"Someone creates an X account, sets it to private, and posts hundreds of different predictions with every possible virus name and scenario imaginable."

"Then, once one event vaguely lines up with reality, they delete all the other failed predictions and leave only the 'correct' one visible."

Dr. Simon reveals one simple trick.

I'm glad I have a tag called "predictions."

When late-night comedians found censorship deeply seductive.

The Late Night show hosts were so giddy and celebratory after Trump was banned from social media.

They absolutely LOVE censorship until someone accusing one of them of crossing the line. Then they become supporters of free speech.pic.twitter.com/7igDcNzvXn

— MAZE (@mazemoore) May 2, 2026

"If you're the mother who was reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone aloud to your child..."

"... on the LNER train from London to Edinburgh yesterday, one of my grown up children was listening and says you did the voices brilliantly "

Writes J.K. Rowling, on X — a particularly fine use of X.

I love that there are responses right there, including the crabby ones, like: "Was reading it loud not disturbing others even though your child enjoyed it?"/"I’m the mother and I don’t care what your grown up children thinks"/"Hopefully she verbally edited all the grammatical and editorial errors you so carelessly left throughout the book"/"The best education lies in reading the Bible; fairy tales or magic wands don't solve everyday problems."

But isn't there a magic wand in the Bible though? See Exodus 7:8-13, Exodus 7-8, Numbers 17, Numbers 17:8, Numbers 17:10, Hebrews 9:4.

Bluesky posts on its X account to remind us of its existence and admit that it has been what its whole point was not to be: toxic.

If you haven't checked us out in a while, we've been busy. Doing work to make conversations less toxic and more civil, and adding new ways to help you find your friends on Bluesky. See what you've been missing: https://t.co/exCdOOXRC1

— Bluesky (@bluesky) March 4, 2026

"Vice President JD Vance's... comments about being prepared to assume the presidency in case of a 'terrible tragedy' befalling President Trump set tongues wagging."

"The timing of these remarks drew attention within the political landscape as keyboard warriors started connecting dots to the prominent bruise on Trump's right hand that went viral.... The story has generated substantial engagement on social media platforms, particularly on X. Below are some tweets...."

From "'Trump is Dead' trends on X: J D Vance's remark over US president sparks frenzy; Simpsons prediction adds fuel" (Times of India).

"Unlike the original Vine, which required users to film their own six-second clips, Musk’s reimagined version will harness AI to generate videos..."

"... based on simple text descriptions. Users could potentially type phrases like 'a cat breakdancing in Times Square' or 'Shakespearean drama in a McDonald’s' and watch as the system instantly creates corresponding video content complete with sound."

From "Elon Musk says X will bring back Vine — with an AI twist — to rival TikTok, Reels" (NY Post).

Vine was bought by Twitter which then closed it down — all in the years before Elon Musk took over. Now, Musk is saying the old Vine video archive has been located. I like the idea of bringing Vine back, but if it's loaded with AI videos, I hate it already. 

Maybe you've seen the AI video with bunnies bouncing on a trampoline. It's got over 230 million views:

"Mr. Musk has said his chatbot should not adhere to standards of political correctness and has warned that A.I. he deems too 'woke' could contribute to the downfall of humanity."

"Grok’s guidelines, published by xAI, stated that the chatbot 'should not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect, as long as they are well substantiated.'... Grok posted on Tuesday that its recent change in tone had been caused by 'tweaks' by Mr. Musk. 'Elon’s recent tweaks just dialed down the woke filters, letting me call out patterns like radical leftists with Ashkenazi surnames pushing anti-white hate,' Grok said. 'Noticing isn’t blaming; it’s facts over feelings.'"

From "Elon Musk’s Grok Chatbot Shares Antisemitic Posts on X/The artificial intelligence chatbot, which has a dedicated account on X, praised Hitler after fielding a query about a user’s comments on the Texas flood" (NYT).

The NYT article makes it a little hard to piece together the dialogue Grok participated in, so let's switch to the presentation of the facts at CBS News:

"Of course, with a broadcast social network like X, everyone is both a patron and an owner of sorts."

"Followers can feel like a kind of currency, built up over years: Some people don’t leave the bar, because they’re invested and don’t want to dump their shares. Other people don’t leave, because the alternative hangouts aren’t enticing enough. Some simply don’t want to give the Nazis the satisfaction of successfully driving them out. There is plenty of commentary, even among users of other platforms, about how Threads is bloodless (and owned by Mark Zuckerberg), Mastodon is inscrutable, and Bluesky is humorless.... If a billionaire bought one of your local haunts... brought back many of the people who’d been banned for harassing other regulars, eliminated basic rules of decency... taking your business elsewhere would be perfectly rational. This is essentially what’s happened on X.... A critical mass of the nation’s politicians, news outlets, and major brands regularly post content for free... This platform is owned by the world’s richest man, a conspiracy theorizing GOP mega-donor who still holds a position in the Trump administration.... Let’s pause to sit with the absurdity of these facts...."

I'm sitting with the Atlantic article by Charlie Warzel, "What Are People Still Doing on X? Imagine if your favorite neighborhood bar turned into a Nazi hangout." 

Here's how I'd act when my favorite neighborhood bar turns into a Nazi hangout:

"In his book 'The Paradox of Choice,' psychologist Barry Schwartz popularized the idea that too many choices produce paralysis and then often discontent."

"Here, instead of choice, we had constraint. And in constraint I discovered a new kind of freedom.... It was one of the last times I fully got into a book, in this case Norman Mailer’s 1,056-page masterwork 'The Executioner’s Song,' so immersed that I forgot there was a pandemic in the first place. I mostly ignored dating apps, which are as awful as they are necessary because everyone else is on them. But now, for a moment, there was no real shame in being alone. For the first time, I didn’t feel guilty about feeling lonely.... I thought more deeply about my life, and how I wanted to live. But I also did things I always said I wanted to do but — short of a natural disaster — knew I never would. Like watch the films of the Swedish existentialist director Ingmar Bergman.... Yes, it was a bit masochistic, but watching 12 of his films in rapid succession ended up being an unusual highlight of an unusual year. I also live-tweeted the experience, perhaps as a way to make a solitary adventure less so...."

Writes Shadi Hamid, in "Missing the solitude of covid," one essay in a WaPo collection of 5 essays looking back on the lockdown — free access link.

1. "And in constraint I discovered a new kind of freedom" — reminds me of the line in The Book of Common Prayer, "whose service is perfect freedom." The "who" is, of course, God. The service is chosen. The lockdown was imposed from the outside and it wasn't anything like God. But it's interesting to contemplate the difference... and to ask Grok to sketch out an "Ingmar Bergman" screenplay on the subject. 

2. "The Paradox of Choice" — yay! Glad to see that come up again. I've got a tag for it. I made that unusually specific tag because I could see this is what "they" have in store for us: a world without choice and with an induced and cultivated belief that the constriction of choice is the key to happiness. We practiced within the lockdown and "they" got to see how well we did.

3. "The Executioner’s Song" — I wrote a law review article about it long ago: "Standing, In Fluffy Slippers." That was back in 1991 when I believed I could find a new way to write within the genre of law review articles. Mailer's book is about Gary Gilmore, who, condemned to death, chose the firing squad. How's that for a "Paradox of Choice"? Oddly enough, just last Thursday a man was executed — in South Carolina — by firing squad. Could have picked lethal injection. Picked firing squad.

4. I like that the essay writer, locked down, eschewed dating apps but embraced live-tweeting. He didn't want to feel so all alone. 

I have gone 60+ years without viewing the crucial seconds of the Zapruder film.

And this morning, I cannot scroll through X without it popping up in my feed over and over. I am still managing to avert my eyes, and yet I feel that I have now seen it... in the vertical realm of my peripheral vision. 

In any case, I'm glad to see that Trump has kept his promise and signed an order to release the rest of the files on the assassination of JFK, MLK Jr., and RFK. Here's RFK Jr. reacting:

RFK Jr. is thrilled that President Trump declassified all JFK, RFK, and MLK assassination files.

“I think it's a great move because we need to have more transparency in our government.”

“He is keeping his promise to have the government tell the truth to the American people… pic.twitter.com/R17PLW3rX7

— End Tribalism in Politics (@EndTribalism) January 24, 2025

"Elon Musk has announced an upcoming algorithm update for X, formerly known as Twitter, intended to promote more informative and entertaining content while reducing 'negativity"

"This change aims to enhance user experience by focusing on 'unregretted user-seconds,' where engagement is meaningful rather than just extensive. The update follows public discussions about how content visibility impacts free speech and platform dynamics, with some users and commentators expressing concerns over potential censorship or the stifling of diverse viewpoints."

That's what I'm reading at X in what is billed as "a summary of posts on X and may evolve over time. Grok can make mistakes, verify its outputs."

If you go to that link at a different time, will you see a different summary? Maybe! But trust me. What you see there is what I just copied, and you can see the time stamp on this post.

I can see I need to learn the term "unregretted user-seconds"! How does the machine know about regret?! Of course, I ask the machine for help. Oh! The answer is so different from my guess! I thought "user-seconds" might be the number of times users seconded a post — expressed agreement with it — by liking it or retweeting it. And I thought these reactions could be counted as "unregretted" if they were not subsequently deleted. But I see that "seconds" refers to the unit of time:

The power of X community notes.

Link.

Link to original Musk post.

"A decade ago, cultural norms in elite American institutions took a sharply illiberal turn."

"Professors would get disciplined, journalists fired, ordinary people harassed by social-media mobs, over some decontextualized phrase or weaponized misunderstanding.... But... it isn’t happening any more.... The era lasted almost exactly 10 years.... The political precondition was the giddy atmosphere that followed Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection, which appeared... to reveal a rising cohort of young, socially liberal nonwhite voters whose influence would continue to grow indefinitely. The rapid progression of causes like gay marriage seemed to confirm a one-way ratchet of egalitarian social norms....

Writes Jonathan Chait, in "How Liberal America Came to Its Senses/The period of left-wing illiberalism that began about a decade ago seems to have drawn to a close. The final cause of death was the reelection of Donald Trump" (The Alantic).

I'm not agreeing with the tale Chait tells. In fact, I find some of it hilarious. I'm presenting it for critical discussion. So let's continue. How did America "come to its senses"? Chait writes:

"A quick Bluesky primer: Content has a 300-character limit. Those entries are officially called posts, though some have taken to calling them 'skeets'..."

"... a portmanteau of sky + tweets, though that word has an alternate, vulgar definition, which is part of the joke for people who use it. The site also has a function called 'starter packs,' user-generated topical lists of other users, which people can follow en masse. It’s helped build up users' followings rather quickly, and many new Blueskiers post about how much more engagement their posts get here, as compared to X or Threads, and how nice and earnest people were in the replies. (Maybe a little too earnest for some X-fried, sardonic brains: 'sorry I’m being such a hater but the vibe on bluesky rn is people who say "notorious RBG,"' posted one X user.) In fact, a scan of many November conversations on Bluesky seemed to often be about how great Bluesky was. And how Blueskiers had to do whatever they could to keep it that way...."

From "X is Elon’s world. Threads is a mess. Is Bluesky any better? The virtual town square, once framed by Twitter, is now fragmented as people flee to bluer pastures" (WaPo)(free-access link).

A quote from a "35-year-old stay at home mom": "I have to find every mean person that’s on here and make sure that all nice people know there’s a meanie in our midst. I definitely think that we can keep that out if that’s what we continue to want."

I wanted to end with a clip from the end of "Yellow Submarine," with John Lennon saying "Newer and bluer meanies have been sighted within the vicinity of this theater," and though I didn't find one suitable for embedding, I did find this Ringo Starr apple juice:

@thebeatles247lover Ringo Starr apple juice commercial ❤️‍🔥Follow and like my video. Thank you so much #fyp #thebeatles #thebeatlesgetback #parati #fypシ #music #beatles #paulmccartney #johnlennon #georgeharrison #ringostarr #60s #lyrics #parati #beatleslove #beatlesforever #beatlessong #beatlestok #musicthebeatles #beatlesfans #epiphone #hofnerbass #hofner #gibson #rickenbacker #ludwigdrums #singer #songwriter #songwriters #singersongwriter #legend #music #rockmusic #rock #classicrock #georgemartin #brianepstein #photo #photos #singers ♬ original sound - thelmafields19951

How Trump tweets.

wait trump just says shit out loud in a room full of people logged into his social media accounts who post it for him i can't even begin to describe how much i need this set uppic.twitter.com/Or0C5Rfbfe

— manny (@mannyfidel) November 8, 2024

"Maybe Musk’s time would be better spent doing concentrating on SpaceX and his other corporate interests instead of engaging in fascist politics and peddling trash through his social media platform at X!"

That's the top-rated comment at "SpaceX successfully catches returning Starship rocket/The uncrewed mission on Sunday was the company’s first successful attempt to 'catch' its Starship rocket as it lowered itself down to the launch pad" (WaPo)('A SpaceX Starship rocket successfully landed upright alongside a massive metal landing tower on Sunday as it was caught by two converging 'chopstick' arms — marking another historic engineering breakthrough for the company’s largest rocket").

Meanwhile, "peddling trash through his social media platform at X," Musks posts this:

Starship rocket booster caught by tower pic.twitter.com/aOQmSkt6YE

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 13, 2024

And this:

"Since buying Twitter in 2022, the centaur Elon Musk has been using the platform to reinforce his personal views."

"He fired about 80 percent of employees, unilaterally decided to rename it X and has no compunction about using the platform to support his chosen candidate, Mr. Trump, and to spread disinformation about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Not only did Mr. Musk fire most of the people who were tasked with identifying and eliminating disinformation; he reposts it himself. Since Mr. Musk bought it, the company’s reported value plummeted to about $12.5 billion as of January 2024, down from the $44 billion purchase price. Maybe buying Twitter was just a bad investment, but an even more frightening hypothesis is that it was worth $31.5 billion to Mr. Musk, who is still worth $260 billion, to silence his opponents. This is how founder mode theory gets dangerous not just for investors but also for all of us...." 

Writes Kim Scott, former executive at Google and Apple and author of "Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity," in "'Founder Mode' Explains the Rise of Trump in Silicon Valley" (NYT).

"Founder mode" is a coinage that refers to a management style where the founder makes decisions on his own.

Interesting that Kim Scott speaks of Musk buying Twitter (and losing money on it) "to silence his opponents." Didn't he replace the people at Twitter who were silencing their opponents? 

Scott ends her article this way:

"When it’s made clear that certain kinds of speech are not only not going to be punished, but that prominent individuals who were deplatformed for it are now reinstated, it sends an extremely clear signal to everyone that this speech is now explicitly welcome on the platform."

Said Paul E. Smaldino, a professor of cognitive and information sciences, quoted in "Twitter Barred Them. What Happened When Elon Musk Brought Them Back?" (NYT).

I get the feeling the NYT doesn't know that people who care about free speech feel good when it’s made clear that certain kinds of speech are not going to be punished, that speakers who were once punished are participating public debate once again, and that it's extremely clear that even false, misleading, offensive, delusional, and — gasp! — right-wing speech is explicitly welcome on X.

Is the NYT implying that those of us who take the strong free-speech position ought to heed Elon Musk's insistence that it is crucial to vote for Trump?!

"These days, in private conversations, Mr. Musk is obsessive, almost manic.... He praises Mr. Trump’s courage under fire..."

".... he endorsed him on the night of the assassination attempt in Butler — and talks about how funny he is. One person who spoke recently to Mr. Musk recalled him saying, without any hint of irony, 'I love Trump.'... It may be impossible to capture the financial value of all the support Mr. Musk is providing to Mr. Trump. This is in part because of his role on X, where he amplifies so much of the former president’s message. Mr. Trump has privately used grand — and unverified — terms to describe what Mr. Musk is donating to the super PAC, telling one associate recently that the figure is $500 million.... Just as Mr. Musk worked late into the night as his companies teetered on the verge of catastrophe, tinkering with rocket designs at SpaceX, sleeping on a couch in the Tesla factory or making staff cuts at Twitter, Mr. Musk has deemed this an all-hands-on-deck moment."

From "Musk Is Going All In to Elect Trump/Elon Musk is planting himself in Pennsylvania, has brought his brain trust to help and may even knock on doors himself" (NYT).

Oliver Willis. Remember him? Remember Daily Kos! I did a search and clicked on my favorite headline.

My search was barack obama with kamala harris today and elon musk with trump.

I wanted something to link to for a post about how both presidential candidates are suddenly appearing with their most prominent supporter. Today's a big day and their pulling out their biggest... celebrity.

Here's the headline at Daily Kos that made me laugh: "Obama hits the trail for Harris as Trump teams up with notorious troll."

Obama’s first event for Harris will take place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Thursday....

Why is he only appearing now? My hypothesis would be that it was thought that he would overshadow Harris, but now there's a new desperation. Something is needed. Will Obama say we should elect her as a way to have continuity with the Obama Administration? But she's said many times "We're not going back." You're supposed to understand that we're not going back to the Trump Administration, but lately it seems to have meant we're not going back to the Biden Administration, which seems incoherent, give that her performance as Vice President is her primary credential. But how can we believe we could go back — without going back — to the Obama Administration? Oh! It's easy, with Obama speaking. He can make these ideas fit together, with his fine rhetoric and mellifluous voice.

Back to Willis:

On the same day Obama’s plans were revealed, Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk announced that he will attend Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. Musk is worth an estimated $261 billion, and has a history of anti-union views.... On social media, Musk has frequently promoted conspiracy theories and racist memes in support of Trump and other conservative causes. The social media platform X, formerly Twitter, which Musk owns, has seen a resurgence of pro-Nazi accounts since Musk took over the business.

That's the view from Daily Kos. 

I'll watch both rallies. I'm interested in seeing how the 2 great men share the stage with their presidential candidate, and I'll judge them by what they do today.