Listen to the whole context. He's responding to Joe's prompt to tell us why he bought Twitter, and —warning that it would sound melodramatic — he says he thought that Twitter had taken the mindset of the San Francisco area and amplified it and made it dominant to the point where all life on Earth was in danger. There's quite a lot of talk of the "Extinctionist" movement, and the phrase "death cult" is used repeatedly.
"If you take environmentalism to an extreme," Musk says, "You start to view humanity as a plague on the surface of the earth, like a mold or something." He asserts that the Earth could do well with 10 times as many people as we have now.
ADDED: Musk goes on to talk about AI: "If AI gets programmed by the Extinctionists, it's utility function will be the extinction of humanity."
AND: He asserts that Twitter had become "an arm of the government" — "a state publication." But: "Old Twitter was completely controlled by the far left." I think I see his point, but those statements don't fit together. The government is not the far left, so both can't be in complete control.
ALSO: "San Francisco/Berkeley is a niche ideology.... Is there a place that's more far left?... From their standpoint, everything is to the right...," Musk says. Twitter was an "accidental far-left information weapon" because the technology happened to develop in that geographic area, and then people who couldn't have created the "weapon" were nevertheless there — "co-located" — where they could pick up the weapon and make it their own.
That made me think of the old adage attributed to Napoleon: "The tools belong to the man who can use them." That seems applicable here. And then there's also the old Audre Lorde line which seems to say the opposite of what was happing at Old Twitter: "The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house."
BUT: "The tools belong to the man who can use them," but here, the tool that was once called Twitter belonged to the far-left denizens of San Francisco/Berkeley, but Musk arrived on the scene with enough money to buy it from them.
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I interpret this as subcultures that are now fully derived from fantasy fiction. See the plots of Logan's Run and Brave New World:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan%27s_Run_(film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World
When a culture purges its religious traditions and ends the "be fruitful and multiply" mandate, fiction fills the vacuum as its guiding principles.
Humans are silly monkeys that wear clothes. Some of them are evolutionary dead-enders who manipulate those "beneath them" as they enjoy one final orgy.
See Zardoz:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zardoz
Ann,
I asked you yesterday, or the day before, how are you thought Twitter got invaded by NewAge liberals, and what that was about? He's telling you. If he knew how to elaborate on it, as I do, he would go into talking about all the connecting fibers NewAge has out there. You guys can't even catch on to chiropractic enough to outlaw it, and it's not even as extreme in it's implications as homeopathy, so what good are y'all? Most Americans couldn't stop fraud if they tried. They are permanent audience members to PT Barnum.
And the whole thing is just out of control.
That is an amazing clip. When I hear the far-left environmentalists talking about Man vs. Nature and casting humans as villains, my reply is that Man is Nature. We are part of nature. We came up out of the earth like all the rest of it. That seems to be lost to the far-left progressives.
Ann,
The first thing he mentions was Twitter's "corrosive" effect, which is also how I remember describing NewAge to you.
He 'gets' it - he just doesn't know what he's got. If you remember that Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple were the epicenter for what we think of as the "San Francisco" way of life - basically, the reason why people say things like "only in San Francisco" - then Elon's talk about a death cult, beaming its ideas to the rest of us, makes more sense. It also fits in with what I've been saying about Harvey Milk's stolen election and the long-term implications of that. Jim Jones was the one who stole it.
Pope John Paul II made the same point. He called it the Culture of Death.
Elon has quickly become one of the leading public conservative intellectuals and it has cost him billions.
Joe Rogan mentions "oppressing any opposing viewpoints," which is exactly what I said happened to me there - and which is happening here, since the Israeli war started. The people running around on this blog, calling everyone an antisemite, are acting exactly like the cultists of San Francisco.
I like how he worries about sounding melodramatic, about cult shit the rest of you don't understand, as all of you continually attack me for being melodramatic, about cult shit the rest of you don't understand.
Elon is correct, as usual. SanFran is teetering on the brink of barbarism, as are many other former communities where so-called progressives rule. Unfortunately for the civilized communities that remain, the rot metastasizes. Case in point. If we could contain islands of savagery, and insulate ourselves and our communities, perhaps we could tolerate leftism, but all evidence points to the intolerability of that pernicious delusion.
"The dismissing of legitimate Scientists" sounds like something a group of NewAgers would do - as they host a new seminar with Deepak Chopra.
Matt Taibbi gets audited for investigating the Twitter files, but nobody thinks of NewAgers in government. Brilliant.
He's not wrong.
Elon. Elon is not wrong.
I don't know if Musk is really a Dem or Rep or MAGA. He's his own man. A John Galt needed in out time.
What he said about Soros is 100% correct. Soros hates civilization. Has fundamentally changed American cities by installing liberal prosecutors to purposefully be soft on crime. Milwaukee's very own John Chisholm who has helped lead Milwaukee's sad deterioration. Soros prosecutors also believe in lawfare. Chisholm harassed Scott Walker and his supporters with the bullshit John Doe investigations. Wisconsin liberals cheered.
I am now at the 10 minute mark in the video, and he isn't saying anything that I haven't told you guys, already. But - as an outsider to SF - he doesn't understand how it all connects together through the NewAge religion. He can't see that it's the belief system that's greasing the wheels.
"You start to view humanity as a plague on the surface of the earth"
He is correct. That's what deep ecology has always meant.
Progs are now splitting over the selective antisemitic Muslim death cult. How will they deal with the deeper split over the antihuman death cult, assuming not all of them want humans to be extinguished just yet?
I'm not too worried about AI but I can tell you what, the next Pizza I'm getting is double anchovy double pineapple
Musk is trying to reform humanity. His explanation for buying twitter fits this goal, but it's disappointing in that I thought he had more of a vision for twitter than just "not a left-wing propaganda tool." I mean, I'm glad it's no longer a left-wing propaganda tool, but when you look at his other projects, that goal seems disappointingly pedestrian.
He may be technically right that the earth could easily hold 10X as many people (the urbanization movement already has our much larger population occupying less space), but it would have to be very carefully managed to ensure we don't starve or go to war over water. I'm not sure we could pull it off under conditions the mass of people would agree to.
I am so tired of the turds in the commentariat who are gloating that Musk has lost money, when he has said time and time again it's not about the money, it's about "righting the ship". Are you really that shallow? My sentiment is the same as Musk expressed here, they can go to hell.
He’s soft pedaling it. Prominent celebrated environmentalists openly say people are the problem. Malthusians infest the movement and hold high political office. One need not “take it to the extreme” when they openly proclaim CO2 is a pollutant. It is a necessary part of the respiration cycle for both humans and green plants. The policies that environmental dumbasses have forced upon states have made electric grids unstable. Life sustaining modernity itself is threatened by their boneheaded policies.
“Silent Spring” was a lie. “The Population Bomb” was a lie. These are the foundational texts of luddites who have been responsible for as much death and suffering as most wars in history. Musk is going easy on these people.
So much there and unfortunately not melodramatic and certainly not inaccurate. It was probably hard to see where some of you live but in Boston or really any major US city it was easy to witness the local culture being crowded out in favor of importing the SF mindset.
For our resident lefties Musk never mentions an interest in the X’s share price.
Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb in 1968.all sorts of apocalyptic predictions for the 70s and 80s due to over population. Massive famine! Disease! Pestilence! Misery! (cue the banjo music)
World population in 1968 was 3.5 billion
World population in 2023 is 2.2 times more at 8.0 billion
Is there any qualitative or quantitative metric by which the people of earth are NOT better off?
Would humanity be better or worse off with another doubling by 2070?
John Henry
I would find Elon a lot more convincing if he had a weird hairdo, lots of piercings and tattoos, and screamed at the sky.
It would show he really felt deeply about what he was saying.
Crack,
I tend to agree with you on chiropractic, vitamins and some other stuff. I definitely agree with you about homeopathy.
But who are you or anyone else to say they should be outlawed?
My body, my choice.
John Henry
Musk also said a 100x100 mile solar farm could power the entire United States.
I say we just make all of Dane County, WI (home of Madison) one giant solar farm. Take the land via eminent domain. Relocate every one to downtown San Francisco.
I'm sure the Ivory Tower liberals in Madison would be happy to give up their land to achieve net zero.
So much there and unfortunately not melodramatic and certainly not inaccurate. It was probably hard to see where some of you live but in Boston or really any major US city it was easy to witness the local culture being crowded out in favor of importing the SF mindset.
For our resident lefties Musk never mentions an interest in the X’s share price.
To me populating Mars is a kookier idea than buying X to try and save civilization. Look how far many moderate people here were full on in it…
If only Elon Musk had the clarity of vision possessed by our resident genius Crack. If Crack's brain were half as well developed as his ego, he would rule the fucking world. Damn New Agers!
Well, he's right.
"But: 'Old Twitter was completely controlled by the far left.' I think I see his point, but those statements don't completely fit together. The government is not the far left, so both can't be in complete control. "
If the Far Left is in complete control of the government, and the government was in complete control of Old Twitter, the statements fit together rather comfortably.
Gotta remember Trump is just a New York Democrat.
Yeah, the 'government' is far left.
People's Republic of Madison is not Anywhere U.S.A.
"The government is not the far left..." Whoa!
But we DO only have 10 years!
The musings of Enigma and Crack are making me think of that movie (Modern Romance, I think it was) where Albert Brooks works as a Hollywood film editor doing the foley sound effects on a cheesy science fiction movie starring George Kennedy.
Thanks for the chuckle.
Musk is at least partly correct. You could take every single person on Earth today, and spread out so they could not touch each other, and they would still all fit into Massachusetts -- with room to spare.
36 sqft per person x 43,560 sqft/ac = 1210 people/ac
1210 people/ac x 640 ac/sqmi = 774,400 people/sqmi
Massachusetts is 10,565 sqmi
774,400 people/sqmi x 10,565 sqmi = 8.18 billion people
World population estimated as of *today* is 8.07 billion people.
Ann said,...
"The government is not the far left, so both can't be in complete control."
They can if NewAges are in government. And we know NewAgers are in government. The Vice President used to date Montel Williams.
The federal government may not be completely far left, but it is very considerably left of center. The Venn diagram (Kamala loves those! hahaha) looks like an eclipse just prior to total.
He asserts that Twitter had become "an arm of the government" — "a state publication." But: "Old Twitter was completely controlled by the far left." I think I see his point, but those statements don't completely fit together. The government is not the far left, so both can't be in complete control.
He makes no assertion the government is the far left does he? An ‘arm’ is an equivalent or de facto, not a declaration of formal equivalence. Far left could control old Twitter and still be an arm of government.
Dave Begley said...
"Pope John Paul II made the same point. He called it the Culture of Death.
Elon has quickly become one of the leading public conservative intellectuals and it has cost him billions."
I've just started using X and by all appearances, it was well worth the price. Most viewpoints are allowed their space to tweet, or whatever it's called - post, I guess - kind of like here. If both sides are unhappy about the other side getting its say, then I say it's successful.
It’s too soon for the anti-Musk psy-ops but make no mistake they’re coming. When were the covid lockdowns- March? Expect them by March…
"Arm of the government"
Like
Google
Comcast-NBC
PBS
NPR
NYT
WaPo
etc...
ENVIRONMENTALISM? Revealed: the racy novel written by the world's most powerful climate scientist
Return to Almora, published in Dr Pachauri’s native India,...tells the story of Sanjay Nath, an academic in his 60s reminiscing on his "spiritual journey" through India, Peru and the US. On the way he encounters, among others, Shirley MacLaine, the actress, who appears as a character in the book. While relations between Sanjay and MacLaine remain platonic, he enjoys sex – a lot of sex – with a lot of women.
If you study cults long enough, you realize their members have a lot of problems with sex. Al Gore even got tripped up by it. It's almost a "tell" that exposes them.
Many of you have called me wrong from the first day I got here, but Elon is right, when we're saying the same things. Amazing.
The government is not the far left?
Well the government certainly uses the far left to control, manipulate and spread their preferred narratives.
Maddow is far left. all of MSNBC is far left. Is there a larger TV mouthpiece for the democrat party?
John henry said...
"Who are you or anyone else to say they should be outlawed?
My body, my choice."
We are not going to be able to control our society until we put some parameters around reality. Rolling back nonsense is one way we can do that. We're already taking medicines that don't work off of our Pharmacy shelves. That should start with homeopathy. Getting rid of chiropractic would make a lot of sense because they are the ones who recommend and prescribe a lot of this nonsense. All we have to do is work our way around the low-hanging fruit and we could get a handle on things. But we can't go on the way we have: We are literally losing to our own stupidity.
Twitter had become the far left's right hand...right?
Lemme explain, so it's like...the government is the left's right arm and...and...the left's right arm is talking out of both sides of its mouth and that mouth was Twitter.
Okay, see what I mean is, it's like the Twitter was like this ventriloquist dummy sitting on the left's knee and the left's right arm was shoved up its butt, the dummy's butt, and was making its lips move, but it was really the left like, throwing it's voice, right? No. I'm serious...it sounds fucked up because it is fucked up.
But then Elon came along and bought the dummy and now it's like anyone can shove their arm up the dummy's butt and move its mouth...which is pretty cool, but is not without problems...like wear and tear on the dummy's butt with all those arms going in and out has got to be an issue, right? but I'm not a tech guy, obviously, so I don't know how they handle that.
Along the same lines as Elon's comment, I recommend to everyone here in the Althouse community the recent speech of the comedian/intellectual Konstantin Kisin. It is on X @TRIGGERnometry.
I will say Kisin's speech is Churchillian; from a Soviet Jewish immigrant.
does Any of this seem Untrue?
Anyone?
I wonder what Hitler meant when he wrote in Mein Kampf about eliminating Jews.
Its a mystery.
I stand w Isreal. Leftists, Mullahs, Hamas-Palistinian terrorists can suck it said...
"Arm of the government"
Like
Google
Comcast-NBC
PBS
NPR
NYT
WaPo
etc...
"Though you may not know it, you live in Louise Hay’s world. Are you a black man who thinks psychics are nonsense but reads the affirmations of Tavis Smiley? Hay House has a special imprint just for Smiley. Are you a TV-loathing snob who occasionally condescends to watch PBS? The pledge-drive specials that Hay House has produced for Wayne (“Inspiration: Your Ultimate Calling”) Dyer have helped raise more than $100 million for public television — they are one of PBS’s most-successful fund-raising tools."
- Mark Oppenheimer, writing about Louise Hay ("The Queen of the New Age") in the New York Times.
God bless Elon. He is the messenger that can’t be ignored telling on the plans of Depopulator Cult of the World Governance guys.
Maybe the intentional world famine they planned to come after the bio weapon attack can be stopped now.
Not to worry, there will be another ice age along shortly (in geologic terms) to take care of any excess population.
Both antifa and BLM are, in slightly different ways, shock troops for the Swamp. The only way to carry out the woke agenda is to give power to government bureaucracies, and restrict or outright deny the old constitutional rights: speech, freedom of religion, assembly, property and due process. Meanwhile the policy of open borders clearly overwhelms the present welfare state, making it more difficult to deliver schools, welfare, law and order, parks or much of anything. It might seem justified to shift resources from all those things and focus on indoctrination.
Ann said:
AND: He asserts that Twitter had become "an arm of the government" — "a state publication." But: "Old Twitter was completely controlled by the far left." I think I see his point, but those statements don't completely fit together. The government is not the far left, so both can't be in complete control.
It of course depends on how one defines "far left."
Our Government, and its employees, largely exist to ensure that Government expands in terms of power, control and influence. No sizable aspect of the U.S. Government supports limitations on Government size, power, budget, etc.
This is a "far left" philosophy. Some call it "fascism." All is controlled by Government, nothing exists outside of Government influence and control. And anyone who challenges the power and control of Government is harassed, sued, regulated, audited and relentlessly prosecuted into prison and/or bankruptcy.
This is the far, far left. It is our Government. They are one in the same.
"but Musk arrived on the scene with enough money to buy it from them."
I wish he'd buy the New York Times.
The other important topic missed was the fact that Elon Musk renewed his caged match challenge to Zuckerberg anywhere anytime any rules. I think though that they came to the conclusion that the Las Vegas Sphere would be even more spectacular than the Roman Colosseum as a venue.
I think the most important thing from their conversation is that both these guys are engaged in our modern era and are happy and enjoy living life to the fullest. That is the most important message.
If you're bitter miserable angry seeking vengeance then your opponents have already won.
"The government is not the far left,"
They're certainly pretty far left.
Twitter was an arm of the government.
Twitter was controlled by the far-left.
That doesn’t make the entire government far-left. But it does mean Twitter took the most far-left approach to everything the government directed it to do.
Many of you have called me wrong from the first day I got here
Who ever said you were wrong about this? (Actually I can't rule out someone's having called you wrong. I don't read every comment on every post. But I certainly don't recall "wrong" being anyone's criticism.)
You're not Cassandra. You're (often) more like me in a Mood, angry because my current hobbyhorse, however worthy, doesn't get my husband to spring into action.
..."The government is not the far left, so both can't be in complete control. "
Ha ha ha. You know Ms. Althouse, sometimes you really crack me up.
- Donald Trump had the most cooperative political environment enjoyed by a President, ever.
- Matt Taibbi didn't get an unannounced home visit while he was enjoying hostile and insulting questioning in front of Progressive Liberal Democrats in Congress.
- Dozens of right-leaning Republicans haven't had the FBI Swat teams bust down their doors and storm their homes, placing them under arrest - for misdemeanors.
- Scores of parents haven't been characterized by the Justice Department as potential Domestic Terror suspects, as a result of attending school board meetings to ask why their pre-pubescent children are being taught homosexual sex practices in the classroom, with transvestites reading gay fairy tales in the library.
- Hundreds of right-leaning Republican organizations seeking non-profit status in the Tea Party days weren't persecuted and unreasonably refused using double standards, by the IRS, which stonewalled Congressional investigation and award a fat pension to Lois Lerner, head fascist.
How long is the list? Now show me the Hard-Right government, and its controlling actions.
I'd trust any guy who can date Amber Heard and Grimes and still finish a complete thought.
Interesting conversation. Note that, unlike the Rogan interviews with the former Twitter executives whom he bought out, Musk didn't have to bring some soft-serve fascist lawyer to do the talking for him.
The government is not the far left, so both can't be in complete control.
I take your point, and there is not perfect overlap, but the far Left is in control—either personnel-wise or policy-wise or both—of large swaths of federal and state government.
Step back and look at immigration. In what substantive way is the open border free-for-all any different than exactly what the far left wants? Look at the institutionalization of woke ideology in the government. Again, how does this diverge from left wing utopia? Look at the legal-judicial-criminal sphere at the state and municipal level where cash bail is gone and not only is there no serious effort to curtail various forms of crime, especially by certain demographics, but the government is encouraging the antisocial breakdown. I could go on and on …
Now I agree that contrary examples exist; however, the government is a great ship of state (like the Titanic, lol) and even with a consistent input in one direction from the helm perturbing its course, the great hull can only change its orientation slowly, by increment, as it cuts a path through the real world over time.
And therefore my assertion is that the left to far left is functionally in control of all of government, and the culture, big business, education and academia, the media, but even with the rigorous assertion of that control, where leftist dreams make contact with reality, the mundane details of life have checked its advance—it certainly hasn’t been the Republicans.
Elon fucks up from time-to-time. Elon gets up everytime. Elon sees what needs to be done. Elon gets things done. I hope Elon has VERY GOOD Security.
"The government is not the far left, so both can't be in complete control."
Unless the far left is in complete control of the part of the government that was in complete control of Twitter. That doesn't seem too unlikely. The far left gets to pick and choose. We don't shoot them on sight, the way we should. Like poisonous snakes. No point in waiting to see what they do. We know what they do.
Musk failed in the most basic task, to comprehend the business model of the business he was buying. Twitter was never in the free speech business. It was in the advertising business. The advertisers paid the bills and paid for free speech only for their own ads. What the users, aka the products, wanted wasn't their concern. Remember, if you aren't paying, you're the product. Products don't have rights.
Now that he's chased off the paying customers, he's belatedly trying to invent a new business model for social media where the users pay with money rather than by viewing ads. But that would require people to value social media enough to pay for it.
Maybe 1% might; but social media grew precisely because it was good enough to be worth bothering with, only because it's free. Add a subscription and you lose most of the users, and lose the network effects, and the whole thing collapses in a heap. But go ahead Elon, waste more money discovering the obvious.
Lots of content from Musk, and I will listen to the podcast. Musk is a human supremacist, which is a thread in civilization that has up to now been dominant, except for its subordination to the moderating principles of religion, with religion's recognition of a higher realm, transcendent truth, the fallible human condition, and moral duties.
Without moderating principles, human supremacists are limited only by their belief in science, and by whatever aesthetic imperatives are currently in vogue. Not enough humility, I fear.
So the communists sold Elon Musk the rope with which to hang them?
I see that Crack is bombing the thread again.
Blogger Pm said...
The government is not the far left, so both can't be in complete control.
I take your point, and there is not perfect overlap, but the far Left is in control—either personnel-wise or policy-wise or both—of large swaths of federal and state government.
Agreed and Musk is right about the climate hysteria. If allowed to continue, it would lead to extinction after chaos.
I think that you've got it wrong, the government IS the far left, they seem to have the same goals.
Crack - I don't think everything on PBS is hot garbage. I do know PBS "news" is hot garbage... and yes I agree - "Frontline' is super lava hot garbage... 100% Stalinist Democrat Party propaganda.
New age = post modernism?
Post Modernism
"Musk failed in the most basic task, to comprehend the business model of the business he was buying. "
What part of 'it's not about the money' are you incapable of understanding?
If new chief executive Linda Yaccarino is to be believed, X has at least clawed its way back to being close to break-even. Considering how much effort has gone into reducing costs, the fact that the business may almost be breaking even is pretty embarrassing. The business must be a shell of its former self.
At the start of this month it was reported Twitter is now worth around $8bn, well down on the amount spent to buy the platform, and less than the total debt taken out to help fund the purchase. While it has survived longer than some expected/hoped, it's not on a sustainable footing.
https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/elon-musks-x-is-black-hole-value-2023-10-03/
Death Cult seems overwrought. But what term would one apply to an environmental movement that is intent on banning all carbon-based energy sources (coal, oil and gas) and has effectively blocked replacing it with nuclear energy for the last 50 years?
They mandate electrification of the entire transportation grid and home heating, but no one seems to respond to real world questions about how solar and wind will support that (except with "Global Warming Denier!" insults). The political leaders of every Blue State are going along with all of it, no questions asked.
Aggie said...
"..."The government is not the far left, so both can't be in complete control. "
Ha ha ha. You know Ms. Althouse, sometimes you really crack me up."
She's looking at this through a different lens. She hasn't had to deal with fedgov.org as an adversary. She's workrd in academea her whole career so anything to the right of Chomsky is considered right wing.
I have spent varying amounts of time in all of America's Major West Coast cities (San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle) and I've always found Portland to be the most far-left, because the rest of the state was KKK and is still pretty far-right, so the left works harder at it. Like Austin, Texas, they put up signs that say "Keep Portland weird" (or "Keep Austin weird") because they feel threatened, so they go to extremes. Out of sight of the normal folks, of course.
Weirdness just comes naturally to the San Francisco Bay area, and it's not threatened in any way by the surrounding communities. As Musk notes, Berkeley competes with the City (as "Berzerkeley") while the more laid back Oakland is trapped between these two capitals of social insanity, ravaged by all the drug dealing being incentivized.
I also recommend Stephen Hicks on the topic of Post Modernism.
So some are gloating that Twitter isn't raking in the cash at the moment, while others crow that the purging of leftists from its ranks has been an exercise in self-kneecapping. Hmm. The commenters are not disclosing their own wealth experience, I see. No corresponding in-depth analysis about why certain advertisers have left, and why others have left, and then come back. Also, no comments on why Elon has repeatedly said it's not about money, but that Free Speech is the more important objective. He said this while he was purchasing it. Selective vision = cognitive impairment?
LLR-democratical Rich/C****: "Musk failed in the most basic task, to comprehend the business model of the business he was buying."
LOLxInfinity!!!!
So hilarious.
At this point one has to believe even Rich isnt this stupid, though he has demonstrated some impressive stupidity in the past, and is just letting the politically driven Musk Hate Freak Flag fly.
Maynard: "I see that Crack is bombing the thread again."
Crack's thread entries basically boil down to this:
"Me"
"I'm smart"
"Me"
"I'm ahead of my time"
"Me"
"Why wont anyone listen to me?"
"Me"
"I'm smarter than anyone else here"
"Me"
"I know things others dont"
"Me"
"I told you guys to stop Oprah, but you didnt!"
"Me"
"Why wont anyone do what I tell them to do?!"
"I can handle things! I'm smart! Not like everybody says..like dumb. I'm smart and I want respect!"
Maynard said...
"I see that Crack is bombing the thread again."
I see someone isn't mature enough just to move on when they see my avatar. I see someone is so immature they have to call me out, knowing I'm gonna answer them. I see somebody needs attention. I see somebody who should just fuck off.
Donald Trump took out Hillary Clinton. The same Hillary Clinton married to a three-time rapist - as we find so many NewAge leaders are. The same Hillary Clinton who invited psychics to the White House - not priests or psychologists - when she got depressed over Bill's affairs. The same Hillary Clinton who still maintains a yoga practice, and who once told reporters she was working for a Theory of Everything, which is the slogan for cult leader Ken Wilber's bullshit, who her husband once quoted at Davos, unaware people were recording. (Ken Wilber, of course, is the associate of Mark Gafni, the former "spiritual advisor" to Whole Foods, also found to be a rapist. Can anyone explain to me why a supermarket needed a "spiritual advisor"? Ken Wilbur was also a favorite of Brad Pitt and that chick who played Rachel on Friends when they were together.) Anyway, THAT'S the Hillary Clinton who Trump took out. But I don't think for a second there might be NewAgers in government.
That's just crazytalk.
Why is it we have so few public billionaires that actually care about doing good for everyday humans and put their boatloads of money where their mouth is?
Gates, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Soros, Winfrey, etc all seem to go along with this far left dogma that seek to wreck the quality of life of most of us on earth.
Block the sun (WTH?)
Steal elections
Own a newspaper megaphone that parrots what the government says
Fund DA’s that actively destroy city life
Ignore human tragedy on their doorstep
So many of them just seem like they don’t care at all about leaving the world better than they found it. I suppose Bezos’s foray into space may be considered good for humanity, but that’s it from the lot of them.
Kudos to Elon. I’m not of fan of his in some areas, but on this topic, he is King. There is no one else that has done as much deep thinking about this from the thousand mile view, and is able to so eloquently, compassionately, and frankly discuss it.
Poor leftist Rich.
X was removed from the corrupt leftist hive - so he's on board with the leftist narrative.
Rich said:
"At the start of this month it was reported Twitter is now worth around $8bn, well down on the amount spent to buy the platform, and less than the total debt taken out to help fund the purchase. While it has survived longer than some expected/hoped, it's not on a sustainable footing."
Since it's Musk's own money and X (formerly known as Twitter) is private, you're concerned why? Musk can lose as much money as he wants, whether it's because of financial error or because it's a vanity project, because he can. Curiously, however, from your previous posts suggesting daylight between your worldview and Musk's, I'm surprised you haven't broken out in your happy dance over its financial decline.
Drago hits it on the nose with his synopsis of Crack's posts. This massive self-regard of yours is why people are put off by you Crack. It's not a race thing. It's your personality.
It’s unclear which “government” you’re referring to, but the federal government I know is obviously far left dominated by pro-extinctionists. Musk couldn’t be more correct.
Funny how the left had ZERO interest in Twitter's financial viability until Musk took it over.
So, today's youth are in a real mental health crisis, fueled in large part, many (including myself) believe, to the addictive, destructive properties of social media, and Rich thinks the guy worth $200B should be focusing on his bottom line.
You're quite the guy, Rich.
I stand w Isreal. Leftists, Mullahs, Hamas-Palistinian terrorists can suck it said...
"New age = post modernism?"
Nope. This is cultism of a religious sort. And while the crystal-wavers look flakey, they are as serious as a heart attack. Fanatically so. I'm talking low-level Hamas here. Think I'm kidding? How else do you think they're breaking up families? Literally killing people with alternative medicines? Leaving people paralyzed from chiropractic? Scamming people in any number of "holistic" ways - doing all these things and then,....just walking away like psycho-and-sociopaths? Off to be "happy" doing it somewhere else? You need to be callous about life and human suffering to do all that, and you need a belief system for that.
There is an interesting corollary at Powerline.
( https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/10/the-issue-is-not-the-issue.php )
“I would find Elon a lot more convincing if he had a weird hairdo, lots of piercings and tattoos, and screamed at the sky.”
Did you see what he’s wearing?
Drago said...
"Crack's thread entries basically boil down to this"
Because it would kill one of you mayonnaise sandwich eaters for me to show up and find you saying "Crack was saying this," right? No, every time I come on this site, I have to find you guys either dissing me or dissing black people. But, you're not a bunch of racists, hanging out together being racist. You like Stephen. Honest.
Anybody like him is just fine with y'all,...
fairmarketvalue said...
Rich said:
You're spot on about Elon and his company. The concern of the Richs of the world is that Elon isn't failing fast enough. They must have their revenge on people who leave the narrative.
They have taken the sin of envy and have elevated it into a virtue.
Crack: "...'oppressing any opposing viewpoints,'... which is happening [to me] here, since the Israeli war started.
You are confusing "oppressing" with "refuting." Your views about Israel are repugnant and ill-informed. No one is oppressing you, just calling you on your bullshit.
THe far left vs. the government. A disctincition without a difference. yes, BIden and Christopher wray aren't "Far left", but they were perfectly willing to work with the "Far Left" to help attack and destroy the Center-right.
Biden never said a bad word about Antifa or BLM in 2020, all he talked about was how Trump loved Nazis. And that "antifa doesn't exist". And that BLM were "peaceful protesters".
Its weird the way no matter how radical and extreme Biden's policies are, he's always "Good ol' moderate Joe". But he's not. The fact that he's a gaffe machine, and ol white guy from Scanton PA, makes people think he's just a harmless, middle of the road liberal, but he's not.
I always chuckle at reporters using the term "chaos" to describe spectacular failures. It's almost as if at extremes of situations they shy away from calling it what it is, seemingly not trusting what they see with their own eyes.
Twitter's example will be studied in future business school classes as a perfect example of value destruction at scale, seemingly for no reason other than one person's whim.
In the latest example of being completely divorced from common sense, Twitter is trying to roll out calls/video conferencing on the platform. Because.... but of course we all are dying to have calls with bots, ideologues, populists, scam artists and other creatures which populate the Twittersphere today. Remaining serious accounts, of course, have no need for "calls" with followers. Such a total lack of self-awareness of how Twitter is seen by the general population is what's at the heart of this destruction.
This will go on until boy wonder exits stage left, and Twitter gets sold to some third party at 80% discount to original purchase price. "Investors" who unquestioningly backed Trump... ahem.. Musk, deserve the outcome they will get.
"...The government is not the far left...?"
Ann, Government's sole function in life is to collect power. That is exactly the goal of the 'Far Left'. I'm surprised how you've not seen this? Your decades in Academia has honed your view in favor of Government and Far Left actions - which is the accumulation of power.
The far left that he's talking about -- the kind of people concentrated in 10 square miles in San Francisco/Berkeley -- are not the same "left" that right-wingers perceive as running the government when Democrats are in office.
That's so obvious I don't see how you can pretend you don't know that.
The left is authoritarian. The right is libertarian.
Ann Althouse said...
"The far left that he's talking about -- the kind of people concentrated in 10 square miles in San Francisco/Berkeley -- are not the same "left" that right-wingers perceive as running the government when Democrats are in office."
Nancy Pelosi was down with Jim Jones. Dianne Feinstein was down with Jim Jones. Jackie Speier was down with Jim Jones (until his people shot her, but she still maintains the lies surrounding events), etc. Christians wear crosses around their necks to identify themselves to others spiritually. We know who they are.
How do you identify a New Ager? Especially in government?
Men, women, and our Posterity are from Earth. Feminists are from Venus. Masculinists are from Mars. Social progressives are from Uranus. That said, all's fair in lust and abortion.
“Musk failed in the most basic task, to comprehend the business model of the business he was buying. Twitter was never in the free speech business. It was in the advertising business. The advertisers paid the bills and paid for free speech only for their own ads. What the users, aka the products, wanted wasn't their concern. Remember, if you aren't paying, you're the product. Products don't have rights.”
“Now that he's chased off the paying customers, he's belatedly trying to invent a new business model for social media where the users pay with money rather than by viewing ads. But that would require people to value social media enough to pay for it.”
ANd amazingly, he still has a lot more money than you do, or almost assuredly ever will have (inflation adjusted, of course). Which, of course is easy to know, since no one has more money than he does.
Musk has serious FU money. And he says here that he saw what he believed to be an almost existential threat to the world. He had the money to attack, and hopefully address, the threat, and did. It’s like Carnegie building libraries, and Gates bringing working potties to Africa, or even Soros buying DAs.
Something else. He is a risk taker. I am, right now, probably sitting on top of tunnels that he has drilled under Vegas. Has he made any money there? Probably $billions$ sunk by now on the technology. What happens though if he gets the technology working? He dug more tunnel in under a year, than NYC did in a century, in their newly opened line. If we are ever going to have serious moderate, and maybe long, distance high speed mass transit, it will probably be in tunnels, underground. Tunnels offer a lot of advantages. You don’t have expensive and long lasting land acquisition problems. You don’t have to share tracks or right of ways with freight trains. Seal the tunnels, evacuate some of the air, and wind resistance problems are greatly lessened. Etc. So what are they using in the tunnels under Las Vegas to test the idea out? Self driving Teslas. Will he succeed? Odds are against him. But they against his attempt of building reusable rockets. Now, he is slated to launch half the satellites launched this year.
The institution of governance follows a progressive scale from right to left-wing ideologies, from the individual to representative to monolithic authorities.
“Drago hits it on the nose with his synopsis of Crack's posts. This massive self-regard of yours is why people are put off by you Crack. It's not a race thing. It's your personality.”
I think that part of it is presentation. Musk sounds super rational here, esp in defending why he dropped $40 Billion on such a ridiculous purchase. Crack, you sometimes sound like a frothing lunatic. The good news, for you, is that he essentially vindicated much of what you have been saying here. And, it is quite possible that without your activism, and that of others, he might not have put the pieces together.
Men, women, and our Posterity are from Earth. Feminists are from Venus. Masculinists are from Mars. Social progressives are from Uranus. That said, all's fair in lust and abortion.
Be fruitful, multiply, and develop the world. Musk is one of those people who believe that people are individually and collectively productive and viable with minimum supervision in the American model of governance.
LOL
LLR-democratical Rich/C**** is still pushibg his feeble Dumb Lefty Jedi Mind Trick to score political points against the guy that completely exposed the New Soviet Democratical aithoritarian censorship regime and blew it up.
Sorry Rich/C****. X is already astonishingly well on its way to its future state.
To stop it, you commies will have to abuse the power of government to defeat it...and dont think we dont know you'll try.
Bruce Hayden, quick correction on your SpaceX numbers: by the end of this year SpaceX will be responsible for delivering 80% of all payload mass to orbit.
As compared with ALL OTHER launch companies and governments.
Which is why LLR-democratical Rich/C****'s pathetic corrupt soviet bureaucraticals are working overtime to slow SpaceX down because Starship is the biggest space race inflection point in the history of spaceflight.
You start to view humanity as a plague on the surface of the earth, like a mold or something.
I remember there was a series of David Suzuki videos pushing a similar idea back in the early 80's. Suzuki's idea was that man was a plague on the earth. A lot of comparisons were made to historical incidents in which invasive species populations had exploded out of control and extreme measures had to be taken to irradicate them, like the famous case of rabbits in Australia. I had an Econ professor who dedicated several full class days to showing us these videos.
hombre said...
"No one is oppressing you, just calling you on your bullshit."
NOT GOOD ENOUGH: I've shown you Glenn Greenwald is documenting conservatives, all over the place, restricting free speech and screaming anti-semitism to defend it. AND YOU STILL DO IT. And, as I keep pointing out, you're all doing it without documenting anything. All you use your own mouth to back up what you say, expecting me to follow;d under mere peer pressure - NOT logical arguments with something to back them up. YOU PROVIDE NOTHING. Meanwhile, I give you links to everything and you guys act like it doesn't matter.
You're a bunch of bullshit artists.
It's just 4chan (where people go to post abusive things that wouldn't be allowed elsewhere) and some journalists patting each other on the back and pretending they are doing real world reporting. From the outside now it's also very clear just how parochial and irrelevant it is.
It used to be great for finance and keeping abreast of the zeitgeist but tbh that scene devolved into partisan brawling when Trump came along and has only got worse since Musk arrived and he let all the racists back in.
Have to agree with Althouse on this one: musk clearly stated that the far left considered anyone outside of the far left to be a right wing extremist including the standard left the moderate left the conservative left the middle of the road moderate Republicans libertarians etc etc.
You can see that same phenomenon mirrored on these comment threads where anyone who does not fall in line with Donald Trump is a leftist stalinist communist loving postmodern death cultist.
I was going to say something similar to Crack's 11:47: Nancy Pelosi, minority leader and former and perhaps future Speaker, is "co-located," as Musk said, with the SF left. Gavin Newsom, Mr. Popularity with the American left, is "co-located" with them - Sacramento is much more similar to SF than to LA, and Newsom is even more so. Kamala Harris, the actual VP for all that she's a silly token, is "co-located" with them.
And just because Musk is correct in saying that SF/Berkeley (with maybe Portland up there too) is THE furthest left place in the country, that doesn't render irrelevant the many other places that give it a run for its money: DC as a city (and its environs where the wielders of the levers of power live), Manhattan, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Madison, Austin, Seattle...
When Musk himself speaks of Twitter's having been both far left and an arm of the government, I didn't read it as "He's being inconsistent - the other leftist cities aren't as far left as the Bay Area"; I read it as, "He knows how much influence, even control, the far left of SF/Berkeley exerted over the programming and operation of Twitter, and he sees what a dandy fit that was for the needs and desires of a left-leaning federal government."
But then I'm not even a lawyer, much less a law prof.
Humanists believe it’s about humans. Extinctionists believe it’s about nature. Christians know it’s about God. Pick your faith… but I advise looking at outcomes, both temporal & eternal. Blessings.
"He asserts that Twitter had become "an arm of the government" — "a state publication." But: "Old Twitter was completely controlled by the far left." I think I see his point, but those statements don't fit together. The government is not the far left, so both can't be in complete control."
The term "Fellow travelers" comes to mind.
Ann said:
The far left that he's talking about -- the kind of people concentrated in 10 square miles in San Francisco/Berkeley -- are not the same "left" that right-wingers perceive as running the government when Democrats are in office.
Ann, the same "far left" runs the Government when Democrats AND Republicans are in office. They are the permanent unaccountable (see the unpunished crimes committed by IRS, FBI, CIA, DOJ and other bureaucrats) bureaucracy and any politician attempting to reduce Federal Government spending, regulations and power will be met with resistance, whether through "pocket veto," or more ham-handed approaches like impeachment, protest, indictments, lawsuits and life-ruining sabotage.
And what percentage of Federal employees vote Democrat vs. Republican? Our Government is FAR LEFT.
"The far left that he's talking about -- the kind of people concentrated in 10 square miles in San Francisco/Berkeley -- are not the same "left" that right-wingers perceive as running the government when Democrats are in office."
Who really runs the government? Constitutionally, it’s the President. The reality, as we found under President Trump is far different. It runs itself, and will run right over any President who tries to stand in their way. Amazingly, many of the participants on the FBI side of Crossfire Hurricane, etc, were either token Republicans, or moderate Democrats. More important though, was that they were bureaucrats first, and Trump was attacking them. Attacking the “Deep State”. I among many here, worked for the federal government at one time (as both an employee and as a contractor). Most of those I worked with were quite conservative in their world outlook. Government workers, by and large, tend to be risk adverse. They aren’t going to be fired, but, at least in the past, aren’t going to make as much money. Show up for 20, 30 years, and get a comfortable pension. But to keep this future secure, they likely see a need to protect the institution that they are devoting their lives to.
For the most part, Dem leadership don’t really empathize that much with the radical left. They are just a useful tool. They helped get rid of Trump, and Republican control of Congress. And that allowed them to turn the spigot for their graft even wider open. What they are after is wealth and power. They are elites, and need the money to maintain their position there. Congress, led by Pelosi, have maintained their exemption to insider trading, from which she has probably made well over $100 million. We saw the dynamic during the COVID-19 lockdowns - they required that we be masked and locked down, but flaunted that those rules didn’t apply to them.
You know what's really funny, nobody here has said the first thing about Joe's outrageous wig. Was it a Halloween stunt or what?
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
The far left that he's talking about -- the kind of people concentrated in 10 square miles in San Francisco/Berkeley -- are not the same "left" that right-wingers perceive as running the government when Democrats are in office.
That's so obvious I don't see how you can pretend you don't know that
The rationalization is so obvious that you need it to vote the way you do. Look at Granholm for an example. Or Mayorkis.
Well, the far left does run the Government in the bay area and in SF. And most of California. But my only point was that the "reasonable Left" doesn't fight the farleft, and they eventually push through their agenda. So, while technically they aren't the Crazzies, and can always point to the "Far left" and go "Wow, we're not that bad" in five years they will be pushing the same policies.
What did "reasonable" leftists do to stop Antifa and BLM? What are the "reasonable left" and the Democrats doing on the Southern border, race, or immigration that the "far left" would disapprove of? Nothing.
But yes, Althouse is right. They are different.
During the run up to the Spainish Civil war, and sometime afterwards, people would make the same distiction between the Government and the "Mainstream Left" and the "far left". But the "Reasonable Left" aka the Spainish Republican Government didn't stop the far left from killing Conservative Politicans or burning down churches and killing 6000 Catholic clergy.
Later these Reasonable Leftists made a bargin with Stalin, and by 1937, had NKVD murder squads roaming behind their lines and defacto Communist control of the Army and police.
Our reasonable Leftists are no different. Give them a choice between Trump and some Crazy Leftwing position and norm busting destruction of our liberties and historical norms they will take the Crazy left. The "reasonable left" only does one thing: Fight those Goddamn rightwingers. No enemies to the Left.
tim maguire:
I mean, I'm glad it's no longer a left-wing propaganda tool, but when you look at his other projects, that goal seems disappointingly pedestrian.
To Musk, X is merely a dangerous tool that needed to be cleaned up in preface to using it to support other things. Check into his plans to become a banking system. He's already cleared some of the way.
I see Crack exploded.
are not the same "left" that right-wingers perceive as running the government when Democrats are in office.
And yet the democrats in office in the last 10 years, are closer to those "the kind of people concentrated in 10 square miles in San Francisco/Berkeley" than the democrats in office during Bill Clinton's terms, or Jimmy Carter's.
"The left is authoritarian. The right is libertarian."
A meaningless and unquantified comment, along the lines of: The left are doody-heads; the right are geniuses (or vice versa).
Bob Boyd:
like wear and tear on the dummy's butt with all those arms going in and out has got to be an issue, right? but I'm not a tech guy, obviously, so I don't know how they handle that.
I am a tech guy. The going in and out is predominantly a hardware issue. The functionality that the user experiences is a software issue.
Musk bought the hardware so any ability to handle the increase in volume is addressed already. That's not a left-right thing.
Part of the software issue is the data and the people controlling the system delimiters. That's where the pruning occurred and removing polluted delimiters isn't a flip the switch thing. One must dig because in AI/delimiters case, it's a left-right thing.
"The far left... -- the kind of people concentrated in 10 square miles in San Francisco/Berkeley -- are not the same 'left' that right-wingers perceive as running the government when Democrats are in office.
"That's so obvious I don't see how you can pretend you don't know that."
It is obvious. However, I'm confident many in the nation and a good number of commenters here who express such absurdly unconsidered sentiments don't know that and, in fact, refuse to know that. They believe it without the least uncertainty.
The topic of Twitter/X and Musk is always good for clicks … Curious why X supports Z…
Do we know why Rogan is wearing a yellow mop on his head?
I think the two of them got stoned in the first one.
Ann Althouse said...
"The far left that he's talking about -- the kind of people concentrated in 10 square miles in San Francisco/Berkeley -- are not the same "left" that right-wingers perceive as running the government when Democrats are in office."
Oh, Madam. I would beg to differ. Perhaps a matter of degree rather than kind.
Robert Cook said...
"The left is authoritarian. The right is libertarian."
"A meaningless and unquantified comment, along the lines of: The left are doody-heads; the right are geniuses (or vice versa)."
And yet here we stand.
I note that the Napoleon movie is coming out, and it looks pretty good. The most murderous European up to his time would have loved the useful idiots of the modern left. That said, the leftists of the Bay area are amateurs compared to the good old genocidal Leninists and Maoists and Castro-ites and Chavistas, who knew that just talking about killing your opponents was a waste of time that could be used more wisely actually doing so.
He asserts that Twitter had become "an arm of the government" — "a state publication.
One other point. There is speculation from some right wing corners of the internet (notably Sundance from theconservativetreehouse.com - Jack's Magical Coffee Shop>) that Twitter before Elon was being funded at least partially from the US government through agencies such as the NSA. Those organizations were siphoning data from Twitter for intelligence gathering purposes that morphs into narrative controlling purposes.
The further speculation is that Jack, as the founder of Twitter, knew all this, but had lost control, and had no way to drive Twitter back to a platform for open discussion. Elon in his Rogan appearance, believes that Jack was ignorant of the government control. Perhaps he is right.
Jack talks to Elon over many days (the text messages have been leaked). Elon at the time is a very frequent user of twitter and has the means to buy the company. Jack convinces Elon to buy the company. Elon announces his offer. And everybody loses his mind. At first it's he can't buy it, then it's he must buy it, and he will fail. When he makes moves to immediately cuts costs the narrative is that it will shutdown without all those people. Flash forward a year, and any moves Elon makes to make Twitter a viable business based on open communication is shouted from the rooftops that it won't work.
In that light, the "left wing Berkley/SF area" and "government publication" both can ring true.
Musk has serious FU money.
Yes and people don't seem to understand that. Elon is the modern Citizen Kane. He can afford to lose 50 billion dollars on Twitter. Is it complex to manage his money? Of course. Will it knock him from his richest in the world perch? Does he care?
He does things for his own reasons. But he is the de-facto face of innovation in this country.
The Crack Emcee:
You're a bunch of bullshit artists.
How's that support of yours coming along for those aspersions you wrote as truths concerning a certain little video on Baum and his 1st Oz story?
Crack: "NOT GOOD ENOUGH" Really? Here is EXACTLY WHAT YOU SAID:
"Joe Rogan mentions 'oppressing any opposing viewpoints,' which is exactly what I said happened to me there - and which is happening here, since the Israeli war started."
"HAPPENED TO ME ... HERE"!!!! I repeat, nobody is oppressing you here. Greenwald has nothing to do with that. You are a predominant gasbag in these comments and no one is oppressing you!
Refuting is not oppressing! Got it?
"Who really runs the government? Constitutionally, it’s the President."
Um, no. The President is the Chief Executive, and he has certain enumerated powers and responsibilities, as per the Constitution, but the POTUS is not a king or emperor; he or she cannot "run the government," cannot rule by fiat, cannot create laws, cannot compel other branches of the government to obey his edicts.
The POTUS is merely a manager--the top manager of the government, yes: He can fire (some) people. He can use the bully pulpit to advocate for or against legislation working through Congress, and he/she can veto laws passed by Congress. But then, Congress can override the President's veto with a 2/3 majority. The CEO of a corporation is the responsible head of the corporation, but the CEO can be ousted by the board of directors, just as the President may be impeached and removed from office. The CEO is answerable to others "under him," so to speak, and so is the president. As we learned in Civics, our government is comprised of three separate but equal branches, each answerable to the other two.
"AND: He asserts that Twitter had become "an arm of the government" — "a state publication." But: "Old Twitter was completely controlled by the far left." I think I see his point, but those statements don't fit together. The government is not the far left, so both can't be in complete control."
You have zero idea who is in control in the bureaucracy, but if you look at the past 10 years, you may start to wonder if it's not seriously been infiltrated.
How else can you explain 51 Intel guys deciding Biden's laptop is Russian disinformation?
Or FBI taking a campaign's fake up dossier seriously, while also slow walking legitimate bribery investigations until the Statute of Limitations runs out.
You'd be a fool to assume these organizations are neutral.
LLR-democratical Rich/C****: "The topic of Twitter/X and Musk is always good for clicks.."
Shorter Rich/C****: writing dumb things gets noticed by more informed/knowledgeable people...who knew?!
“ When Musk himself speaks of Twitter's having been both far left and an arm of the government, I didn't read it as "He's being inconsistent - the other leftist cities aren't as far left as the Bay Area"; I read it as, "He knows how much influence, even control, the far left of SF/Berkeley exerted over the programming and operation of Twitter, and he sees what a dandy fit that was for the needs and desires of a left-leaning federal government." ”
I agree with you that that is the reasonable interpretation of what he must’ve meant. But one thing I wanted to do with this post is to show his tendency to speak in overstatements. He has a distinctive rhetoric, and it sounds powerful, but he can’t mean everything he’s saying literally because the statements don’t fit together. His overstatements overlap into impossibility. He reminds me of the sort of teenage girl who would gush that one boy means everything to her and a popstar also means everything to her and 10 or 12 other things also mean everything to her.
Bruce Hayden said...
"Crack, you sometimes sound like a frothing lunatic."
Because nothing is ever good enough for you guys. I give you links. I beg you to do the same, and you do not.
I call you out on shit. It's never acknowledged.
You always gang up on me as a group. I always end up standing alone with one or two people, saying "I agreed with you" after the fact.
I have been here for 10 years and you guys are still calling me a Democrat and saying I vote with the left.
No matter how many times I've bought it with you, one deviation, and you always accuse me of being on the other side.
I've been harder on Ann and Meade, and even put those complaint in writing, and they've been more fair to me than anybody in the comment section.
Drago never admits when he's wrong, but as I said, acts like a little dog was just here to pee on my leg.
I don't know who the faggot Oligonicella is, but they've appointed themselves as my new guardian. Fuck you.
And hombre, you haven't refuted anything. All you people do is talk. You provide no evidence. You provide no links. All you do is talk.
"X has at least clawed its way back to being close to break-even. Considering how much effort has gone into reducing costs, the fact that the business may almost be breaking even is pretty embarrassing. The business must be a shell of its former self."
Twitter has shown a profit only in 2018 and 2019. It lost money again in 2020 and 2021 before Musk took over, and it lost money every year before 2018. To say it is back to being close to break even is misleading since for the most part it was never there to begin with.
hombre said...
"Refuting is not oppressing! Got it?"
Show me a post where you calmly and cooly explained something to me, and provided links to back it up. If you didn't, fuck off and shut-the-fuck-up because you didn't "refute" shit - YOU JUST ACTED LIKE WHITE PEOPLE ANDV RAN YOUR GOD DAMNED MOUTHS.
Aggie:
You know what's really funny, nobody here has said the first thing about Joe's outrageous wig. Was it a Halloween stunt or what?
Side effects of horse medicine.
"A meaningless and unquantified comment, …"
Well, it's certainly true that the left is authoritarian and not libertarian.
Mr. Musk takes big swings, sometimes he connects, sometimes he misses. He still comes across, rhetorically, as a sane guy, as opposed to Mr. Trump- who tends to swing wildly.
'The government is not the far left, so both can't be in complete control. '
McFly? Is anyone in there?
"The publication noted that while Republicans tend to do worse with government workers, Trump received just 5 percent of all federal government donations compared to Mitt Romney's 14 percent in 2012. Government workers at 14 agencies gave a total of $2 million during the last presidential cycle with $1.9 million—or 95 percent—going to Clinton."
In almost all government departments, the numbers are usually 80-90% in favor of democrats.
'Oakland is trapped between these two capitals of social insanity, ravaged by all the drug dealing being incentivized.'
Which is a shame, as geographically and weather-wise, Oakland should be a world-class city.
He has a distinctive rhetoric, and it sounds powerful, but he can’t mean everything he’s saying literally because the statements don’t fit together.
Fair enough! But I still don't think he's that far off, given the current priorities of the self-styled "moderate left," including in government.
Althouse,
SF is about 47 square miles. Berkeley is about 17 square miles. What is with your "10 square miles" estimate for both cities combined? Are you generally off by a factor of six, or what?
"Fundamental Racism in America"
People on this blog believe every myth this teacher is debunking.
"What is with your "10 square miles" estimate for both cities combined?"
I thought that's what I heard Musk say. Not trying to estimate or establish a fact. Sorry.
Blogger Robert Cook said...
"The left is authoritarian. The right is libertarian."
A meaningless and unquantified comment, along the lines of: The left are doody-heads; the right are geniuses (or vice versa).
Socialism, of whatever flavor including National Socialism and Fascism*, are inherently authoritarian. Socialism will not work without force by the state (or government, administration, community or whatever name it may take).
If I am industrious I may grow 500 bushels of corn to get me through the year to the next harvest with some to trade for other needs. My neighbor is lazy and does nothing and thus has no corn to feed herself.
Under socialism, the state will take some or all of my corn to give to the cornless neighbor. It might even call it a tax rather than a redistribution or sharing. I object? It will use as much force as necessary, up to killing me to take my corn.
Sounds pretty authoritarian to me.
Or, after the first time this happens, I grow no corn, relying on the state to take corn from someone else for my benefit. But pretty soon nobody is stupid enough to grow corn. So the state, using up to deadly force, forces me to grow corn for the benefit of the society .
Sounds pretty authoritarian to me.
Socialism cannot exist without the use of force.
Possible exception for small, voluntary, communities of like minded people. They never seem to last long, though.
*Cook will no doubt reply that fascism/national socialism are not socialism. because "(mumble, mumble, koff, Koff, something about ownership, mumble, mumble, koff, koff)" Cook really, really, really, needs to learn a bit about socialism beyond slogans.
John Henry
Crack, Stop being so damn reactive. You don't need to make a new post about everything and anything. Chill, a little.
According to some, the govt can't be left (as a synonym for socialist) because it does not have a piece of paper saying that it "owned" Twitter.
This is a fallacy that some otherwise intelligent folks have. That legal ownership is important.
Mussolini realized this a century ago. So what if the Agnelli's have legal documents saying that they "own" FIAT.
Who gets to decide if this year FIAT will make 2 seat sports cars, cheap family transport, trucks or whatever and how much they will sell for? Or how much the workes get paid and so on? If it is the state making these decisions, the Agnellis ownership documentation is worth less than the toilet paper roll in my crapper.
John Henry
Crack: Thanks for the link to the class on race and culture that is taught by Dr. Sam Richards at Penn State University. Your fellow republicans might be more inclined not to dismiss the professor's analysis of white privilege if they watched these two clips as well:
Statistics on Cop on Black Crime
What Does the MAGA Hat Mean?
John henry is correct that S/socialism can't work without force. But that's true of government itself--George Washington probably didn't say that "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force," but it's true nonetheless.
That's what its monopoly of violence is all about, and paper barriers like constitutions don't always protect those who aren't the government, whatever form or tint it takes.
SteveWe said...
"Crack, Stop being so damn reactive. You don't need to make a new post about everything and anything. Chill, a little."
What part of "mind your own business" don't you supposed-conservatives understand? Y'all sit around here and be racist, and don't even correct each other for that, but you're all over me. Fuck you. Just over the last few weeks, you guys have said black people have to "prove "we're as smart as white people, black people should announce everyone we appropriated our music from, we can't do math, and more, without any one of you correcting it. But you think I shouldn't be so reactive, right?
Maybe I wouldn't have to be if more of you had ethical backgrounds and a backbone.
SteveWe said...
"Crack, Stop being so damn reactive. You don't need to make a new post about everything and anything. Chill, a little."
Hard to believe you guys can sit here and listen to so much racist shit and then turn around and tell the black guy not to be so reactive.
Everything about y'all is wrong.
The Crack Emcee:
How do you identify a New Ager?
They believe in sins of the race of the father?
SteveWe said...
"Crack, Stop being so damn reactive. You don't need to make a new post about everything and anything. Chill, a little."
I lived and worked in San Francisco for 30 years, and came on this blog complaining about the cults - which most people here denied existed - but you guys still wanna act like Elon Musk knows more about it than I do, when he's only been there for what? 5-10 years? Did buying Twitter give him some great insight that I missed over the last three decades? Or does he just have a superficial idea of what he's talking about, and you guys just glom onto it because he's rich and white?
Even better: has he ever been traumatized by the experience? You assholes say it's my presentation, but do you ever remember that I've been traumatized by this? Do you make any room for that? Or do you just always go with the cool customer, whether he knows anything or not? And is it a good thing to constantly attack somebody who's traumatized - for being traumatized? Tell me: if your daughter was raped, would your main concern be that she calm down? Would you sit by as Drago, Narr, and the rest of these racist assholes followed her around, saying racist shit while policing her behavior for now on?
I know why I bother posting these questions because you racists never answer them, just like you don't provide evidence to back up the shit you say.
"New Ager"
They believe in sins of the race of the father?
Corruption of blood.
Narr,
Yes, of course, govt is itself about force and the monopoly of force.
There are some who believe in anarchy, the absence of government. I am not one of them. I do believe in minimalist government. I have no problem with minimalist govt collecting minimalist taxes either. Just enough for the minimalist govt to stay minimalist.
Re the paper (Constitution, laws), it helps. It helps because if makes a reference point for people to agree on or argue over. It is better than nothing.
But it also depends on everyone acting with some modicum of good faith.
John Henry
Because I like both Musk and Rogan, and find them both interesting, I'm watching the whole podcast. It's OK watching; I don't often have the time to watch Rogan. But Geez, right in the middle Joe orders a pizza with double pineapple and double anchovies, then once delivered, we get treated to chewing and lip-smacking, slobbering noises - Rogan's studio has excellent microphones - for about 15 minutes. And they've been hitting the scotch and who-knows-what-else, so - they eat with gusto. Finally Rogan's assistant takes it away from them.
"Show me a post where you calmly and cooly explained something to me, and provided links to back it up."
There have been links on these comments over several days as well as references to the Hamas Covenant of 1988, the provisions of which should be familiar to anyone participating in the discussion. If you are not familiar, here are some excerpts (direct quotes):
- The Islamic Resistance Movement is a distinguished Palestinian movement....
- Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.
- Leaving the circle of struggle with Zionism is high treason, and cursed be he who does that.
- "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him." (Koran)
This Covenant was in effect in 2006 when Hamas was elected. At least two things are clear: 1. There is no peaceful solution available with Hamas and never has been. 2. The document supports genocide (as does Islam). Not just of Zionists, but of Jews.
The 2017 document is clearly a propaganda device contradicting the original and the Koran and was not the credo of Hamas as elected in 2006.
Perhaps our failure, if any, to cite you to links with which you are comfortable stem from a belief that your characterizing the October 7th terrorist massacre as "retribution" and failing to condemn it unequivocally not only shows ignorance of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist aims but is indicative of moral bankruptcy with which there is no reasoning.
Rogan at about 1:40:45: What was it actually worth? (Twitter) Musk pauses to think: "Everything."
"Who really runs the government? Constitutionally, it’s the President."
“Um, no. The President is the Chief Executive, and he has certain enumerated powers and responsibilities, as per the Constitution, but the POTUS is not a king or emperor; he or she cannot "run the government," cannot rule by fiat, cannot create laws, cannot compel other branches of the government to obey his edicts.”
“The POTUS is merely a manager--the top manager of the government, yes: He can fire (some) people. He can use the bully pulpit to advocate for or against legislation working through Congress, and he/she can veto laws passed by Congress. But then, Congress can override the President's veto with a 2/3 majority…”
I very much disagree, and that is the problem. Here is a portion of the Constitution:
Article II
Section 1
“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. “
The powers of the Presidency are listed in Section 2. Section 1 doesn’t say that the President has whatever power Congress allots him as the chief executive, but rather all Executive Power. What power the Executive branch is completely derivative of the Presidents’s.
“SF is about 47 square miles. Berkeley is about 17 square miles. What is with your "10 square miles" estimate for both cities combined? Are you generally off by a factor of six, or what?”
My memory is that Musk said they were in a 10 mile radius. Using A=Ï€R², that works out to 314.159 sq miles. Musk, if nothing else, is numeric.
Crack, What's buzzing in your bonnet? I made a post that you should consider being less reactive and I receive 3 posts in reaction to mine, in all of which are foaming about racism.
What's my race, Crack? You have no idea, do you? But you feel totally justified to lump me into the category of being a racist, a white supremacist bent on traumatizing you and your daughter, and a shit flinging asshole.
Gee, thanks a lot, Crack.
Mormons are a lot like the Zionists in that they occupy Utah at the expense of Native Americans and Catholics. They illegaly pushed the christians and indians off their land.
If we care to look back far enough we'll find that the Jews were involved.
hombre said...
You do realize you just did it again, right? A response that features nothing but your stupid mouth?
You morons can't even follow simple instructions.
teveWe said...
"Crack, What's buzzing in your bonnet? I made a post that you should consider being less reactive and I receive 3 posts in reaction to mine, in all of which are foaming about racism."
Yes. I rejected your suggestion and told you why.
"What's my race, Crack? You have no idea, do you?"
No, I don't. You must be new here. You must think I foam at the mouth about white people all the time, as opposed to when I come here and have to face a bunch of antagonistic racists. Racists who you apparently aren't bothered by.
"But you feel totally justified to lump me into the category of being a racist, a white supremacist bent on traumatizing you and your daughter, and a shit flinging asshole."
I didn't lump you in with anybody. I said you should mind your own business. Do you notice that I don't spend my time calling people out like the rest of you? If one of you attacks me I will attack back, but do you notice that I don't follow people around and call them names, and spend all my time fucking with them like you guys do me? Tell me any black person wouldn't feel put-upon when that's the case.
"Gee, thanks a lot, Crack."
"Why Americans don't understand,...basic logic escapes me" - John Mearsheimer
The Crack Emcee:
I lived and worked in San Francisco for 30 years, and came on this blog complaining about the cults - which most people here denied existed -
Yes, I was already here, that's how you arrived. No, no one denied cults existed.
When you start your response with a lie, the rest is to be ignored.
"The sins of the father", "corruption of blood"; both fantasies, both mystical thinking.
Don't you agree, Crack?
I just realized you guys are trying to make me feel like a Palestinian:
I've been here longer than almost all of you, but - somehow - you Zionist types show up, and think (for no reason but your own arrogance) you have the right to tell me that I should leave, or change my behavior. What? Did you guys make the blog "bloom" like the Israeli desert? Was it a "hell hole" before you showed up? Or are you just a bunch of new assholes?
You're an example of humanity at its worst.
The Crack Emcee:
You assholes say it's my presentation, but do you ever remember that I've been traumatized by this? Do you make any room for that?
No. Because you're not special. Not in that regard or any other.
The Crack Emcee:
I've been here longer than almost all of you,
No you haven't.
Let’s add some context here.
Twitter was losing money even before Musk joined. Many of its users might have been happy with the platform but the business was suffering and was non-viable.
This is why Twitter's previous management rushed to the court to force Musk, who was considering abandoning the deal, to buy the company.
It was clear that Musk had to change things. He tried to expand the user base which many didn't like but was the way to go as the previous model which relied on users representing a narrowly defined mainstream, could not sustain Twitter.
It is interesting that none of those from the narrow mainstream and the Musk-critics group was able to make a better offer for Twitter and prevent its acquisition by Musk.
Anyway, If Musk will succeed in his efforts to re-organize Twitter is currently unknown but since Musk appeared as a candidate to buy Twitter, I have not read any alternative business proposals that would make Twitter financially viable and also more relevant to society.
Relying on a relatively small section of society whose members just agree with each other on everything does not make a viable business as Jack Dorsey found out.
Poor, poor pitiful me
Poor, poor pitiful me
Oh, these boys won't let me be
Lord, have mercy on me
Woah-woah, is me
“You don’t understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender, I could’ve been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am.”
Oligonicella said...
The Crack Emcee:
"Yes, I was already here, that's how you arrived. No, no one denied cults existed."
You, moron. At the beginning, even Ann and Meade were doubtful of what I was saying.
"When you start your response with a lie, the rest is to be ignored."
Actually, I think I've had enough of you, and you will be ignored from here on out.
Crack: "A response that features nothing but your stupid mouth?"
Some would think that citing and quoting directly from the Hamas Covenant was actually "from the horse's mouth."
I guess Hamas' uncompromising commitment to genocide reflected in the Covenant is better ignored by their panderers or dismissed as retribution.
The Crack Emcee:
You, moron. At the beginning, even Ann and Meade were doubtful of what I was saying.
The only thing anyone doubted was your paranoid visions matching with reality, not that cults exist.
Actually, I think I've had enough of you, and you will be ignored from here on out.
This will be about the fourth or fifth time you've said that.
How's that support for your lies re that video coming?
Some have asked about Rogans's wig. It's supposed to be a Halloween costume. He dressed as his doppelganger, who was spotted at a Brazil-Puerto Rico baseball game. It was quite amusing when the photo surfaced.
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