Miscellaneous news items that don't warrant their own thread

[Pwns]

Oh noes what'll we do if social media is run by billionaires?

A lot of panic over Elon Musk threatening to shut down the Twitter ministry of truth.

[BDKJMU]

Oh noes what'll we do if social media is run by billionaires?

A lot of panic over Elon Musk threatening to shut down the Twitter ministry of truth.

Yep. The 43 billion hostile takeover.
https://www.bloombergquint.com/business ... of-twitter
Maybe twitter will become a bastion of free speech again..

[BDKJMU]

Proof we have a spending, and not a taxing/revenue problem.

The federal government collected a record $2,121,987,000,000 in total taxes through the first six months of fiscal 2022 (October through March), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement.

This also marked the first time that federal tax collections have exceeded $2 trillion in the first half of a fiscal year….

https://www.cnsnews.com/article/washing ... ough-march

[AZGrizFan]

Oh noes what'll we do if social media is run by billionaires?

A lot of panic over Elon Musk threatening to shut down the Twitter ministry of truth.

Yep. The 43 billion hostile takeover.
https://www.bloombergquint.com/business ... of-twitter
Maybe twitter will become a bastion of free speech again..

Fucking morons. That is NOT a hostile takeover, FFS.

[Baldy]

Oh noes what'll we do if social media is run by billionaires?

A lot of panic over Elon Musk threatening to shut down the Twitter ministry of truth.

Who wants to tell Max?

[SDHornet]

Oh noes what'll we do if social media is run by billionaires?

A lot of panic over Elon Musk threatening to shut down the Twitter ministry of truth.

[SDHornet]

Oh noes what'll we do if social media is run by billionaires?

A lot of panic over Elon Musk threatening to shut down the Twitter ministry of truth.

Who wants to tell Max?

[SeattleGriz]

As much as they've been in the news lately, looks as if Fairfax County is getting a new Superintendent. Dr Reid is moving on from our Northshore district. Have no idea if this is a move to more liberal or less. Got this in my email inbox last night.

I will say I was impressed when she replied to an email I sent her. It was in regards to a bomb threat at my son's high school. Apparently the kid the threat was aimed at, was a pretty big bully on campus. Told her that if she was looking for who scrawled the threat, she should probably see who the bully was picking on.

Dear Northshore Community,

Earlier this week, I confirmed that I was a finalist for the superintendent position at Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia. Today, it is with very mixed emotions that I announce I will be leaving this great Northshore School District at the end of June. Earlier this evening, the Fairfax County School Board voted to appoint me as their next superintendent effective July 1.

[Ibanez]

South Carolina is now the latest state to call for a convention to propose amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Gov. Henry McMaster on Wednesday signed into law the bill seeking changes to the Constitution.

State lawmakers tailored their call for a convention to spending checks on the federal government, curbing the federal government’s jurisdiction and power and setting term limits for Congress.

About 18 other states, mostly Republican-led and concentrated in the South, have passed similar proposals.

https://www.live5news.com/2022/04/14/go ... on-states/

15 states to go.

Unless it's an amendment to balance the budget, i'm not sure what you can have regarding spending. This may be a stupid question but does the US Gov't have a true, independent audit? I doubt it.

Term limits are a good idea - look at Feinstein. She's 88 and rotting away in the Senate whereas a younger, more capable person could be in her seat, serving California.

Edit - apparently, there is a website for this effort: https://conventionofstates.com/

[Pwns]

LMAO at Slate.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/0 ... ation.html

[kalm]

South Carolina is now the latest state to call for a convention to propose amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Gov. Henry McMaster on Wednesday signed into law the bill seeking changes to the Constitution.

State lawmakers tailored their call for a convention to spending checks on the federal government, curbing the federal government’s jurisdiction and power and setting term limits for Congress.

About 18 other states, mostly Republican-led and concentrated in the South, have passed similar proposals.

https://www.live5news.com/2022/04/14/go ... on-states/

15 states to go.

Unless it's an amendment to balance the budget, i'm not sure what you can have regarding spending. This may be a stupid question but does the US Gov't have a true, independent audit? I doubt it.

Term limits are a good idea - look at Feinstein. She's 88 and rotting away in the Senate whereas a younger, more capable person could be in her seat, serving California.

Edit - apparently, there is a website for this effort: https://conventionofstates.com/

There’s also a movement that’s been around for awhile, calling for a constitutional amendment regarding corporate personhood.

[kalm]

Oh noes what'll we do if social media is run by billionaires?

A lot of panic over Elon Musk threatening to shut down the Twitter ministry of truth.

Hardly new but yet still not great for a truly free press. As implied by the author…Musk seems to have the emotional maturity of Trump…or the average 7 year old.

Of course, just because something is exceedingly dumb doesn’t mean it’s not news. When the world’s richest man embarks on a ten-day saga to take over a publicly traded company that, for better or worse (worse!), has a profound influence on our media and politics, in order to rebuild it to fit his unsophisticated vision of free-speech maximalism, it is decidedly newsworthy. And yet other than his grand gesture, most everything about the Musk news is speculative. Musk, just yesterday, hinted that he might not have secured the funding for this particular bid. A Wall Street Journal story also suggests that it would be exceedingly hard for Musk to unlock the money he has from shares in Tesla and SpaceX in order to fund the purchase. It’s also entirely possible not only that Twitter rejects the bid, but also that the company makes it more difficult for him to purchase more stock in the company. Also, prominent Twitter shareholders are already out there tweeting rejections of his offer. So this entire circus may be nothing more than an attention spectacle………..

The comparison is not perfect (and lord knows Musk himself has pushed meme stocks before in big ways), but the plays for Twitter by Musk and others remind me of Robinhood investing, only this time for the superrich. Musk seems to have very little actual vision for Twitter (as evidenced by a TED Talk interview he did yesterday, where he and his interviewer, Chris Anderson, tripped over basic concepts of free speech and hate speech). Many of the changes Musk says he wants to make to Twitter are actually things Twitter currently does (though maybe not with the consistency he desires).


I take Musk at his word that he doesn’t love the way Twitter is run, but ultimately what he’s trying to do is more about exercising power than anything else. In a piece about the GameStop saga, the New York Times’ Kevin Roose quoted theorist Martin Gurri, who suggested the behavior of Reddit investors was “a kind of vengeful nihilism, an urge to burn down the establishment without a clear sense of what’s supposed to replace it.” To me, Musk’s attempt sounds quite a bit more in line with Gurri’s quote than a bunch of Redditors logging into Robinhood.

Musk and his admirers and contemporaries in Silicon Valley refuse to see themselves as part of any establishment (despite the fact that they very much benefit from the thing they now wish to tear down).

https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/gal ... XAx-92roRg

[AZGrizFan]

Hardly new but yet still not great for a truly free press. As implied by the author…Musk seems to have the emotional maturity of Trump…or the average 7 year old.

Of course, just because something is exceedingly dumb doesn’t mean it’s not news. When the world’s richest man embarks on a ten-day saga to take over a publicly traded company that, for better or worse (worse!), has a profound influence on our media and politics, in order to rebuild it to fit his unsophisticated vision of free-speech maximalism, it is decidedly newsworthy. And yet other than his grand gesture, most everything about the Musk news is speculative. Musk, just yesterday, hinted that he might not have secured the funding for this particular bid. A Wall Street Journal story also suggests that it would be exceedingly hard for Musk to unlock the money he has from shares in Tesla and SpaceX in order to fund the purchase. It’s also entirely possible not only that Twitter rejects the bid, but also that the company makes it more difficult for him to purchase more stock in the company. Also, prominent Twitter shareholders are already out there tweeting rejections of his offer. So this entire circus may be nothing more than an attention spectacle………..

The comparison is not perfect (and lord knows Musk himself has pushed meme stocks before in big ways), but the plays for Twitter by Musk and others remind me of Robinhood investing, only this time for the superrich. Musk seems to have very little actual vision for Twitter (as evidenced by a TED Talk interview he did yesterday, where he and his interviewer, Chris Anderson, tripped over basic concepts of free speech and hate speech). Many of the changes Musk says he wants to make to Twitter are actually things Twitter currently does (though maybe not with the consistency he desires).


I take Musk at his word that he doesn’t love the way Twitter is run, but ultimately what he’s trying to do is more about exercising power than anything else. In a piece about the GameStop saga, the New York Times’ Kevin Roose quoted theorist Martin Gurri, who suggested the behavior of Reddit investors was “a kind of vengeful nihilism, an urge to burn down the establishment without a clear sense of what’s supposed to replace it.” To me, Musk’s attempt sounds quite a bit more in line with Gurri’s quote than a bunch of Redditors logging into Robinhood.

Musk and his admirers and contemporaries in Silicon Valley refuse to see themselves as part of any establishment (despite the fact that they very much benefit from the thing they now wish to tear down).

https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/gal ... XAx-92roRg

Man. You REALLY hate successful people, don’t you?

[kalm]

Hardly new but yet still not great for a truly free press. As implied by the author…Musk seems to have the emotional maturity of Trump…or the average 7 year old.




https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/gal ... XAx-92roRg

Man. You REALLY hate successful people, don’t you?

I don’t like or dislike people based on their “success”.

[AZGrizFan]

Man. You REALLY hate successful people, don’t you?

I don’t like or dislike people based on their “success”.

Well you’re posting authors who certainly do.

[Pwns]

I try to avoid conspiratorial thinking, but you can't at least be suspicious that the admin is trying to keep Elon Musk from buying Twitter.

[SDHornet]

I try to avoid conspiratorial thinking, but you can't at least be suspicious that the admin is trying to keep Elon Musk from buying Twitter.

The Twitter bid by Musk is a good follow. The Twitter Board of Directors basically voted in special rules in which they can dilute Twitter stock by issuing it out at a below market value rate so that Musks bid wouldn't be the majority of shares...

...basically telling the shareholder that yeah, we don't care if you lose money on your investment if it keeps Musk away from majority ownership.

Speculation is that this will trigger lawsuits. We'll see how this plays out, but seeing who is arguing against the Twitter takeover by Musk (anti-free speech folks) is really something to see.

The other interesting tid bit is if the sale goes through, how much of how Twitter censored and why could put some of the Twitter folks in hot water as they testified to Congress that they didn't engage in censorship. So they could be thwarting the sale just to keep their asses safe from perjury charges.

What a tangled web the Musk takeover of Twitter will be.

[kalm]

I don’t like or dislike people based on their “success”.

Well you’re posting authors who certainly do.

Why would I care about who a writer hates as long as the story is based in fact? I can read it, and form my own opinion.

Musk is an awkward attention whore who likes to flex and say shitty some things. IMO he’s gone from edgy cool mysterious inventor guy (who doesn’t appreciate wizardry?) to douchey ego driven celeb rather quickly.

[Baldy]

Well you’re posting authors who certainly do.

Why would I care about who a writer hates as long as the story is based in fact? I can read it, and form my own opinion.

Musk is an awkward attention whore who likes to flex and say shitty some things. IMO he’s gone from edgy cool mysterious inventor guy (who doesn’t appreciate wizardry?) to douchey ego driven celeb rather quickly.

Actually, he is showing to be more edgy cool fascinatingly mysterious than he ever was before. The Left is just big mad now because they always assumed he was solidly on their team.

[kalm]

Why would I care about who a writer hates as long as the story is based in fact? I can read it, and form my own opinion.

Musk is an awkward attention whore who likes to flex and say shitty some things. IMO he’s gone from edgy cool mysterious inventor guy (who doesn’t appreciate wizardry?) to douchey ego driven celeb rather quickly.

Actually, he is showing to be more edgy cool fascinatingly mysterious than he ever was before. The Left is just big mad now because they always assumed he was solidly on their team.

I didn’t mention ideology…just speaking from my observations. I listened to a couple of his early Rogan interviews and never assumed him to be anything politically.

Still not sure if he is.

But thanks for sharing.

[Baldy]

Actually, he is showing to be more edgy cool fascinatingly mysterious than he ever was before. The Left is just big mad now because they always assumed he was solidly on their team.

I didn’t mention ideology…just speaking from my observations. I listened to a couple of his early Rogan interviews and never assumed him to be anything politically.

Still not sure if he is.

But thanks for sharing.

Thanks for helping me prove the point.

The Left didn't really assume him to be anything politically (though they view everything politically) because they always took it for granted that Musk was solidly on their team. Musk is undergoing same treatment that Bill Maher and Glenn Greenwald faced when they showed any semblance of pragmatism.

[kalm]

I didn’t mention ideology…just speaking from my observations. I listened to a couple of his early Rogan interviews and never assumed him to be anything politically.

Still not sure if he is.

But thanks for sharing.

Thanks for helping me prove the point.

The Left didn't really assume him to be anything politically (though they view everything politically) because they always took it for granted that Musk was solidly on their team. Musk is undergoing same treatment that Bill Maher and Glenn Greenwald faced when they showed any semblance of pragmatism.

Maybe you should share your grievances with “the left” then.

I judge based on actual words rather than labels. If Greenwald stops making sense, he stops making sense. Regardless of ideology.

If Rick Wilson or Ben Sasse make sense on an issue, they make sense. Regardless of ideology.

Best of luck!

[Baldy]

Thanks for helping me prove the point.

The Left didn't really assume him to be anything politically (though they view everything politically) because they always took it for granted that Musk was solidly on their team. Musk is undergoing same treatment that Bill Maher and Glenn Greenwald faced when they showed any semblance of pragmatism.

Maybe you should share your grievances with “the left” then.

I judge based on actual words rather than labels. If Greenwald stops making sense, he stops making sense. Regardless of ideology.

If Rick Wilson or Ben Sasse make sense on an issue, they make sense. Regardless of ideology.

Best of luck!

This is true...as long as their words align with the appropriate label.

[kalm]

Maybe you should share your grievances with “the left” then.

I judge based on actual words rather than labels. If Greenwald stops making sense, he stops making sense. Regardless of ideology.

If Rick Wilson or Ben Sasse make sense on an issue, they make sense. Regardless of ideology.

Best of luck!

This is true...as long as their words align with the appropriate label.

That must be a weird way to operate but again…best of luck!

[AZGrizFan]

Well you’re posting authors who certainly do.

Why would I care about who a writer hates as long as the story is based in fact? I can read it, and form my own opinion.

Musk is an awkward attention whore who likes to flex and say shitty some things. IMO he’s gone from edgy cool mysterious inventor guy (who doesn’t appreciate wizardry?) to douchey ego driven celeb rather quickly.

Yet you parroted his comment that “Musk has the emotional maturity of Trump”.

They aren’t in the same universe. The fact you don’t LIKE what he says doesn’t automatically make him another Trump. so face it, you really just don’t like successful people.