2024, 11:57:07 AM
Quote from: Tamas on January 22, 2024, 11:46:07 AMSo it's mostly a language thing. In Hungary the dropping of communism was officially marked by renaming from People's Republic of Hungary to Republic of Hungary so was made a big deal. And then Orban years ago dropped the "Republic of" bit from the official designation which was made into a big deal by his opponents (made out to be an admission that it is him and not the people who are in power).
I wouldn't be surprised if it's not just a Hungarian thing - as I say look at the way the French use "republican". It carries values beyond not being hereditary. I suspect, but could be wrong, that in Poland "rzeczpospolita" also has similar extra meaning. A bit like the German idea of rechtstaat which is really influential across Europe and, to my knowledge, has no real equivalent in English language legal writing (from my understanding, the closest we come is maybe some very "thick" definitions of rule of law).

I think in English it's purely a descriptive term, but in other languages might have an idealist component too against which the reality can be measured.

I know attribute it to English-speaker's obsession with ancient Rome.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on January 22, 2024, 03:46:39 PM
Quote from: Tamas on January 22, 2024, 01:00:36 PMI know attribute it to English-speaker's obsession with ancient Rome.

English-speakers don't have an "obsession with ancient Rome" so much as they have the knowledge that many of the roots of the English language are traced back to Latin.  In English, for instance, one can use the knowledge that "ante" means "before" to suss out the meaning of words using "ante" without resorting to dictionaries.

Non-native English speakers may not have been educated in the use of Latin forms to decipher new English-language words, so I can understand why the use of Latin in this context might seem like an "obsession" to them.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on January 22, 2024, 03:53:19 PM
Quote from: Tamas on January 22, 2024, 11:46:07 AMAm not. I was not aware of the English definition being "well there's no monarch so what else to call it". Any definition going past that (e.g. Wikipedia's sovereignty of the public) breaks down completely for most non-democratic countries (although it would still apply to places like Russia or Hungary).

I'd be interested to see the Hungarian definition of a nation that does not have a monarch and is not a republic.

In fact, I'd be interested to discover what non-monarchical countries have a government that does not at least pretend to rule using a mandate of some sort from the citizens, barring "emergency" or temporary governments (subsequent to a coup, for instance).  Even the emergency-type governments acknowledge that they are an aberration to the normal process of gaining the people's mandate.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on January 22, 2024, 04:07:33 PM
Quote from: grumbler on January 22, 2024, 03:53:19 PM
Quote from: Tamas on January 22, 2024, 11:46:07 AMAm not. I was not aware of the English definition being "well there's no monarch so what else to call it". Any definition going past that (e.g. Wikipedia's sovereignty of the public) breaks down completely for most non-democratic countries (although it would still apply to places like Russia or Hungary).

I'd be interested to see the Hungarian definition of a nation that does not have a monarch and is not a republic.

In fact, I'd be interested to discover what non-monarchical countries have a government that does not at least pretend to rule using a mandate of some sort from the citizens, barring "emergency" or temporary governments (subsequent to a coup, for instance).  Even the emergency-type governments acknowledge that they are an aberration to the normal process of gaining the people's mandate.

So Canada is a "monarchical" country as you would put it.

But we have this notion of "the Crown".  As you probably know my job is a Crown Prosecutor.  Government-owned land is called "Crown land".  (those are probably the biggest two uses of the word "Crown")

But we're very particular in the use of the word "Crown", or maybe Rex/Regina (criminal court names are always R v Name).  Hardly anything is ever in the name of Elizabeth / Charles.  It's because "the Crown" represents the government, and not the individual monarch.

Heck you even have dueling "Crowns" - you have "the Crown in right of Alberta" (in my case), or "the Crown in right of Canada" as both the Federal and provincial governments are imbued with being "the Crown".  By the way - municipal governments, as they are creations of statute, are not "the Crown".
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on January 22, 2024, 04:34:59 PM
I can confirm that republic means more than just non-monarchical in French. I did not know this was what it mean in English.

It feels like a strange, dichotomy way of classifying methods of government.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on January 22, 2024, 05:05:58 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on January 22, 2024, 04:34:59 PMI can confirm that republic means more than just non-monarchical in French. I did not know this was what it mean in English.

It feels like a strange, dichotomy way of classifying methods of government.

Just like in the United States there was this expectation that a Republic was in the classical tradition and was radically based on popular sovereignty. For whatever reason there was no thinking that this Republic had anything in common with the Venetian Republic which was still in existence at the time. This was something radical and new.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on January 22, 2024, 06:26:14 PM
It wasn't that new, the mother country had elected MPs, elected by commoners, even in 1776.

Now yes, the franchise was quite limited, and issues like rotten and pocket boroughs, the strong Lords, and the remnant powers of the monarch were all anti-democratic elements to the British system, but the initial U.S. government was not that much more democratic than Britain's in the late 18th century. Remember the American franchise expanded rapidly between 1812-1840, it was quite restrictive before then.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on January 22, 2024, 10:21:02 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on January 22, 2024, 04:34:59 PMI can confirm that republic means more than just non-monarchical in French. I did not know this was what it mean in English.

It feels like a strange, dichotomy way of classifying methods of government.

It's not really a dichotomy, it's two different and independent categories.

Republic / non-Republic (monarchy) - whether the head of state is an inherited position or not.

Democratic / non-Democracy - whether or not the government is answerable to the people via a popular vote.

Democratic Republic - France
Autocratic Republic - China
Democratic Monarchy - the Netherlands
Autocratic Monarchy - Saudi Arabia

I mean other classification schemes can make sense too, but I don't think it's particularly strange (but maybe that's because it's what I'm used to).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on January 23, 2024, 01:54:32 AM
Quote from: Jacob on January 22, 2024, 10:21:02 PMRepublic / non-Republic (monarchy) - whether the head of state is an inherited position or not.


It's all words, but FWIW to my mind elected monarchs doesn't necessarily mean that you have a republic. I think the kings of Rome didn't head a republic, and if Sweden switched back (we went hereditary in the 16th century) we would still be a Democratic Monarchy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on January 23, 2024, 02:21:49 AM
Fair point.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on January 23, 2024, 05:38:17 AM
Quote from: grumbler on January 22, 2024, 03:53:19 PM
Quote from: Tamas on January 22, 2024, 11:46:07 AMAm not. I was not aware of the English definition being "well there's no monarch so what else to call it". Any definition going past that (e.g. Wikipedia's sovereignty of the public) breaks down completely for most non-democratic countries (although it would still apply to places like Russia or Hungary).

I'd be interested to see the Hungarian definition of a nation that does not have a monarch and is not a republic.

In fact, I'd be interested to discover what non-monarchical countries have a government that does not at least pretend to rule using a mandate of some sort from the citizens, barring "emergency" or temporary governments (subsequent to a coup, for instance).  Even the emergency-type governments acknowledge that they are an aberration to the normal process of gaining the people's mandate.

In official designations people just go with the official name of the country but describing the nature of the government you wouldn't be using "republic" to the various dicatorships etc. Exception are the people's republics because those are widely understood to be the same as saying "communist dictatorship". "Republic" has an almost idealistic connotation to it similar to how Zoupa explained.  I understand that to be the same in Poland as well, for example. Definitely more linked to democracy in people's minds more than probably appropriate even without allowing for the "if there is no hereditary monarch, it's a republic" nonsense.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on January 23, 2024, 11:09:50 AM
Quote from: Jacob on January 22, 2024, 10:21:02 PMIt's not really a dichotomy, it's two different and independent categories.

Republic / non-Republic (monarchy) - whether the head of state is an inherited position or not.

Democratic / non-Democracy - whether or not the government is answerable to the people via a popular vote.

Democratic Republic - France
Autocratic Republic - China
Democratic Monarchy - the Netherlands
Autocratic Monarchy - Saudi Arabia

I mean other classification schemes can make sense too, but I don't think it's particularly strange (but maybe that's because it's what I'm used to).

This.  People confuse the basis of sovereignty (sovereign public = republic. sovereign individual = monarchy - I don't know of any third alternative to this concept, so it looks like a dichotomy to me) and the means by which the government achieves legitimacy (through elections = democracy, through inheritance or force = autocracy, with lots of variations between them).

There are countries that don't neatly fit into the republic/monarchy dichotomy, like Iran.  In Iran, Allah is sovereign, and elections only determine the government with the consent of the Supreme Leader, who is himself "appointed by Allah."  I'm not sure if this is a republic with a weird fictional superstructure, or a monarchy with a weird fictional election system.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on January 23, 2024, 11:13:05 AM
Quote from: grumbler on January 23, 2024, 11:09:50 AM
Quote from: Jacob on January 22, 2024, 10:21:02 PMIt's not really a dichotomy, it's two different and independent categories.

Republic / non-Republic (monarchy) - whether the head of state is an inherited position or not.

Democratic / non-Democracy - whether or not the government is answerable to the people via a popular vote.

Democratic Republic - France
Autocratic Republic - China
Democratic Monarchy - the Netherlands
Autocratic Monarchy - Saudi Arabia

I mean other classification schemes can make sense too, but I don't think it's particularly strange (but maybe that's because it's what I'm used to).

This.  People confuse the basis of sovereignty (sovereign public = republic. sovereign individual = monarchy - I don't know of any third alternative to this concept, so it looks like a dichotomy to me) and the means by which the government achieves legitimacy (through elections = democracy, through inheritance or force = autocracy, with lots of variations between them).

There are countries that don't neatly fit into the republic/monarchy dichotomy, like Iran.  In Iran, Allah is sovereign, and elections only determine the government with the consent of the Supreme Leader, who is himself "appointed by Allah."  I'm not sure if this is a republic with a weird fictional superstructure, or a monarchy with a weird fictional election system.

Isn't it a theocracy? You fall into the (IMHO false) need to define a country as either a republic or a monarchy, which is what we have been identifying as an English-only thing.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on January 23, 2024, 11:21:16 AM
The Iranian constitutional set up is like an Italian corporate structure, with a lot of nested interconnections. The Supreme Leader is chosen by an Expert Council whose eligible members are controlled by a Guardian Council. The Guardian Council consists of 6 members chosen by the Supreme Leader, and 6 other members elected by the Assembly from a list of candidates chosen by the Chief Justice of Iran, who in turn is selected by the Supreme Leader.

It's not a hereditary monarchy, we can say that. Structurally there are some similarities to the Venetian Republic, but obvious differences as well.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on January 23, 2024, 11:31:44 AM
Oddly, I have found the Iranian constitution interesting in the past because of its weird structure. I've always thought the best way of summing it up is they wanted to insure a clerical Supreme Leader could keep power in perpetuity, regardless of what the people want / think on the matter; but they wanted to have some structures in place that could prevent a Supreme Leader from simply creating a dynastic monarchy in which Iran's other powerful clerics and other interests would be permanently shut out.

In that respect there is some similarities (but many differences) with a structure like that in the PRC--they have attempted to structure their country so a paramount leader will largely be able to run the country as an absolutist, but with the CCP still able to be kingmakers and control some layers of government. How well it works as always varied, the Chinese clearly imagine it preferable to have rulers be term-limited, and some have been, but several have also managed to ensconce themselves as lifetime rulers as well.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on January 23, 2024, 11:32:44 AM
Switzerland is obviously a republic and democracy, but they don't even have a head of state and their government does not follow any majorities from elections.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on January 23, 2024, 11:51:19 AM
I think that's because Switzerland is structurally still a "confederation of cantons" instead of a true unitary state.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on January 23, 2024, 01:23:54 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on January 23, 2024, 11:31:44 AMOddly, I have found the Iranian constitution interesting in the past because of its weird structure. I've always thought the best way of summing it up is they wanted to insure a clerical Supreme Leader could keep power in perpetuity, regardless of what the people want / think on the matter; but they wanted to have some structures in place that could prevent a Supreme Leader from simply creating a dynastic monarchy in which Iran's other powerful clerics and other interests would be permanently shut out.

That is similar in some ways to how the post-Mao CCP attempted to prevent a single Emperor-like ruler. Xi is in the process of dismantling those protections.

I suspect that over time a similar dynamic will play out in Iran.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on January 24, 2024, 09:45:12 AM
Quote from: Tamas on January 23, 2024, 11:13:05 AMIsn't it a theocracy? You fall into the (IMHO false) need to define a country as either a republic or a monarchy, which is what we have been identifying as an English-only thing.
Not sure it's English only as Syt or Jake mentioned.

And it isn't the only way in English. Republic/republican/republicanism has a very specific meaning in Irish English. It isn't just a taxonomical sort of term. It's ultimately traced back to the French revolution (via Wolfe Tone) but in modern, it is Easter 1916 which means a united, free Ireland under a republic.

You see it in big controversies in the early days of post-independence Irish politics. De Valera bit by bit removes all links to the British state, culminating in the constitution in 1937 which ends the "Free State". But the promise of an Irish Republic is still unfulfilled - so the country is officially name Eire for a time. That process is finalised after the war when Ireland leaves the Commonwealth and there is a Republic of Ireland Act - but it doesn't declare itself a Republic, instead it says the state should be "described as the Republic of Ireland" (the official name is still Ireland/Eire). It's for the same reason - Ireland has not achieved the meaning of "republic" within Irish politics. I think it's why if you see British politicians, for example, talk about Ireland they are far, far more likely to talk about it as the "Republic of Ireland" than Irish politicians who will, overwhelmingly, refer to it as Ireland or the "state".

QuoteI suspect that over time a similar dynamic will play out in Iran.
I think that's already happened. From my understanding Khamenei is not a great religious scholar. I think the Iranian constitution had to be changed to allow him to become Supreme Leader and it's always been pretty controversial within believes in an Islamic Republic that for, ultimately, political reasons on the first transfer of power they needed to bend the religious criteria.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on January 25, 2024, 06:13:04 AM
Ireland is a special case because of British guilt. e.g. we often reference their PM as Taoiseach but we never bother with any other PMs in the world. Nobody calls Orban Miniszterelnok, or Tusk Premier, for example.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on January 25, 2024, 06:28:21 AM
:lol: I can absolutely promise you no one in Ireland believes it's about British guilt (which'd be a nice thing).

FWIW the Americans use Taoiseach too.

I think it's more a reflection of Irish nationalism/state-making, I suspect because PM is a term from the UK. I think they ask countries overseas to use Taoiseach (not unlike Mumbai or Turkiye). Plus the incredible success/effectiveness of Irish cultural diplomacy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on January 25, 2024, 06:35:09 AM
I think it's ridiculous to demand other countries use words from one's contemptibly small language. If Sweden demanded other countries say Sverige and shit I would find it embarrassing.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on January 25, 2024, 07:31:25 AM
Slightly pisses me off when they call the Spanish President "PM" in Anglo media, I gotta say. It's not the language, it's just that they have to UK-ify the name of his office.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on January 25, 2024, 08:43:37 AM
Quote from: Tamas on January 25, 2024, 06:13:04 AMIreland is a special case because of British guilt. e.g. we often reference their PM as Taoiseach but we never bother with any other PMs in the world. Nobody calls Orban Miniszterelnok

No but there are some other names we call Orban . . .
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on January 25, 2024, 09:11:25 AM
Quote from: celedhring on January 25, 2024, 07:31:25 AMSlightly pisses me off when they call the Spanish President "PM" in Anglo media, I gotta say. It's not the language, it's just that they have to UK-ify the name of his office.
I honestly had no idea Spain had a president. I always thought it was a pretty logical rule of king=president,
pm=top guy if you've got a king, otherwise officially second in command but maybe the actual ruler depending on country.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on January 25, 2024, 09:17:31 AM
Quote from: Tamas on January 25, 2024, 06:13:04 AMIreland is a special case because of British guilt. e.g. we often reference their PM as Taoiseach but we never bother with any other PMs in the world. Nobody calls Orban Miniszterelnok, or Tusk Premier, for example.
The German PM is mostly referenced as Chancellor in English media though.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on January 25, 2024, 09:35:17 AM
Quote from: Josquius on January 25, 2024, 09:11:25 AMI honestly had no idea Spain had a president. I always thought it was a pretty logical rule of king=president,
pm=top guy if you've got a king, otherwise officially second in command but maybe the actual ruler depending on country.
:lol: This is the republic/monarchy thing all over again. I was bamboozled when I first read a Spanish paper and saw them talking about the "presidente del gobierno".

QuoteThe German PM is mostly referenced as Chancellor in English media though.
Yeah I don't think I've ever seen an article talking about a German Prime Minister, always Chancellor.

It is worth noting that Taoiseach is the official title in Irish and English which may also be part of it (as with the Turkiye and Mumbai characteristics). With others they may just be translating the title from, say, Hungarian or Polish, while in English the head of the Irish government is the Taoiseach so it is wrong to say Prime Minister.

Even if you were to translate Taoiseach it doesn't mean Prime Minister. It means "chieftan" or "leader" - it comes from the 1937 consitution after all, so is rather of its time and also, as I say, reflecting the cultural aspect of Irish nationalism. Much like how Ireland's two main parties are the Soldiers of Destiny (which emerged from the We Ourselves party) and the Tribe of the Gaels. It's part of the Celtic revival and the importance of language in Irish nationalism - especially at that point in time.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on January 25, 2024, 09:37:11 AM
Quote from: Josquius on January 25, 2024, 09:11:25 AM
Quote from: celedhring on January 25, 2024, 07:31:25 AMSlightly pisses me off when they call the Spanish President "PM" in Anglo media, I gotta say. It's not the language, it's just that they have to UK-ify the name of his office.
I honestly had no idea Spain had a president. I always thought it was a pretty logical rule of king=president,
pm=top guy if you've got a king, otherwise officially second in command but maybe the actual ruler depending on country.

Our guy presides over the govermnent - hence the name, been like that since the XIXth century. Franco was both chief of state and president of the government, as separate offices he personally held.

During the Spanish Republic we had 2 presidents: the president of the council (head of government), and the president of the Republic (chief of state). Confused me as hell when I was in school.

But in all modern Spanish history Spanish heads of government have always been presidents.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on January 25, 2024, 09:43:13 AM
Having two Presidents at once reminds me of the EU reform proposals in the Five Presidents' Report which just seems like too many Presidents. At that rate it sounds like an investment bank :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on January 25, 2024, 09:59:25 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on January 25, 2024, 09:43:13 AMHaving two Presidents at once reminds me of the EU reform proposals in the Five Presidents' Report which just seems like too many Presidents. At that rate it sounds like an investment bank :lol:

You'll love to know that the speaker is also "president of the parliament"  :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on January 25, 2024, 10:14:39 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on January 25, 2024, 09:35:17 AMEven if you were to translate Taoiseach it doesn't mean Prime Minister. It means "chieftan" or "leader"
The German equivalent of leader for the HoG went out of fashion.  :ph34r:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on January 25, 2024, 10:20:30 AM
Quote from: Sheilbh on January 25, 2024, 09:43:13 AMHaving two Presidents at once reminds me of the EU reform proposals in the Five Presidents' Report which just seems like too many Presidents. At that rate it sounds like an investment bank :lol:

I do reckon the EU using sensible naming and different terms for the 3 heads would have been enough to sway the brekshit vote.
But then again a gust of wind would have done the same.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on January 30, 2024, 01:22:33 AM
So... Ahem.  Anyone has seen Berkut lately ?  :shutup:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/29/elon-musk-neuralink-first-human-brain-chip-implant
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tonitrus on January 30, 2024, 01:26:49 AM
I bet the liability contract with that first test subject is a doozy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on January 30, 2024, 01:31:07 AM
Monkey see, monkey don't.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on January 30, 2024, 01:34:48 AM
Also, in other news, Elon told his Texas employees that they wouldmbe required ro make sacridices.  Like sleeping at the factory, so that their new model be delivered on time.

Thankfully. Texas is one of these paradise righ to work States, right?  So I don't see any pesky unions interfering with such bold plans toward the future of the American workforce where the entire family units, from the youngest children to the spouse will soon work at the same place and lodge in barracks hastily built by the employers.

For efficiency measures, workers could be chained to one another so they don' t get lost in factory.  the sound of a cracking whip could also help them guid themselves toward the right spot and achieve maximim efficiency.

Nothing better than a good whippin' in the morning to shake you up for the day.  a whip a day keeps coffee away!)¡
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on January 30, 2024, 07:17:32 AM
Texas minimum employment standards?

A quick check turns out abysmal protection for employees, which I suppose is on brand.


One interesting nugget is there is no statutory requirement to provide any breaks.  Not even time to eat lunch.  Employers let their employees go hungry at their discretion.

And the minimum wage laws are a joke. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on January 30, 2024, 09:53:47 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on January 30, 2024, 07:17:32 AMTexas minimum employment standards?

A quick check turns out abysmal protection for employees, which I suppose is on brand.

Typical anti-Texas BS propaganda.

Texas employees have lots of rights and protections.  The right to open carry firearms in the workplace. The right to conceal carry firearms in the workplace. The right to discharge firearms in the workplace if reasonably needed for personal defense or defense of others.  Or if someone is suspected of being a Mexican invader.  You commie Canadians only wish you could have the rights Texans have.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on January 30, 2024, 10:28:22 AM
 :lol:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on January 30, 2024, 11:57:20 AM
Quote from: viper37 on January 30, 2024, 01:22:33 AMSo... Ahem.  Anyone has seen Berkut lately ?  :shutup:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/29/elon-musk-neuralink-first-human-brain-chip-implant

Didn't a bunch of monkeys die when they tried that experiment?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on January 30, 2024, 12:19:08 PM
I guess the human was a volunteer unlike the monkeys.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on January 30, 2024, 02:00:02 PM
I am interested to know where this is taking place, and whether any research ethics board approval (or something analogous) was required
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on January 30, 2024, 02:43:16 PM
(https://i.imgur.com/FUzi3MY.png)
:lol:


Also, California is Communist now?

(https://i.imgur.com/7FMschq.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on January 30, 2024, 02:51:58 PM
It's funny how the left stays static,nudges rightwards even... But conservatives insist they're  going communist.
Well. It would be funny if people didn't swallow it. Depressing is a better word.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on January 30, 2024, 03:25:53 PM
Oh that's a real surprise with Rogan. Never would've seen that one coming.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on January 30, 2024, 03:26:28 PM
I've been playing Bioshock Infinite off and on recently on the deck.  Reading the Musk tweet, my brain immediately  brought up the scratchy Voxophone sound. Truly is life imitating art.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on January 30, 2024, 03:30:03 PM
Quote from: Jacob on January 30, 2024, 03:25:53 PMOh that's a real surprise with Rogan. Never would've seen that one coming.

I don't contest that he is a leftist.  Socialist even, just not communist. More . . . nationalist.  If only there was a name for someone who thinks of themselves as National and Socialist . . .
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on January 30, 2024, 07:01:07 PM
I don't get this. He was pro-Bernie Sanders who wants to go much farther than I do.

How are the current leftists more Communist than Bernie?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on January 30, 2024, 07:05:32 PM
From what I gather the "California is too commie" crowd focus on drugs and crime. Which I don't know how that's communist, but it is what it is.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on January 30, 2024, 07:06:03 PM
Quote from: HVC on January 30, 2024, 07:05:32 PMFrom what I gather the "California is too commie" crowd focus on drugs and crime. Which I don't know how that's communist, but it is what it is.

More gulags will make it less Communist!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on January 30, 2024, 07:09:18 PM
Quote from: Josquius on January 30, 2024, 02:51:58 PMIt's funny how the left stays static,nudges rightwards even... But conservatives insist they're  going communist.
Well. It would be funny if people didn't swallow it. Depressing is a better word.
I think quite a few people on the left would say that the left has not stayed static, though most would only do so privately, just to be safe from the other leftists.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on January 30, 2024, 07:15:50 PM
Quote from: DGuller on January 30, 2024, 07:09:18 PM
Quote from: Josquius on January 30, 2024, 02:51:58 PMIt's funny how the left stays static,nudges rightwards even... But conservatives insist they're  going communist.
Well. It would be funny if people didn't swallow it. Depressing is a better word.
I think quite a few people on the left would say that the left has not stayed static, though most would only do so privately, just to be safe from the other leftists.

Well here we are in a private space. Go ahead.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on January 30, 2024, 07:18:10 PM
No political view is static... except maybe the Amish.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on January 30, 2024, 07:19:18 PM
Quote from: HVC on January 30, 2024, 07:18:10 PMNo political view is static... except maybe the Amish.

Ok but the claim is going full Communism, not failing to be the same from 2020 when he was a Bernie supporter.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on January 30, 2024, 07:22:57 PM
Fair enough on the going full commie, but Josq's point was on the staticity of the left.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on January 30, 2024, 07:44:41 PM
Quote from: Valmy on January 30, 2024, 07:15:50 PMWell here we are in a private space. Go ahead.

I am not DGuller and can not speak for him, but I've known him (virtually) for years...

I expect where he feels the left has moved significantly is on identity politics, policies to address past injustice as seen through the lens of identity politics, and - in particular - on the potential negative consequences (outside of reactionary circles) from being too slow take in and conform to the most recent appropriate language and attitudes.

Leaving aside for a moment whether the change is good, bad, or a mixed bag I do tend to agree that there's been a change. There are things you could say or do ten, twenty, and thirty years ago that result in very different reactions and consequences today.

One example of a change in the left, in my view, is the fairly recent tendency to examine social justice through the lens of privilege. Another change is an increased focus on things like appropriation and representation.

And - of course (and separately) - social media has happened and has had a huge impact on how we perform, interact with, and perceive politics across the spectrum - including on the left.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on January 30, 2024, 08:11:02 PM
Quote from: DGuller on January 30, 2024, 07:09:18 PM
Quote from: Josquius on January 30, 2024, 02:51:58 PMIt's funny how the left stays static,nudges rightwards even... But conservatives insist they're  going communist.
Well. It would be funny if people didn't swallow it. Depressing is a better word.
I think quite a few people on the left would say that the left has not stayed static, though most would only do so privately, just to be safe from the other leftists.

Well yeah. As said its moved quite a bit to the right. This is a frequent source of infighting on the left.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on January 30, 2024, 10:06:05 PM
Musks 2018 56 billion compensation package voided.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on January 31, 2024, 10:05:11 AM
Who do you have in mind?

Here the NDP has been having that discussion for at least the last 20 years.  It erupts into the public eye every once in a while. For example he debate over removing references to socialism from the party constitution.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Darth Wagtaros on January 31, 2024, 02:27:48 PM
Quote from: HVC on January 30, 2024, 10:06:05 PMMusks 2018 56 billion compensation package voided.
We'll be seeing a flood of outrage about leftist shareholders.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on January 31, 2024, 02:29:42 PM
Quote from: Jacob on January 30, 2024, 07:44:41 PM
Quote from: Valmy on January 30, 2024, 07:15:50 PMWell here we are in a private space. Go ahead.

I am not DGuller and can not speak for him, but I've known him (virtually) for years...

I expect where he feels the left has moved significantly is on identity politics, policies to address past injustice as seen through the lens of identity politics, and - in particular - on the potential negative consequences (outside of reactionary circles) from being too slow take in and conform to the most recent appropriate language and attitudes.

Leaving aside for a moment whether the change is good, bad, or a mixed bag I do tend to agree that there's been a change. There are things you could say or do ten, twenty, and thirty years ago that result in very different reactions and consequences today.

One example of a change in the left, in my view, is the fairly recent tendency to examine social justice through the lens of privilege. Another change is an increased focus on things like appropriation and representation.

And - of course (and separately) - social media has happened and has had a huge impact on how we perform, interact with, and perceive politics across the spectrum - including on the left.

You have identified some groups within what might generally be described as "the left".  But the claim is about the whole of the left.  I think that is demonstrably false in the Canadian context.  I won't comment on what is happening in other countries.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on January 31, 2024, 02:40:47 PM
I expect DGuller is not particularly focused on the Canadian context.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on January 31, 2024, 03:05:52 PM
Quote from: Jacob on January 31, 2024, 02:40:47 PMI expect DGuller is not particularly focused on the Canadian context.

And that is in part what I am pointing out.  He made a sweeping comment about "the left" that is not accurate for Canada, and I suspect not accurate for a number of other countries as well.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on January 31, 2024, 04:20:46 PM
Quote from: HVC on January 30, 2024, 10:06:05 PMMusks 2018 56 billion compensation package voided.

I don't know if the decision holds up on appeal, and there will certainly be some cyclonic twitter tantrums about it.  But the bigger picture is that for a company of the significance of Tesla this should never be an issue; there had to be some epic governance fails for the case to even get to trial.  And that just adds another weight to the downside of the Elon scale, where his erratic management style balances against his entrepreneurial energy and capial raising skills.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tonitrus on January 31, 2024, 07:40:56 PM
I thought the whole purpose of a corporate board of directors was to enrich themselves/each other as much as they can get away with? :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on January 31, 2024, 07:53:44 PM
Quote from: Jacob on January 30, 2024, 07:44:41 PM
Quote from: Valmy on January 30, 2024, 07:15:50 PMWell here we are in a private space. Go ahead.

I am not DGuller and can not speak for him, but I've known him (virtually) for years...

I expect where he feels the left has moved significantly is on identity politics, policies to address past injustice as seen through the lens of identity politics, and - in particular - on the potential negative consequences (outside of reactionary circles) from being too slow take in and conform to the most recent appropriate language and attitudes.

Leaving aside for a moment whether the change is good, bad, or a mixed bag I do tend to agree that there's been a change. There are things you could say or do ten, twenty, and thirty years ago that result in very different reactions and consequences today.

One example of a change in the left, in my view, is the fairly recent tendency to examine social justice through the lens of privilege. Another change is an increased focus on things like appropriation and representation.

And - of course (and separately) - social media has happened and has had a huge impact on how we perform, interact with, and perceive politics across the spectrum - including on the left.

I mean besides the social media stuff, which happened 15 years ago or something, the rest of that pretty much occurred during the transition when George McGovern won the Democratic nomination in 1972. Hardly some kind of new shift.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on January 31, 2024, 08:58:58 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on January 31, 2024, 07:40:56 PMI thought the whole purpose of a corporate board of directors was to enrich themselves/each other as much as they can get away with? :hmm:

Since about roughly 1998, yes
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on February 01, 2024, 10:37:44 AM
Elon's response to the pay package decision has been calm, measured, and responsible.

I'm joking of course.

He went on X to ask the "public" if Tesla should reincorporate in Texas; the highly discerning corporate law experts that constitute his twitter following of course voted overwhelmingly in favor.  Whereupon Musk announced he would hold a shareholder vote on reincorporation.  If the goal was to rebut that concern that Musk has overbearing influence on Tesla governance and treats it as his plaything, I think we can call that a fail.

The real question is whether a Texas court would be less likely to give the same result against Musk or would apply more officer and director favorable legal standards. Musk's X followers and perhaps Musk himself assume yes, apparently based on the stereotypes of Texas as an uber-Randian capitalist paradise, red in tooth and claw vs. Delaware as Bidenland.  The reality is quite different: Texas and Delaware law on fiduciary duty and conflicted transactions are similar, and if anything, Texas may be a little more strict. Texas also has a statue permitting oppressed shareholders to petition to place an entire company in receivership; Delaware does not. Most Delaware corporate disputes are steered to an experienced specialist Court with a key pro-defendant feature: no juries.  Texas just started up its own special business court, which is just starting to hear cases. Juries are still available where otherwise generally permitted.  That's significant because most corporate defendants do anything they can to avoid being dragged before a Texas jury, which still retains a strong rep for whopping pro-plaintiff verdicts.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on February 01, 2024, 10:44:08 AM
How does reincorporating work?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on February 01, 2024, 10:47:18 AM
Quote from: Jacob on February 01, 2024, 10:44:08 AMHow does reincorporating work?

I'm not sure on the mechanics, that's what the transactional lawyers do. You could create a new company in Texas and merge Tesla into that company.  There could be other ways. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on February 01, 2024, 10:52:32 AM
So in theory shareholder value is unaffected, assuming the markets are neutral on the whole process?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on February 01, 2024, 11:03:10 AM
Texas?  Back when I first started my legal career, I was involved in a series of cases in which corporate entities tried desperately to avoid having their matters determined in Texas courts for a number of the reasons JR has explained, but primarily it was to avoid a Texas jury deciding very complex issues of corporate liability.

Those cases are still the textbook cases taught in Canadian law schools regarding conflicts of laws.

Musk obviously is much smarter than everyone else, and he sees something the rest of us have just simply missed.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on February 01, 2024, 11:04:42 AM
Quote from: Jacob on February 01, 2024, 10:52:32 AMSo in theory shareholder value is unaffected, assuming the markets are neutral on the whole process?

It really depends how it's done. And given that musk is in the mix, I would not assume that there would be classes of shareholders who would not be impacted negatively, and who would have a very good claim in a Texas court with a jury, who would be quite willing to provide them with a rich judgment.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on February 01, 2024, 11:23:22 AM
Quote from: Jacob on February 01, 2024, 10:52:32 AMSo in theory shareholder value is unaffected, assuming the markets are neutral on the whole process?

It shouldn't.  I wouldn't ordinarily favor Texas incorporation over Delaware; Texas would be pretty far down on the list of places to incorporate.  That said the likely net impact on a company like Tesla should be marginal.  The broader concern is what this says about management stability and coherence at the company.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on February 01, 2024, 11:47:29 AM
Quote from: Jacob on February 01, 2024, 10:52:32 AMSo in theory shareholder value is unaffected, assuming the markets are neutral on the whole process?

I think it's not so much that it's guaranteed that shareholder value is unaffected - rather  that in order to do so you have to get shareholder consent (and quite possibly from all classes of shareholders).


I've commented before that if all parties agree you can do virtually anything, legally speaking.  Its only when disputes arise (which they do, frequently) that things get complicated.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on February 01, 2024, 12:45:40 PM
Quote from: Barrister on February 01, 2024, 11:47:29 AM
Quote from: Jacob on February 01, 2024, 10:52:32 AMSo in theory shareholder value is unaffected, assuming the markets are neutral on the whole process?

I think it's not so much that it's guaranteed that shareholder value is unaffected - rather  that in order to do so you have to get shareholder consent (and quite possibly from all classes of shareholders).


I've commented before that if all parties agree you can do virtually anything, legally speaking.  Its only when disputes arise (which they do, frequently) that things get complicated.

Shareholder consent does not mean 100% of shareholders agreed to the proposition.  That is why there is such a thing as shareholder oppression lawsuits.  Which, is sort of the core of his present problem.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on February 01, 2024, 01:56:22 PM
We'll never get to mars if musk keeps focuses on these petty matters.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on February 01, 2024, 01:57:14 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 01, 2024, 12:45:40 PM
Quote from: Barrister on February 01, 2024, 11:47:29 AM
Quote from: Jacob on February 01, 2024, 10:52:32 AMSo in theory shareholder value is unaffected, assuming the markets are neutral on the whole process?

I think it's not so much that it's guaranteed that shareholder value is unaffected - rather  that in order to do so you have to get shareholder consent (and quite possibly from all classes of shareholders).


I've commented before that if all parties agree you can do virtually anything, legally speaking.  Its only when disputes arise (which they do, frequently) that things get complicated.

Shareholder consent does not mean 100% of shareholders agreed to the proposition.  That is why there is such a thing as shareholder oppression lawsuits.  Which, is sort of the core of his present problem.

Of course.

Depending on any Shareholder agreement you may need more than 50%, or you may need to get the majority of all classes or shares, or you might need "the majority of the minority" (if for example the majority shareholder is offering to buy out the minority).  It all gets complicated and out of my depth to go over in detail.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on February 01, 2024, 02:01:24 PM
Quote from: HVC on February 01, 2024, 01:56:22 PMWe'll never get to mars if musk keeps focuses on these petty matters.

COunter-argument - the more time he gets distracted by stuff like this, the less time he has to mess up SpaceX...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on February 01, 2024, 02:06:06 PM
Quote from: Barrister on February 01, 2024, 02:01:24 PM
Quote from: HVC on February 01, 2024, 01:56:22 PMWe'll never get to mars if musk keeps focuses on these petty matters.

COunter-argument - the more time he gets distracted by stuff like this, the less time he has to mess up SpaceX...

I was mostly being sarcastic, but good point.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on February 01, 2024, 02:52:44 PM
Quote from: Barrister on February 01, 2024, 02:01:24 PM
Quote from: HVC on February 01, 2024, 01:56:22 PMWe'll never get to mars if musk keeps focuses on these petty matters.

COunter-argument - the more time he gets distracted by stuff like this, the less time he has to mess up SpaceX...

I think your sarcasm detector needs a little maintenance   :)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on February 01, 2024, 02:53:26 PM
Quote from: HVC on February 01, 2024, 02:06:06 PM
Quote from: Barrister on February 01, 2024, 02:01:24 PM
Quote from: HVC on February 01, 2024, 01:56:22 PMWe'll never get to mars if musk keeps focuses on these petty matters.

COunter-argument - the more time he gets distracted by stuff like this, the less time he has to mess up SpaceX...

I was mostly being sarcastic, but good point.

I should kept reading  :Embarrass:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on February 01, 2024, 04:21:27 PM
If only we had 50 Musks, one for every state.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on February 02, 2024, 02:54:35 AM
Musk ranked most over rated CEO by fellow CEOs. (https://www.businessinsider.com/business-executives-ranked-elon-musk-america-most-overrated-ceo-2024-2)

 Beats out second place Bob Igor by 97 votes.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on February 02, 2024, 03:06:37 AM
I'm still not onboard with mocking Musk's credentials as a business executive, which conveniently everyone started doing only after he lifted his mask on his political views.  To be honest, when people mock Berkut's 50 Musks line, in my mind they mock themselves, not Berkut.  Henry Ford didn't become a much worse businessman, prospectively and retrospectively, after he started publishing antisemitic screeds.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on February 02, 2024, 03:12:58 AM
Quote from: DGuller on February 02, 2024, 03:06:37 AMI'm still not onboard with mocking Musk's credentials as a business executive, which conveniently everyone started doing only after he lifted his mask on his political views.  To be honest, when people mock Berkut's 50 Musks line, in my mind they mock themselves, not Berkut.  Henry Ford didn't become a much worse businessman, prospectively and retrospectively, after he started publishing antisemitic screeds.

I am not mocking his lack of business sense. Rather I am finding it rather unnerving since it is hurting enterprises I want to see succeed. His main role was as a pitch guy, in building up hype for his products. And he did a great job, he made space exploration and EVs cool. Now he seems to be doing exactly the opposite. Henry Ford was a hands on sort of manager, they do not seem comparable. Not to mention the Model T and a Tesla seem like complete opposite kinds of products. One is a cheap auto the common man can afford, the other is a tech gizmo toy for the wealthy.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on February 02, 2024, 03:31:36 AM
Quote from: DGuller on February 02, 2024, 03:06:37 AMI'm still not onboard with mocking Musk's credentials as a business executive, which conveniently everyone started doing only after he lifted his mask on his political views.  To be honest, when people mock Berkut's 50 Musks line, in my mind they mock themselves, not Berkut.  Henry Ford didn't become a much worse businessman, prospectively and retrospectively, after he started publishing antisemitic screeds.

Heh, I think the way he's stewarded twitter is what has made him a worse businessman. And it's not his first failed business.

He always applies the same formula for every single of his business: hype machine, keep teams lean and small and crunch them, try not to rely on external partners to retain control of the product. This worked for Tesla (up to a point, as a mature company they are struggling mightily with bringing new stuff to market), but not for twitter, SolarCity, Boring Company.. It's not like his resumé is all wins. And he does have a penchant to use these companies as his personal piggy banks - like how he used Tesla to bail out SolarCity. That's fine and dandy as long as shareholders don't wisen up to the fact you're not a miracle worker.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on February 02, 2024, 03:37:27 AM
I've read that venture capitalists look for one monster hidden next to six duds.  By that metric he made some people a lot of money.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on February 02, 2024, 03:44:52 AM
Not every venture of his was a win, sure, but it appears that on aggregate he has done rather well.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on February 02, 2024, 03:46:03 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 02, 2024, 03:37:27 AMI've read that venture capitalists look for one monster hidden next to six duds.  By that metric he made some people a lot of money.

Yeah, his business philosophy works for startups - which is what made Tesla a success, but not so much for mature companies.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on February 02, 2024, 04:30:45 AM
Quote from: DGuller on February 02, 2024, 03:06:37 AMI'm still not onboard with mocking Musk's credentials as a business executive, which conveniently everyone started doing only after he lifted his mask on his political views.  To be honest, when people mock Berkut's 50 Musks line, in my mind they mock themselves, not Berkut.  Henry Ford didn't become a much worse businessman, prospectively and retrospectively, after he started publishing antisemitic screeds.

When would you say that is? Per the early pages of this thread in 2018, it looks like we had views all over the place with relation to his credentials and Berkut's 50 Musks line.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on February 02, 2024, 07:48:13 AM
Quote from: DGuller on February 02, 2024, 03:06:37 AMI'm still not onboard with mocking Musk's credentials as a business executive, which conveniently everyone started doing only after he lifted his mask on his political views.  To be honest, when people mock Berkut's 50 Musks line, in my mind they mock themselves, not Berkut.  Henry Ford didn't become a much worse businessman, prospectively and retrospectively, after he started publishing antisemitic screeds.
Quote from: DGuller on February 02, 2024, 03:06:37 AMI'm still not onboard with mocking Musk's credentials as a business executive, which conveniently everyone started doing only after he lifted his mask on his political views.  To be honest, when people mock Berkut's 50 Musks line, in my mind they mock themselves, not Berkut.  Henry Ford didn't become a much worse businessman, prospectively and retrospectively, after he started publishing antisemitic screeds.

Ah no, a few of us disagreed with Berkut's claim long before Musk went full Musk.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on February 02, 2024, 08:06:07 AM
Quote from: celedhring on February 02, 2024, 03:46:03 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 02, 2024, 03:37:27 AMI've read that venture capitalists look for one monster hidden next to six duds.  By that metric he made some people a lot of money.

Yeah, his business philosophy works for startups - which is what made Tesla a success, but not so much for mature companies.

Yeah, I think that's it with the "Musk the business genius" stuff.
With start ups it's all about growth. And buzz and attention is a key way to get that.

With 50 musks though, musks existence as a unique attention grabber would be gone. Then it'd all be down to his actual business skills... Which many outside languish, wiser than me in such matters, have laid into over the years.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on February 02, 2024, 11:09:04 AM
Quote from: DGuller on February 02, 2024, 03:06:37 AMI'm still not onboard with mocking Musk's credentials as a business executive, which conveniently everyone started doing only after he lifted his mask on his political views.  To be honest, when people mock Berkut's 50 Musks line, in my mind they mock themselves, not Berkut.  Henry Ford didn't become a much worse businessman, prospectively and retrospectively, after he started publishing antisemitic screeds.

Nah, I was mocking him in like 2018. He is a hype man, and I recognized him as such long before he came out as a Nazi. Most of his success at Tesla and SpaceX (his only actual, profitable ventures he can claim reasonable credit for) are based primarily on his ability to raise capital. I said long ago when Berkut was still posting that "ability to raise capital" isn't a bad skill to have--for someone starting companies it is one of the most important skills.

But a big part of that process was serially lying about what his companies could and would do to generate maximum investments.

On the operations / management side, he has, to his credit, "delivered enough" to keep the investors happy, and to lend enough credibility to his iterative rounds of hype capital raising to continue to bear fruit. He deserves some level of credit for that.

But whether he can operate a company long term that actually runs on its own core business merits, instead of regular and massive infusions of investment capital, has still yet to be seen.

It is generally not unusual that executives who are good at founding companies and raising investor capital end up not being the best guys to run those companies long term--and there is good evidence that both Tesla and SpaceX largely are ran by people who aren't Elon Musk, while he retains the CEO title and appears to spend a lot of his time faffing around with nonsense.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on February 02, 2024, 11:24:30 AM
My main beef with Musk pre-Nazism was just that he represented himself like a Tony Stark style figure, or some mythological super-inventor. I took much less issue with the idea he was a "good businessman", just that the type of good businessman he was, was one who was really good at raising capital, with a more mixed reputation at actually running his companies (and lots of evidence the real running of his companies is largely delegated--which in and of itself isn't terrible, if you know that isn't your core competency you should delegate a lot of management to figures like your COO and etc, there isn't a one size fits all approach to being the CEO.)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on February 02, 2024, 11:26:38 AM
Back in the early days there did seem to be good stuff about Musk- he was actually pushing space forward, maybe a billionaire with money to burn was what we needed there, and then there was the whole thing about Tesla being open source and its technology open to imitators or...something?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on February 08, 2024, 02:30:11 AM
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/06/business/gina-carano-disney-lucasfilm-lawsuit.html

QuoteElon Musk Is Funding Ex-'Mandalorian' Actress's Suit Against Disney

Gina Carano accused Disney and Lucasfilm of discrimination when they dropped her after she posted baseless conspiracy theories and right-wing views on social media.


Elon Musk poked the Walt Disney Company anew on Tuesday by agreeing to fund a wrongful-termination lawsuit filed by the "Mandalorian" actress Gina Carano.

"Please let us know if you would like to join the lawsuit against Disney," Mr. Musk, seemingly trawling for other plaintiffs, wrote in a post on X, which he bought in 2022.

Disney dropped Ms. Carano, a former mixed-martial artist, from "The Mandalorian" in 2021 after she espoused baseless conspiracy theories and right-wing positions, some of which were seen as homophobic and antisemitic, in a series of social media posts. Her character was written out of the series. Lucasfilm, the Disney division that makes "The Mandalorian," said in a statement at the time that Ms. Carano's "social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable."

United Talent Agency also dropped Ms. Carano.

Ms. Carano's suit, filed on Tuesday in federal court in California, seeks a court order forcing Disney and Lucasfilm to weave her "Mandalorian" character back into episodes and recast her for the part. (Employed as a "guest actor," she was paid $25,000 for each episode in which she appeared.) She is also suing for punitive damages.

Mr. Musk has been throwing elbows at Disney and its chief executive, Robert A. Iger, since Disney and X's other major advertisers, including Apple, paused spending on the platform in mid-November. The advertisers took action after Mr. Musk's endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory. He seemed especially angry about Disney's decision to pull ads; other Hollywood companies, in particular, followed Disney's lead.

In internal documents at X, which were seen by The New York Times, sales employees have been notified that Disney has continued to pause advertising on the platform "globally" and "indefinitely."

Spokesmen for Disney did not respond to requests for comment for this article on Tuesday.

In late November, Mr. Musk verbally attacked Mr. Iger from the stage of The New York Times's DealBook Summit. (Citing Disney's pulling of ads, which Mr. Musk called "blackmail," the billionaire used an expletive to tell Mr. Iger to go away.) In December, after Disney stood firm, Mr. Musk wrote on X that Mr. Iger "should be fired," adding that "Walt Disney is turning in his grave over what Bob has done to his company."

More recently, Mr. Musk has cheered on Nelson Peltz, an activist investor who, with the disgruntled former chairman of Marvel Entertainment, is waging a proxy battle to gain two seats on the Disney board.

"Brutal track record," Mr. Musk wrote on X on Jan. 18, amplifying a post by Mr. Peltz's Trian Partners that highlighted Disney's underperforming stock. "Shareholders have been incredibly poorly served by the @Disney board!"

Disney has vigorously defended its board, along with Mr. Iger's track record. Mr. Iger, who came out of retirement in 2022 to retake Disney's reins, has cut costs drastically, moved to turbocharge growth at Disney parks and reorganized the company to improve movie quality, among other efforts.

Asked about the extent of Mr. Peltz's relationship with Mr. Musk, a spokesman for Trian had no immediate comment. Mr. Peltz and Mr. Musk were photographed together on Saturday at the Los Angeles premiere of "Lola," an independent film that one of Mr. Peltz's daughters wrote, directed and starred in.

X's head of business operations, Joe Benarroch, said in a statement that Mr. Musk's company was "proud to provide financial support for Gina Carano's lawsuit, empowering her to seek vindication of her free speech rights on X and the ability to work without bullying, harassment or discrimination."

Last year, Mr. Musk vowed to fund legal action for X users who said they had been discriminated against at work because of their posts on the platform. At the time, he said he would "go after the boards of directors of the companies too."

Ms. Carano's lawsuit stated: "A short time ago, in a galaxy not so far away, defendants made it clear that only one orthodoxy in thought, speech or action was acceptable in their empire, and that those who dared to question or failed to fully comply would not be tolerated. And so it was with Carano."


Court filing: https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/gina-carano-disney-suit-feb-6-2024.pdf
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on February 08, 2024, 02:31:50 AM
Would be nice if Musk would also act on behalf of other people suffering for what they wrote on Twitter. But I guess some victims are more equal than others.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/08/29/saudi-arabia-man-sentenced-death-tweets
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on February 08, 2024, 03:38:35 AM
Quote from: Syt on February 08, 2024, 02:31:50 AMWould be nice if Musk would also act on behalf of other people suffering for what they wrote on Twitter. But I guess some victims are more equal than others.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/08/29/saudi-arabia-man-sentenced-death-tweets

So the Saudis are learning from the Norks then.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Darth Wagtaros on February 08, 2024, 07:58:09 AM
He and some other Libertarian/closet Right whinger want to buy Disney now?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on February 08, 2024, 08:19:20 AM
JR, does the US prohibit maintenance and champerty?

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on February 08, 2024, 09:15:04 AM
Quote from: DGuller on February 02, 2024, 03:06:37 AMI'm still not onboard with mocking Musk's credentials as a business executive, which conveniently everyone started doing only after he lifted his mask on his political views.  To be honest, when people mock Berkut's 50 Musks line, in my mind they mock themselves, not Berkut.  Henry Ford didn't become a much worse businessman, prospectively and retrospectively, after he started publishing antisemitic screeds.

Yeah but you have to admit it's really really funny the way things have unfolded.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on February 08, 2024, 10:08:14 AM
So when I mock somebody for claiming, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that a particular person is a "great man", I am actually mocking myself.

Well self, get ready for more mocking.  I'm not gonna stop calling bullshit when I hear it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on February 08, 2024, 10:21:38 AM
FWIW I'm not familiar with many mainstream criticisms of Henry Ford as a businessman, his businesses never seemed to outright hurt themselves because of Ford deciding to speculate with vast sums of money on nonsense related to Ford's personal quirks or obsessions. Ford also was far more of an operations man than Musk has ever been, Ford's main focus in life was not hyping up the stock price of Ford motors (in fact it was a privately held company until 9 years after his death--Ford largely made his personal wealth off the profitable returns of his business, not on stock holdings being juiced up by speculators.)

Ford is typically criticized for being a big asshole as a person, and a virulent antisemite.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on February 08, 2024, 10:38:32 AM
We should keep ion mind that Berkut's line was written before Musk brought down twitter.  Before Musk went insane, it was not unreasonable to want to see more like him (though there was an equally viable line of reasoning that said his accomplishments were not replicable by additional Musks). Berkut has acknowledged that he was wrong about Musk.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on February 08, 2024, 11:02:50 AM
Quote from: grumbler on February 08, 2024, 10:38:32 AMWe should keep ion mind that Berkut's line was written before Musk brought down twitter.  Before Musk went insane, it was not unreasonable to want to see more like him (though there was an equally viable line of reasoning that said his accomplishments were not replicable by additional Musks). Berkut has acknowledged that he was wrong about Musk.

He also said it though after I started this thread. A thread that started with Musk calling people pedophiles because they didn't want to play with his high tech sub.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on February 08, 2024, 11:15:22 AM
No one could know what Musk was really like... except the majority of the posters of this thread.

As for acknowledging anything, he only did so after a year of lurking and ridicule. Half heartedly at that.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on February 08, 2024, 11:31:36 AM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on February 08, 2024, 10:21:38 AMFord deciding to speculate with vast sums of money on nonsense related to Ford's personal quirks or obsessions.
There were some quirks at least:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordl%C3%A2ndia
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: FunkMonk on February 08, 2024, 12:02:37 PM
The 50 Musks line is honestly pretty meme-worthy. He is lucky he said it here and not Twitter because it would've been immortalized on knowyourmeme.com. As it is, it's just a funny ribbing that is par for the course on Languish.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on February 11, 2024, 04:08:28 AM
Musk moves Neuralinks incorporation from Delaware to Nevada to protect his future malfeasance :D
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on February 14, 2024, 07:04:00 AM
(https://i.postimg.cc/wjJwHdq7/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on February 14, 2024, 07:13:21 AM
I mean, I guess the easiest way for the border to move is for one side to stop fighting. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on February 14, 2024, 09:30:34 AM
Yes. Russia rolling over Ukraine would absolutely result in no more young Ukrainian men dying or just disappearing. That's definitely something that would happen out of that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on February 14, 2024, 11:07:43 AM
Quote from: Josquius on February 14, 2024, 09:30:34 AMYes. Russia rolling over Ukraine would absolutely result in no more young Ukrainian men dying or just disappearing. That's definitely something that would happen out of that.

To be fair then it would not just be young men dying, but also children, women and the elderly. Equal opportunity!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: DGuller on February 14, 2024, 01:10:15 PM
I really hope the relevant agencies are keeping tabs on Elon, and have the balls to act if necessary regardless of blowback.  This is not the kind of person you want to be in the service of rival nations.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on February 14, 2024, 01:14:52 PM
Fox (née Pravda) probably does more damage and no one cares. Musk going full Russian agent shouldn't do much. I don't envision him going full Bond villain and using space x to bomb cities :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on February 14, 2024, 03:49:16 PM
Musk through being CEO of SpaceX has access to non-insignificant classified information, there would quite certainly have to be something done if he was genuinely believed to be a Russian agent (which I don't think he is, I think he is just extremely stupid on most topics, and has fallen into a lot of middle aged man stupid conspiracy shit because the fact he is smart in one area of life has made him believe his expertise is universal and he never questions the stupid shit he thinks or hears.)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on February 14, 2024, 03:50:59 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on February 14, 2024, 03:49:16 PMMusk through being CEO of SpaceX has access to non-insignificant classified information, there would quite certainly have to be something done if he was genuinely believed to be a Russian agent (which I don't think he is, I think he is just extremely stupid on most topics, and has fallen into a lot of middle aged man stupid conspiracy shit because the fact he is smart in one area of life has made him believe his expertise is universal and he never questions the stupid shit he thinks or hears.)

How does he pass US security checks? He wouldn't be allowed to do grunt work in the Swedish nuclear industry for instance.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on February 14, 2024, 03:52:16 PM
Quote from: The Brain on February 14, 2024, 03:50:59 PM
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on February 14, 2024, 03:49:16 PMMusk through being CEO of SpaceX has access to non-insignificant classified information, there would quite certainly have to be something done if he was genuinely believed to be a Russian agent (which I don't think he is, I think he is just extremely stupid on most topics, and has fallen into a lot of middle aged man stupid conspiracy shit because the fact he is smart in one area of life has made him believe his expertise is universal and he never questions the stupid shit he thinks or hears.)

How does he pass US security checks? He wouldn't be allowed to do grunt work in the Swedish nuclear industry for instance.

There are genuine questions, some stuff like his reported recreational use of ketamine would be immediate disqualifiers for ordinary people holding clearances. But a lot of the stuff like that remains firmly in the field of "reported", not "confirmed", so it is hard to say--it is possible it has been looked into and he passed scrutiny. That stuff isn't made public.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on February 15, 2024, 04:42:50 AM
In addition to being ugly as sin it appears that the cyvertruck exterior uses cheap stainless steal that's rusting already :lol: tesla, all the cost, none of the quality.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on February 15, 2024, 09:11:01 AM
Quote from: DGuller on February 14, 2024, 01:10:15 PMI really hope the relevant agencies are keeping tabs on Elon, and have the balls to act if necessary regardless of blowback.  This is not the kind of person you want to be in the service of rival nations.

So far the only agency that seems to be keeping tabs is the SEC, because Musk appears unable to conduct any securities transaction without violating the law.  That particular problem predates his recent breakdown.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on February 15, 2024, 12:30:14 PM
Tesla is currently in an interesting situation. For the last decade or so they were the avantgarde on electric vehicles.

At the moment, 97% of their sales is model 3/Y, S/X barely matter anymore.

Cybertruck isn't there yet and will not have the same global success as 3/Y even if might sell well in North America.

But 3/Y are getting old and competition is catching up, especially Chinese companies, but also Stellantis or Volkswagen.

Semi, Optimus, robo-taxis, an unannounced Model 2 are all far in the future. The claim that Tesla would grow to 15 million cars by 2030 (about 20% global market share) is not realistically achievable.

One has to wonder how the company will develop now and if its CEO is not too distracted by his shenanigans to properly manage the company. They might just become another car company. Or they might turn around and find the next big thing.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on February 15, 2024, 12:45:22 PM
No problem. Tesla is an AI company, innit?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on February 15, 2024, 02:55:46 PM
Quote from: Jacob on February 15, 2024, 12:45:22 PMNo problem. Tesla is an AI company, innit?

Yeah that's the problem right there.  They bought into their own valuation hype and took their eye off the ball.

At the luxury end they are being smoked by Lucid and the traditional luxury brands like BMW and Benz are piling in.  Model S and X don't refresh until 2025.  I think they are screwed there.  Their Ace is "autopilot" but that turns on finding people who want to drop 100K on a car so they can watch a second rate AI drive it inconsistently.

On the mass market end, the 3/Y are still competitive on price-range, at least since they cut price and presumably gutted their margins.  But Hyundai and Kia have leapfrogged them on fast charge and are building cars with better interiors and more reliable quality.  Hyundai drops their Ioniq 7 later this year but the Model Y refresh has been postponed.

My Model 3 lease is up next year, will be interesting to see . . .

Tesla may sell themselves to the Street as a tech/AI company but they need to remember they are selling cars, not entertainment consoles that just happen to be mounted on a platform with wheels.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on February 15, 2024, 04:18:22 PM
It's not even clear whether they have anything in the pipeline for S/X. These models seem almost dead.

Also you hear very little about the Semi anymore. That was a strange move anyway. All the other big automotive companies had split off their truck business (e.g. Mercedes, Volkswagen, Renault, Toyota, Volvo, etc.), but they built it up afresh despite it being a very different market than cars.

Lucid is not (yet?) a relevant competitor though. They sold as many cars in all of 2023 as Tesla had sold by January 2nd. And Lucid so far makes huge losses for Prince Bonesaw.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on February 15, 2024, 04:38:09 PM
I've been seeing them all over the road in the fancier NY suburbs, they sure look relevant
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on February 15, 2024, 04:40:43 PM
Isn't Lucid just a dodgy stock market pump and dump?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Habbaku on February 15, 2024, 04:53:54 PM
https://jalopnik.com/why-tesla-cybertrucks-are-rusting-despite-being-made-of-1851257091

 :lol:

QuoteTesla Cybertrucks Are Rusting Despite Being Made Of Stainless Steel
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on February 15, 2024, 05:44:39 PM
Teslas problem is that their quality never caught up. Selling premium cars with fly by night quality control and fit. That can keep you going when you're the only kid on the block, but like minsky said, the completion is there now. Porsche's new offerings are supposed to be good too. So you have the luxury brands biting at the top end, and the likes of ford an kia biting at the lower end.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on February 15, 2024, 07:53:51 PM
But none of Lucid, Porsche, Kia, or Ford - nor any of their competitors, Chinese or otherwise - have stories coming out every month or two about their customers getting killed while using their car's AI features. Only Tesla has that.

Surely that'll push their stocks up in the long run - blood sacrifice is bound to sharpen Tesla's competitive edge.

In fact, Musk got approval to test one of his companies brain implant technologies on humans. Surely we're not far away from 40K style human brains (sourced from the desperate) providing AI for vehicles. None of Musk's competitors will be able to deliver synergies like that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on February 15, 2024, 11:12:56 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on February 15, 2024, 04:38:09 PMI've been seeing them all over the road in the fancier NY suburbs, they sure look relevant
Interesting. I am not following Lucid closely, so maybe my impression is wrong.

Last year they built 8500 cars and sold 6000, at a huge loss. Also no growth compared to 2022. They laid off 20% of their workforce in 2023. Does not sound like a growth story challenging Tesla.

The latest competitors in the luxury/premium EV segment are BYD (e.g. with the U7) and Li Auto. Both profitable and quickly growing. Also the Xiaomi SU7.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on February 16, 2024, 05:21:57 AM
Quote from: HVC on February 11, 2024, 04:08:28 AMMusk moves Neuralinks incorporation from Delaware to Nevada to protect his future malfeasance :D

SpaceX is now moved too.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on February 16, 2024, 10:45:24 AM
Oh man, I bet Delaware is really upset. That'll learn 'em.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on February 16, 2024, 10:59:22 AM
Yeah - although in my very limited experience almost all US companies I came across were either Nevada or Delaware incorporated (mainly Delaware). My understanding is they're both very good if you want to avoid tax or benefit from corporate secrecy.

I doubt it matters much, but could be wrong (and both of them like all other tax avoidance and corporate secrecy hubs should be punished <_<).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on February 16, 2024, 01:48:27 PM
Nevada makes a bit more sense than Texas because the fiduciary standards are definitely more deferential to management.  But corporate disputes go to courts with elected judges and juries.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on February 16, 2024, 02:07:52 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on February 16, 2024, 01:48:27 PMNevada makes a bit more sense than Texas because the fiduciary standards are definitely more deferential to management.  But corporate disputes go to courts with elected judges and juries.


Makes sense, he is counting on elected judges not wanting to upset their voting public by enforcing the law against him.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on February 16, 2024, 02:37:27 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 16, 2024, 02:07:52 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on February 16, 2024, 01:48:27 PMNevada makes a bit more sense than Texas because the fiduciary standards are definitely more deferential to management.  But corporate disputes go to courts with elected judges and juries.
Makes sense, he is counting on elected judges not wanting to upset their voting public by enforcing the law against him.

That's a dangerous idea for a few reasons but I'll post later to elaborate.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on February 16, 2024, 03:37:27 PM
If the voting population of Nevada turns against Musk for whatever reason, then having to rely on elected judges might not be a good idea. I can imagine a few scenarios where it'd be popular to kick Musk to the curb.

Alternately, if an elected judge has a reason to want to make a big name for himself (do elected judges move on to other elected roles?) then torpedoing Musk would certainly be a way to become a household name.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on February 20, 2024, 03:59:33 PM
Okay - so I know nothing about cars and all I really know about Tesla is from this thread. But saw this today and was a bit surprised given what I'd read here:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GGxOOx4XMAAFAJT?format=png&name=small)

So how does it tie together?

From Bloomberg report that European car manufacturers considering some form of tie-up/cooperation ("an Airbus of autos") to face US (Tesla) and Chinese (BYD) competition.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on February 20, 2024, 04:31:58 PM
That doesn't seem shocking, Tesla and BYD only manufacture EVs? Most of the incumbent auto manufacturers long treated EVs as a small sideline, with a few going much fuller into it only recently (VW for example is betting very heavily on them.)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on February 20, 2024, 04:41:41 PM
I work in the industry,so I am not surprised. What was your expectation based on this thread? Tesla doing worse?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on February 20, 2024, 04:42:14 PM
I guess there's an issue with most of them being stuck in the middle?

You want electric but you're not rich... You get cheap and chinese.

You're rich and want electric? Tesla is the one that somehow keeps it's prestige with those who don't pay attention.

In the middle are most of the other brands.
Expensive for what they are and will it really hit your prestige to have a byd rather than a Citroën?

If you want a flash one like BMW then you get a petrol BMW, that's the proper one that appeals to BMW buyers.

Or something like so.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on February 20, 2024, 04:50:18 PM
Quote from: Zanza on February 20, 2024, 04:41:41 PMI work in the industry,so I am not surprised. What was your expectation based on this thread? Tesla doing worse?
Yeah.

QuoteExpensive for what they are and will it really hit your prestige to have a byd rather than a Citroën?
Not until they bring back the DS :contract: :ultra:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on February 20, 2024, 04:52:05 PM
Raw unit numbers also don't really foretell financial health, right?

Tesla is not doing terrible, but there is a reason their stock price is down (and it isn't just Musk being toxic.)

They have missed earnings estimates the last 2 quarters, they have a worse EPS ($4.99) than industry average ($7.99), their P/E is significantly higher than industry average (46 vs 13), their EPS growth TTM lags the auto industry (18% vs 36%), they have had well-advertised price-cuts to keep sales volume consistent, showing weakness in demand.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on February 20, 2024, 04:55:44 PM
The passenger car industry is, I would say, both forward looking and not at the same time.

In this thread, most of our doom saying about Tesla is how they've seemed to have stop innovating and that a good chunk of their revenue was from other car manufacturers buying carbon/emissions credits from them. Credits that other car manufacturers need less and less every year. All bad things on the long term.

On the short term side, they are still the only electric car manufacturer actually filling orders in a timely manner. (Unless you want a Ford F-150 lightning. Ford has stock of that 100k$ truck)

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on February 20, 2024, 05:39:38 PM
If the most important things for an EV are price, performance, and range, Tesla is still really well positioned. The cars drive well, their ranges are upper tier, and their pricing has become more reasonable.

But 2 years ago they were really the only serious game in town.  Now there is real competition, and that competition is increasing the tempo of iterative releases and upgrades, while Tesla seems to be slowing theirs. 

Tesla can still thrive with lower market share of a much bigger EV market, but their price premiums and thus margins will take a hit.  And that is going to be problem because the stock price is not consistent with any margin erosion.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on February 20, 2024, 06:22:56 PM
Report today that Ford and Tesla are getting into a price war.

That is something Ford has the resources to outlast.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on February 20, 2024, 06:43:04 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 20, 2024, 06:22:56 PMReport today that Ford and Tesla are getting into a price war.

That is something Ford has the resources to outlast.

Truly the battle of build quality specialists
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on February 20, 2024, 06:59:48 PM
What's Ford's competing with against the model 3?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on February 20, 2024, 07:58:10 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on February 20, 2024, 06:59:48 PMWhat's Ford's competing with against the model 3?

The E version of the Mustang, which was just reduced in price.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on February 20, 2024, 08:09:00 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on February 20, 2024, 05:39:38 PMIf the most important things for an EV are price, performance, and range, Tesla is still really well positioned. The cars drive well, their ranges are upper tier, and their pricing has become more reasonable.

But 2 years ago they were really the only serious game in town.  Now there is real competition, and that competition is increasing the tempo of iterative releases and upgrades, while Tesla seems to be slowing theirs. 

Tesla can still thrive with lower market share of a much bigger EV market, but their price premiums and thus margins will take a hit.  And that is going to be problem because the stock price is not consistent with any margin erosion.

They have the stated ambition to sell 15 million cars by 2030 (about 20% global car market), which is not realistically achievable. And their next project "Redwood" is assumed to be a $25k entry level car.

Competition with the Chinese in that mass market segment will be brutal. Will be tough to earn significant margins there. Tesla have said that manufacturing will be revolutionary ("giga casting", "workers sleeping on the line") though, so let's see if they can pull it off.

One interesting thing about the Chinese challengers is that they seem to have an innovation cycle of about 36 months for a new model. Traditional car companies are closer to 60 months. So far, Tesla seems to be closer to their traditional competition rather than their challengers here. Haven't heard any signs yet that they are reducing that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on February 20, 2024, 08:14:51 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 20, 2024, 06:22:56 PMReport today that Ford and Tesla are getting into a price war.

That is something Ford has the resources to outlast.
Ford's Q4/23 figures do not sound like they have more stamina for a price war than Tesla. Or maybe I am missing why you think they could outlast Tesla?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Grey Fox on February 20, 2024, 08:27:37 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 20, 2024, 07:58:10 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on February 20, 2024, 06:59:48 PMWhat's Ford's competing with against the model 3?

The E version of the Mustang, which was just reduced in price.

Interesting choice.  :hmm:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on February 20, 2024, 10:23:47 PM
Quote from: Zanza on February 20, 2024, 08:14:51 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 20, 2024, 06:22:56 PMReport today that Ford and Tesla are getting into a price war.

That is something Ford has the resources to outlast.
Ford's Q4/23 figures do not sound like they have more stamina for a price war than Tesla. Or maybe I am missing why you think they could outlast Tesla?

It's simple really, Ford has higher margin vehicles that drive its profits. Tesla has only this line of vehicles.

Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on February 21, 2024, 03:10:22 AM
BTW Chinese EVs don't seem cheap at all.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: OttoVonBismarck on February 21, 2024, 09:09:18 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on February 20, 2024, 05:39:38 PMTesla can still thrive with lower market share of a much bigger EV market, but their price premiums and thus margins will take a hit.  And that is going to be problem because the stock price is not consistent with any margin erosion.

Tesla is a success story as a small car company that has been able to attain scale and market share and become a larger car company. Tesla is not a success story as a disruptive tech company that is going to dominate a whole new industry akin to Microsoft and personal computing, Google and search, Meta and social media, Apple and mobile phones, Amazon and online retail etc. And the problem is the people who have been speculating on Tesla stock for 10 years have largely done so with the belief Tesla was going to be akin to the latter story, not the story of "successful startup car company that becomes a successful player in the car manufacturing market."

Tesla has the first mover advantage all of those big tech incumbents I mentioned do, but the industry Tesla is in doesn't reward the first movers with the monopolistic power that tech did with those respective technologies.

There is nothing intrinsically bad about being a car manufacturer, and it is a market with a lot of baked in incumbency advantage and very difficult for new players to break into (basically none have since the first half of the 20th century when the car companies started consolidating, with the exception of state backed enterprises.)  So however they achieved it, being able to break into the market is a big accomplishment.

But if your share price is priced like something very different from that, there can be some pain when those realities are reconciled.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on February 21, 2024, 10:02:43 AM
I think Tesla has been the "invest in Elon Musk" stock at least since the pandemic market craziness and will perform accordingly (i.e. not well).
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on February 21, 2024, 12:09:55 PM
Quote from: Tamas on February 21, 2024, 03:10:22 AMBTW Chinese EVs don't seem cheap at all.
US and EU homologation and cost of sales  makes them much more expensive than in their home market.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Gups on February 22, 2024, 09:25:30 AM
Quote from: Tamas on February 21, 2024, 03:10:22 AMBTW Chinese EVs don't seem cheap at all.

They are much cheaper than other EVs of similar size. MG4 and MG5 are a good 20% cheaper than their European, American or Japanese equivalents. Only possible exception is the Dacia Spring but that's quite a bit smaller than he MG4 and has only half its range.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Lucidor on February 24, 2024, 04:06:35 PM
Quote from: Josquius on February 15, 2024, 04:40:43 PMIsn't Lucid just a dodgy stock market pump and dump?
Certainly not...  ;)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on February 24, 2024, 04:29:06 PM
(https://media.tenor.com/E6vMf2BfykIAAAAM/a-g-g-ghost-bender.gif)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on February 24, 2024, 05:40:42 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 20, 2024, 10:23:47 PM
Quote from: Zanza on February 20, 2024, 08:14:51 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 20, 2024, 06:22:56 PMReport today that Ford and Tesla are getting into a price war.

That is something Ford has the resources to outlast.
Ford's Q4/23 figures do not sound like they have more stamina for a price war than Tesla. Or maybe I am missing why you think they could outlast Tesla?

It's simple really, Ford has higher margin vehicles that drive its profits. Tesla has only this line of vehicles.


What do you refer to here? Tesla's BEV vehicles have better margins than Ford's ICE vehicles.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on February 24, 2024, 08:01:03 PM
Quote from: Lucidor on February 24, 2024, 04:06:35 PM
Quote from: Josquius on February 15, 2024, 04:40:43 PMIsn't Lucid just a dodgy stock market pump and dump?
Certainly not...  ;)

:cheers:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on February 26, 2024, 10:10:29 AM
Quote from: Zanza on February 24, 2024, 05:40:42 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 20, 2024, 10:23:47 PM
Quote from: Zanza on February 20, 2024, 08:14:51 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 20, 2024, 06:22:56 PMReport today that Ford and Tesla are getting into a price war.

That is something Ford has the resources to outlast.
Ford's Q4/23 figures do not sound like they have more stamina for a price war than Tesla. Or maybe I am missing why you think they could outlast Tesla?

It's simple really, Ford has higher margin vehicles that drive its profits. Tesla has only this line of vehicles.


What do you refer to here? Tesla's BEV vehicles have better margins than Ford's ICE vehicles.

The price war has just started andTesla has started cutting its prices which will necessarily cut its margins. Ford is cutting its prices on its vehicle not its internal combustion engines.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Jacob on February 26, 2024, 11:18:21 AM
Article saying that the Chinese car industry is well poised at the moment vs European and American companies: https://www.businessinsider.com/china-xi-jinping-crush-tesla-elon-musk-american-ev-industry-2024-2

I guess a big question is how much US will rely on even higher tariffs, and how effective they'll be. Chinese EV manufacturers may set up shop in Mexico to take advantage of local free trade agreements.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on February 26, 2024, 11:26:34 AM
Quote from: Jacob on February 26, 2024, 11:18:21 AMArticle saying that the Chinese car industry is well poised at the moment vs European and American companies: https://www.businessinsider.com/china-xi-jinping-crush-tesla-elon-musk-american-ev-industry-2024-2

I guess a big question is how much US will rely on even higher tariffs, and how effective they'll be. Chinese EV manufacturers may set up shop in Mexico to take advantage of local free trade agreements.

Simply setting up shop in Mexico is not guaranteed end run into the North American free trade zone.  There are unit limits built into the current trade agreement, which would make such a strategy untenable for China and for the existing manufacturers in Mexico.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zanza on February 26, 2024, 11:36:33 AM
Chinese competition catching up fast has been a major theme for about five years, and the decade before that for parts.

From what I've heard, their prime target for exports this and next year will actually not be triad markets (US, WEU, JP), but rather the "global south". The US and EU actually do have quite high non-tariff market entry barriers in addition to tariffs. However, the Chinese will of course be able to overcome these eventually unless additional ones are created just to deter them. But that's tough as the Western car makers still rely heavily on the Chinese market.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on March 05, 2024, 03:53:34 PM
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GH7vUTgW0AA8xa9?format=jpg&name=large)

He's really unhinged.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on March 05, 2024, 03:56:11 PM
Man he really thinks a lot of himself, doesn't he.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Brain on March 05, 2024, 04:08:06 PM
Is that a recent post? Isn't that meme format ancient?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Razgovory on March 05, 2024, 06:10:37 PM
Is that what he thinks he's doing?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on March 06, 2024, 01:52:34 AM
I wish the left had even a fraction of the power these nuts claim to believe it does.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on March 06, 2024, 02:22:06 AM
(https://i.postimg.cc/RZPDP0D3/image.png)

(https://i.postimg.cc/wjbwXG1L/image.png)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Zoupa on March 06, 2024, 03:36:29 AM
Texas Election Code, Art. 276.001 prohibits anyone from directing another person how to vote and from asking how the person voted.  The statute specifically prohibits one who has "authority in the scope of employment" from telling another how to vote.  That means employers.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on March 06, 2024, 06:54:14 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on March 06, 2024, 03:36:29 AMTexas Election Code, Art. 276.001 prohibits anyone from directing another person how to vote and from asking how the person voted.  The statute specifically prohibits one who has "authority in the scope of employment" from telling another how to vote.  That means employers.

Like billionaire snowflakes care. :P
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on March 06, 2024, 11:47:07 PM
Quote from: Zoupa on March 06, 2024, 03:36:29 AMTexas Election Code, Art. 276.001 prohibits anyone from directing another person how to vote and from asking how the person voted.  The statute specifically prohibits one who has "authority in the scope of employment" from telling another how to vote.  That means employers.
Too bad we didn't have that same law in Quebec.  We could have jailed Laurent Beaudoin back in '95.  And a lot of Libs' supporters.  Drain the swamp as they say. :sleep:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on March 08, 2024, 12:48:44 PM
So, I think it's been the last couple years I got into Twitter.  I actually posted a little bit until I got told from my employer not to reveal what my job was (I thought I was just presenting a counter-point to the opposing side, but I do what I am told).

But I'm just astonished how much 100% unapologetic racist shit is showing up in my Twitter feed these days.  Like it's not just a tiny bit.  Like 100% either scientific racism or "great replacement theory" kind of stuff.

I still kind of like what Twitter can do at its best - present a news feed into breaking stories - but it is really kind of hard to swallow the rest of what comes with it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on March 08, 2024, 02:13:13 PM
I've said it before, but it does increasingly seem China had the right idea with their tying of social media to actual IDs.
Abused to hell for dodgy purposes in their case but done by a free country with democratic sensible laws being all that are enforced!
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on March 08, 2024, 04:20:46 PM
Quote from: Josquius on March 08, 2024, 02:13:13 PMI've said it before, but it does increasingly seem China had the right idea with their tying of social media to actual IDs.
Abused to hell for dodgy purposes in their case but done by a free country with democratic sensible laws being all that are enforced!

I am glad as hell that all the dumb shit I said on the internet is thankfully 99% anonymous.

I have already warned my son about going full Fireblade online with it likely to follow him around his whole life.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on March 08, 2024, 05:00:03 PM
Quote from: Barrister on March 08, 2024, 12:48:44 PMI still kind of like what Twitter can do at its best - present a news feed into breaking stories - but it is really kind of hard to swallow the rest of what comes with it.

There are two baseball analysts that I follow that post on twitter.  Otherwise, I would have ditched it completely as substack covers just about everything else of interest, with much more substance and much less stupidity.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on March 08, 2024, 05:01:05 PM
Quote from: Valmy on March 08, 2024, 04:20:46 PM
Quote from: Josquius on March 08, 2024, 02:13:13 PMI've said it before, but it does increasingly seem China had the right idea with their tying of social media to actual IDs.
Abused to hell for dodgy purposes in their case but done by a free country with democratic sensible laws being all that are enforced!

I am glad as hell that all the dumb shit I said on the internet is thankfully 99% anonymous.

I have already warned my son about going full Fireblade online with it likely to follow him around his whole life.

If you knew it was going to be tied to you would you have said such shit though?

Then theres the right to forget laws.

Though for sure I absolutely couldn't be a politician due to stuff said online.
Probably so many examples I can't even remember, maybe where nothing bad was actually meant even, but out of context by enemies... Oh shit.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on March 08, 2024, 05:07:13 PM
Quote from: Josquius on March 08, 2024, 05:01:05 PM
Quote from: Valmy on March 08, 2024, 04:20:46 PM
Quote from: Josquius on March 08, 2024, 02:13:13 PMI've said it before, but it does increasingly seem China had the right idea with their tying of social media to actual IDs.
Abused to hell for dodgy purposes in their case but done by a free country with democratic sensible laws being all that are enforced!

I am glad as hell that all the dumb shit I said on the internet is thankfully 99% anonymous.

I have already warned my son about going full Fireblade online with it likely to follow him around his whole life.

If you knew it was going to be tied to you would you have said such shit though?

Then theres the right to forget laws.

Though for sure I absolutely couldn't be a politician due to stuff said online.
Probably so many examples I can't even remember, maybe where nothing bad was actually meant even, but out of context by enemies... Oh shit.

:shifty:

The friends of Margaret Thatcher will never forget your sins...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on March 12, 2024, 02:44:42 AM
(https://i.postimg.cc/x1VddQSd/image.png)

(https://i.postimg.cc/yN850fqZ/image.png)

 :wacko:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on March 12, 2024, 10:35:37 AM
For a man whose businesses are so dependent on the government (Tesla on EV tax breaks, SpaceX on NASA contracts) you'd think he'd be a lot less partisan in his social media presence...
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Darth Wagtaros on March 13, 2024, 11:19:40 AM
WHy? It just provides him with more outrage porn to share to his fans.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on March 13, 2024, 11:22:54 AM
Quote from: Barrister on March 08, 2024, 12:48:44 PMI still kind of like what Twitter can do at its best - present a news feed into breaking stories - but it is really kind of hard to swallow the rest of what comes with it.
Mastodon is for this.
https://mstdn.ca/explore
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on March 13, 2024, 12:53:52 PM
How are illegal immigrants going to be able to vote?

Is there any issue regarding the border and immigration where they don't just make shit up?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Admiral Yi on March 13, 2024, 01:07:16 PM
Quote from: Valmy on March 13, 2024, 12:53:52 PMHow are illegal immigrants going to be able to vote?

You don't have to show proof of citizenship when your register or when you vote.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Valmy on March 13, 2024, 01:13:50 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 13, 2024, 01:07:16 PM
Quote from: Valmy on March 13, 2024, 12:53:52 PMHow are illegal immigrants going to be able to vote?

You don't have to show proof of citizenship when your register or when you vote.

Oh fuck that. Well sure because unless you are one of the 40% of Americans that actually have a passport there doesn't exist any proof of citizenship. It is rather hard to require people to present a document that does not exist. But there are other ID and residency requirements.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on March 14, 2024, 05:49:29 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 13, 2024, 01:07:16 PM
Quote from: Valmy on March 13, 2024, 12:53:52 PMHow are illegal immigrants going to be able to vote?

You don't have to show proof of citizenship when your register or when you vote.

That's not been true in any of the places I have registered to vote.  Everywhere I've registered has required a proof of US citizenship.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on March 14, 2024, 05:52:11 AM
The only place the illegals boosting the dem vote bit makes the slightest sense is the bulking up the census numbers thus power of certain states explanation.

But this is so abstract and long term that the nuts rarely bother with this one and instead stick to scatter gun easily disprovable lies.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Tamas on March 15, 2024, 08:25:13 AM
Quote from: Josquius on March 14, 2024, 05:52:11 AMThe only place the illegals boosting the dem vote bit makes the slightest sense is the bulking up the census numbers thus power of certain states explanation.

But this is so abstract and long term that the nuts rarely bother with this one and instead stick to scatter gun easily disprovable lies.

Isn't the key about being an illegal is that you are not showing up in any numbers anywhere? Does the US really have illegal immigrants answering census questions?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on March 15, 2024, 09:19:00 AM
Quote from: Tamas on March 15, 2024, 08:25:13 AMIsn't the key about being an illegal is that you are not showing up in any numbers anywhere? Does the US really have illegal immigrants answering census questions?

The Census uses estimated numbers (very controversial on the right) in an attempt to be approximately right rather than precisely wrong.  But the immigrants issue is not so much illegals (despite what the Republican fearmongers claim) but "asylum seekers" who don't and won't qualify for asylum.  US and international law requires that those claiming to seek asylum get a hearing to determine the legitimacy of their claims.  The US immigration system does not have the resources to process those claims swiftly, nor the facilities to detain the asylum claimants while they await adjudication, so the law requires that they be given an immigration court asylum adjudication court date and then be released on their own recognizance.  Something like 86% of them never show up for their hearing, and simply remain illegally (which was almost always the objective to begin with). 

So those are illegal aliens, but there are numbers for them.  My understanding is that the numbers for those are used to estimate the numbers of illegal aliens that do not even attempt to go through the asylum system, but simply sneak into the country.  The accuracy of these estimates is highly controversial, since they are used to determine the annual distribution of federal welfare money and, every ten years after the formal census, the apportionment of congressional districts. 
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on March 15, 2024, 09:19:23 AM
Quote from: Tamas on March 15, 2024, 08:25:13 AM
Quote from: Josquius on March 14, 2024, 05:52:11 AMThe only place the illegals boosting the dem vote bit makes the slightest sense is the bulking up the census numbers thus power of certain states explanation.

But this is so abstract and long term that the nuts rarely bother with this one and instead stick to scatter gun easily disprovable lies.

Isn't the key about being an illegal is that you are not showing up in any numbers anywhere? Does the US really have illegal immigrants answering census questions?

I've heard illegal folk are under represented in the census as though catching them isn't the job of the census people the immigrants  obviously don't trust they won't speak to those whose job it is.
But under represented doesn't mean zero representation. And do know in many censuses where data is obviously wrong they'll estimate.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Barrister on March 15, 2024, 10:54:04 AM
Quote from: Tamas on March 15, 2024, 08:25:13 AM
Quote from: Josquius on March 14, 2024, 05:52:11 AMThe only place the illegals boosting the dem vote bit makes the slightest sense is the bulking up the census numbers thus power of certain states explanation.

But this is so abstract and long term that the nuts rarely bother with this one and instead stick to scatter gun easily disprovable lies.

Isn't the key about being an illegal is that you are not showing up in any numbers anywhere? Does the US really have illegal immigrants answering census questions?

As I understand it there was a minor (or maybe not so minor) controversy when Trump as President was trying to get citizenship added as a question to the US census.  Ultimately he failed, and thus when you take the US census you are not asked if you are a citizen.

As such, Jos has it right - non-citizens are included in the census, which means that non-citizens are counted when it comes to districting.  A state like Texas might thus get more seats in congress by counting illegals than if you only counted citizens.  But that certainly doesn't mean that illegal immigrants are eligible to vote.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: celedhring on March 15, 2024, 11:02:27 AM
Quote from: Josquius on March 15, 2024, 09:19:23 AM
Quote from: Tamas on March 15, 2024, 08:25:13 AM
Quote from: Josquius on March 14, 2024, 05:52:11 AMThe only place the illegals boosting the dem vote bit makes the slightest sense is the bulking up the census numbers thus power of certain states explanation.

But this is so abstract and long term that the nuts rarely bother with this one and instead stick to scatter gun easily disprovable lies.

Isn't the key about being an illegal is that you are not showing up in any numbers anywhere? Does the US really have illegal immigrants answering census questions?

I've heard illegal folk are under represented in the census as though catching them isn't the job of the census people the immigrants  obviously don't trust they won't speak to those who do.
But under represented doesn't mean zero representation. And do know in many censuses where data is obviously wrong they'll estimate.

Over here it's similar. One of the purposes of registration (we don't do a door-to-door census, all the data is extracted from municipal registration) is knowing how many people live in X municipality, in order to better plan services, funding, and such. If they required residency cards and such, thus excluding illegal immigrants, it wouldn't serve that purpose.

Also, illegal immigrants do register quite often since it's required to access services and aid.

There are far right parties that have threatened of policing the registry and report illegal immigrants, but that would be illegal.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on March 15, 2024, 05:30:03 PM
Super champion of free speech, musk, has terminated a contract with Don Lemon on X for asking him mean questions.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on March 15, 2024, 10:00:20 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 13, 2024, 01:07:16 PM
Quote from: Valmy on March 13, 2024, 12:53:52 PMHow are illegal immigrants going to be able to vote?

You don't have to show proof of citizenship when your register or when you vote.
Places like Florida disallow ex-cons from voting.

But they can't check whether or not you are a citizen of the country?  Whether or not you are who you really say you are?  I could spend some time in Florida or Arizona, register on the electoral list as Donald Pence and no one would bother to check if I'm a legal resident of the US and I'm really Donald Pence from the address I give?

This sounds suspicious.

They would know I am a convicted felon, but they would not know I am not a US citizen?  How does that work if there's no ID, no proof of citizenship?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on March 15, 2024, 11:25:16 PM
Quote from: viper37 on March 15, 2024, 10:00:20 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 13, 2024, 01:07:16 PM
Quote from: Valmy on March 13, 2024, 12:53:52 PMHow are illegal immigrants going to be able to vote?

You don't have to show proof of citizenship when your register or when you vote.
Places like Florida disallow ex-cons from voting.

But they can't check whether or not you are a citizen of the country?  Whether or not you are who you really say you are?  I could spend some time in Florida or Arizona, register on the electoral list as Donald Pence and no one would bother to check if I'm a legal resident of the US and I'm really Donald Pence from the address I give?

This sounds suspicious.

They would know I am a convicted felon, but they would not know I am not a US citizen?  How does that work if there's no ID, no proof of citizenship?

Yi might be confusing municipal, possibly state, election voter requirements.  States have to require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, though not to actually vote.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: HVC on March 16, 2024, 09:14:34 AM
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on March 18, 2024, 04:14:42 PM
Musk hasn't reached Mars yet, but already, he's planning to reach other solar systems.

There are visionaries.  There are dreamers.  And then, there are bullshitters.

Elon Musk Says Future SpaceX Starship 'Will Travel To Other Star Systems' After Rocket's Latest Test (https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2024/03/18/elon-musk-says-future-spacex-starship-will-travel-to-other-star-systems-after-rockets-latest-test/?sh=3d07962574a8)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on March 18, 2024, 11:59:44 PM
Is his intent to taint the word starship so if we do one day end up making the enterprise he gets the credit?
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on March 19, 2024, 05:34:52 AM
Quote from: viper37 on March 18, 2024, 04:14:42 PMMusk hasn't reached Mars yet, but already, he's planning to reach other solar systems.

There are visionaries.  There are dreamers.  And then, there are bullshitters.

Elon Musk Says Future SpaceX Starship 'Will Travel To Other Star Systems' After Rocket's Latest Test (https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2024/03/18/elon-musk-says-future-spacex-starship-will-travel-to-other-star-systems-after-rockets-latest-test/?sh=3d07962574a8)

To be fair, he's just arguing that a "future version of starship" will be capable of interstellar travel, not the spaceship they are currently building.  Some future spaceship version will almost certainly do so.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on March 19, 2024, 07:14:23 AM
Quote from: grumbler on March 19, 2024, 05:34:52 AM
Quote from: viper37 on March 18, 2024, 04:14:42 PMMusk hasn't reached Mars yet, but already, he's planning to reach other solar systems.

There are visionaries.  There are dreamers.  And then, there are bullshitters.

Elon Musk Says Future SpaceX Starship 'Will Travel To Other Star Systems' After Rocket's Latest Test (https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2024/03/18/elon-musk-says-future-spacex-starship-will-travel-to-other-star-systems-after-rockets-latest-test/?sh=3d07962574a8)

To be fair, he's just arguing that a "future version of starship" will be capable of interstellar travel, not the spaceship they are currently building.  Some future spaceship version will almost certainly do so.

The closest star is 4.3 light years away.  So at least he got one thing right.   The starship that reaches the next solar system will need to be "a lot more advanced".
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: grumbler on March 19, 2024, 07:32:32 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 19, 2024, 07:14:23 AM
Quote from: grumbler on March 19, 2024, 05:34:52 AM
Quote from: viper37 on March 18, 2024, 04:14:42 PMMusk hasn't reached Mars yet, but already, he's planning to reach other solar systems.

There are visionaries.  There are dreamers.  And then, there are bullshitters.

Elon Musk Says Future SpaceX Starship 'Will Travel To Other Star Systems' After Rocket's Latest Test (https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2024/03/18/elon-musk-says-future-spacex-starship-will-travel-to-other-star-systems-after-rockets-latest-test/?sh=3d07962574a8)

To be fair, he's just arguing that a "future version of starship" will be capable of interstellar travel, not the spaceship they are currently building.  Some future spaceship version will almost certainly do so.

The closest star is 4.3 light years away.  So at least he got one thing right.   The starship that reaches the next solar system will need to be "a lot more advanced".

Yeah.  Seems like a lot of angst for angst's sake that people go nuts over such a truism as his statement.  He says enough dumb things that there's no need to get upset when he says something that is not dumb.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on March 19, 2024, 07:36:41 AM
Quote from: grumbler on March 19, 2024, 07:32:32 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 19, 2024, 07:14:23 AM
Quote from: grumbler on March 19, 2024, 05:34:52 AM
Quote from: viper37 on March 18, 2024, 04:14:42 PMMusk hasn't reached Mars yet, but already, he's planning to reach other solar systems.

There are visionaries.  There are dreamers.  And then, there are bullshitters.

Elon Musk Says Future SpaceX Starship 'Will Travel To Other Star Systems' After Rocket's Latest Test (https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2024/03/18/elon-musk-says-future-spacex-starship-will-travel-to-other-star-systems-after-rockets-latest-test/?sh=3d07962574a8)

To be fair, he's just arguing that a "future version of starship" will be capable of interstellar travel, not the spaceship they are currently building.  Some future spaceship version will almost certainly do so.

The closest star is 4.3 light years away.  So at least he got one thing right.   The starship that reaches the next solar system will need to be "a lot more advanced".

Yeah.  Seems like a lot of angst for angst's sake that people go nuts over such a truism as his statement.  He says enough dumb things that there's no need to get upset when he says something that is not dumb.

I think what people are reacting to is his certainty that it will be his company that does it, if it is done at all.

But that is the one thing that he does bring to the table, he's a good front man.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on March 19, 2024, 07:41:54 AM
A front man for the idea of interstellar travel? :wacko:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on March 19, 2024, 08:48:16 AM
One of the big ironic things about musks statement is that he actively supports a future path that ensures starships from earth never reach distant stars and we will be lucky to be doing more than chucking sticks at each other in 1000 years.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on March 19, 2024, 08:52:42 AM
Quote from: garbon on March 19, 2024, 07:41:54 AMA front man for the idea of interstellar travel? :wacko:

How else is a private corporation going to get the funding necessary to do something that is impossible unless the technology is developed to do so?


An argument can be made that it is an unwise allocation of resources. But that's not a question a modern capitalist society asks.  The only relevant question is whether it gets financial backing.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on March 19, 2024, 09:36:43 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 19, 2024, 08:52:42 AM
Quote from: garbon on March 19, 2024, 07:41:54 AMA front man for the idea of interstellar travel? :wacko:

How else is a private corporation going to get the funding necessary to do something that is impossible unless the technology is developed to do so?


An argument can be made that it is an unwise allocation of resources. But that's not a question a modern capitalist society asks.  The only relevant question is whether it gets financial backing.

I've never spoken to a 'modern capitalist society' so I'm not sure if it has a capacity for asking questions, let alone which sorts of questions it is permitted to ask.  ;)

I do think it made sense when people talk about how he turned electric cars from a fantasy to a reality. I see less that a point in his favor when we are talking space wank of interstellar travel for something that will not happen in our lifetimes. As you mention that necessarily also involves allocation of resources which while electric cars go in the positive, this is decidely in the negative.

Note, before anyone comes in on the vein of 'lot of angst for angst's sake', I wouldn't have paid any mind to what Musk did or did not say about space were it not for these recent posts on it.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Josquius on March 19, 2024, 09:39:55 AM
I do think there's a lot of validity in space tourism as a tech mover towards getting more "useful" space stuff down the line.
If we can bring down launch costs enough it could really open up space based industry, mining, and climate change protections.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: crazy canuck on March 19, 2024, 09:42:56 AM
Quote from: garbon on March 19, 2024, 09:36:43 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 19, 2024, 08:52:42 AM
Quote from: garbon on March 19, 2024, 07:41:54 AMA front man for the idea of interstellar travel? :wacko:

How else is a private corporation going to get the funding necessary to do something that is impossible unless the technology is developed to do so?


An argument can be made that it is an unwise allocation of resources. But that's not a question a modern capitalist society asks.  The only relevant question is whether it gets financial backing.

I've never spoken to a 'modern capitalist society' so I'm not sure if it has a capacity for asking questions, let alone which sorts of questions it is permitted to ask.  ;)

I do think it made sense when people talk about how he turned electric cars from a fantasy to a reality. I see less that a point in his favor when we are talking space wank of interstellar travel for something that will not happen in our lifetimes. As you mention that necessarily also involves allocation of resources which while electric cars go in the positive, this is decidely in the negative.

Note, before anyone comes in on the vein of 'lot of angst for angst's sake', I wouldn't have paid any mind to what Musk did or did not say about space were it not for these recent posts on it.


I agree

I think you misunderstood my post as being complementary to Musk.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: The Minsky Moment on March 19, 2024, 09:47:14 AM
The guy does a lot of drugs, it's as simple as that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on March 19, 2024, 11:36:42 AM
Quote from: garbon on March 19, 2024, 07:41:54 AMA front man for the idea of interstellar travel? :wacko:

(https://video-images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1604490175803-lylelanley2.jpeg)
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: viper37 on March 19, 2024, 11:47:40 AM
Quote from: grumbler on March 19, 2024, 05:34:52 AM
Quote from: viper37 on March 18, 2024, 04:14:42 PMMusk hasn't reached Mars yet, but already, he's planning to reach other solar systems.

There are visionaries.  There are dreamers.  And then, there are bullshitters.

Elon Musk Says Future SpaceX Starship 'Will Travel To Other Star Systems' After Rocket's Latest Test (https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2024/03/18/elon-musk-says-future-spacex-starship-will-travel-to-other-star-systems-after-rockets-latest-test/?sh=3d07962574a8)

To be fair, he's just arguing that a "future version of starship" will be capable of interstellar travel, not the spaceship they are currently building.  Some future spaceship version will almost certainly do so.
Yes, I know, but the way he's talking, he's inferring that it's the next one after that.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: garbon on March 19, 2024, 12:02:04 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 19, 2024, 09:42:56 AM
Quote from: garbon on March 19, 2024, 09:36:43 AM
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 19, 2024, 08:52:42 AM
Quote from: garbon on March 19, 2024, 07:41:54 AMA front man for the idea of interstellar travel? :wacko:

How else is a private corporation going to get the funding necessary to do something that is impossible unless the technology is developed to do so?


An argument can be made that it is an unwise allocation of resources. But that's not a question a modern capitalist society asks.  The only relevant question is whether it gets financial backing.

I've never spoken to a 'modern capitalist society' so I'm not sure if it has a capacity for asking questions, let alone which sorts of questions it is permitted to ask.  ;)

I do think it made sense when people talk about how he turned electric cars from a fantasy to a reality. I see less that a point in his favor when we are talking space wank of interstellar travel for something that will not happen in our lifetimes. As you mention that necessarily also involves allocation of resources which while electric cars go in the positive, this is decidely in the negative.

Note, before anyone comes in on the vein of 'lot of angst for angst's sake', I wouldn't have paid any mind to what Musk did or did not say about space were it not for these recent posts on it.


I agree

I think you misunderstood my post as being complementary to Musk.

I did. :blush:
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Sheilbh on March 22, 2024, 05:09:46 AM
Quote from: Barrister on March 08, 2024, 12:48:44 PMSo, I think it's been the last couple years I got into Twitter.  I actually posted a little bit until I got told from my employer not to reveal what my job was (I thought I was just presenting a counter-point to the opposing side, but I do what I am told).

But I'm just astonished how much 100% unapologetic racist shit is showing up in my Twitter feed these days.  Like it's not just a tiny bit.  Like 100% either scientific racism or "great replacement theory" kind of stuff.

I still kind of like what Twitter can do at its best - present a news feed into breaking stories - but it is really kind of hard to swallow the rest of what comes with it.
I honestly don't see it - but I have almost no followers, very, very rarely Tweet anything and only follow people (a couple of thousand). I think other people have a very different experience.

What I see a lot of is really obvious scams (especially crypto) being promoted. The ones I see are often well known UK celebrities like Martin Lewis or Jeremy Vine apparently warning the banking system's about to crash and you need crypto - and I'm fairly sure (never click the links) they're also phishing.

QuoteIsn't the key about being an illegal is that you are not showing up in any numbers anywhere? Does the US really have illegal immigrants answering census questions?
Same in the UK. The census is of who is in households - here it's an online form. In the UK at least it asks about background, country of origin and other citizenships etc but doesn't ask about immigration status because it's not a tool to police immigration. It's information gathering.

I think there is a belief that we probably undercount because people don't respond - but I think this is also true for legal migrants and the general point that we don't really know how many people are in the UK.
Title: Re: Elon Musk: Always A Douche
Post by: Syt on March 26, 2024, 07:43:45 AM
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/25/elon-musk-hate-speech-lawsuit

QuoteJudge dismisses 'vapid' Elon Musk lawsuit against group that cataloged racist content on X

Center for Countering Digital Hate has chronicled rise of racist, antisemitic and extremist content on X since Musk's acquisition


A judge in California on Monday dismissed the tech billionaire Elon Musk's lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a non-profit that has published reports chronicling the rise of racist, antisemitic and extremist content on X, formerly Twitter, since Musk's acquisition.

The case was dismissed in accordance with the state's anti-Slapp law, which forbids nuisance lawsuits intended to punish the exercise of free speech.

"Sometimes it is unclear what is driving a litigation, and only by reading between the lines of a complaint can one attempt to surmise a plaintiff's true purpose," 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 represents the latter circumstance. This case is about punishing the defendants for their speech."

The dismissal was not unexpected. During a hearing last month, Breyer described parts of Musk's case as one of the "most vapid extensions of law that I've ever heard". Breyer also grilled Musk's lawyers on why the company did not file a defamation lawsuit if it felt that CCDH was making false and damaging claims in its reports.

"You didn't bring a defamation claim," Breyer said. "Now you tell me that, actually, this is even better than a defamation claim. But of course, it's not."


Musk, who has claimed himself a "free speech absolutist", did not immediately comment publicly on the ruling. Musk tweeted last week that the "CCDH is a truly evil organization that just wants to destroy the first amendment under the guise of doing good!"

The CCDH celebrated the ruling, with its CEO, Imran Ahmed, stating that he hoped it would embolden other researchers to hold social media companies accountable. CCDH's lawyer in the case, Roberta Kaplan, praised the decision as a vindication of the organization's mission.

"Today's decision proves that even the world's wealthiest man cannot bend the rule of law to his will," said Kaplan. "We are grateful for the district court's careful and comprehensive opinion, which refuses to allow Elon Musk and X Corp to weaponize the courts to censor good-faith research and reporting."

Musk's X filed suit against CCDH last year, alleging that the organization "intentionally and unlawfully accessed data" through scraping the platform's posts to make its reports. CCDH defended its practices as public data gathering and called the allegations "riddled with legal deficiencies", arguing that the true purpose of the lawsuit was to censor speech that criticized Musk.

"Musk's & X Corp's strategy is to keep this case in court for as long as possible to burden us with spiraling legal costs," CCDH posted on X before the hearing. "This is a clear case of Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation (Slapp) aimed to scare us away from doing research on X."

Since Musk bought Twitter in 2022, later renaming it X, a slew of major advertisers have left the platform amid a documented rise in hate speech on the platform and a shift away from established news outlets to low-quality viral content. Musk has lashed out over the loss of advertisers with a series of lawsuits against groups that monitor hate speech, including suing CCDH in California and a separate suit in Texas against the progressive non-profit Media Matters.

During an onstage event with the New York Times in November, Musk additionally told advertisers who had left the platform to "go fuck yourself".

The lawsuits have concerned rights groups and researchers who see Musk as one of the world's richest people attempting to leverage his immense wealth to silence critics. Musk's efforts also coincide with a Republican campaign targeting anti-disinformation researchers, including lawsuits against organizations such as the Stanford Internet Observatory and University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public.

Musk is meanwhile facing a class-action lawsuit from former X employees, which alleges that the company failed to pay $500m in severance following his takeover of the platform and subsequent mass layoffs.