Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[wcw43921]

8 hours ago, Logan D. Hurricanes said:

The big announcement is here! You are not ready. 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

"I can’t believe I'm going to jail for an NFT salesman"

[Lord Liaden]

9 minutes ago, wcw43921 said:

 

"I can’t believe I'm going to jail for an NFT salesman"

 

"Although Gionet was once a major Trump supporter in his first two presidential campaigns, he has now apparently switched his allegiance to rapper Kanye West, who has taken to openly praising Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and denying the Holocaust."

 

So Gionet decided Trump isn't a serious enough fascist bigot. And he thinks Kanye West is.

 

MAGA poster boy here.

[Cygnia]

Twitter suspends accounts of several journalists who had reported on Elon Musk

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Free Speech!

[Ternaugh]

Unsurprisingly, it's looking like some of the images used for the Trump NFT grift were lifted from commerce sites on the internet, and then badly Photoshopped to put his head and branding on them.

 

https://gizmodo.com/donald-trump-nft-trading-cards-1849900531

[unclevlad]

There is a very real possibility that Musk is burning down his entire empire.  NOT just Twitter.  The other shareholders of Tesla can't be happy with him.  He sold another $3.5B in Tesla stock, which depresses the price, after saying in April he wouldn't finance the Twitter deal by selling stock.  Tesla stock's down 60%.  Securities law is intricate, but I think he's leaving himself open for a lawsuit.  

 

The EU is also particularly unhappy with this latest stunt of his.  And rather clearly, draconian moves like this can't sit will with potential advertisers.  They want stability, and Twitter is a rowboat in a hurricane.

 

The Trump cards...<sigh>.  I just feel like screaming at anyone who still backs him.  THIS is the kind of person you want as *President*?  Well.  Preaching to the choir.  Just more support that the man's a total narcissist who lives in a fantasy world.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

11 minutes ago, Ternaugh said:

Unsurprisingly, it's looking like some of the images used for the Trump NFT grift were lifted from commerce sites on the internet, and then badly Photoshopped to put his head and branding on them.

 

https://gizmodo.com/donald-trump-nft-trading-cards-1849900531

 

[Lectryk]

30 minutes ago, Ternaugh said:

Unsurprisingly, it's looking like some of the images used for the Trump NFT grift were lifted from commerce sites on the internet, and then badly Photoshopped to put his head and branding on them.

 

https://gizmodo.com/donald-trump-nft-trading-cards-1849900531

 

This is authentication buried in the process of creation:  it's his (his team's?) trademark to steal (um, use without proper attribution) others IP.

20 minutes ago, Logan D. Hurricanes said:

 

 

Beat my answer to it...

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

 

[Lord Liaden]

P.T. Barnum nailed it: "There's a sucker born every minute."

[Cygnia]

Top Trumps...you're doing it wrong.

[unclevlad]

22 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

P.T. Barnum nailed it: "There's a sucker born every minute."

 

Or, if you prefer, you can fool some of the people all of the time.

[Ternaugh]

The math's funny. 45,000 "cards" at $99 each should be $4,455,000, not $1,000,000. It's not like Trump to lowball a figure like that (unless he's reporting to the IRS).

[Pariah]

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

P.T. Barnum nailed it: "There's a sucker born every minute."

 

39 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

Or, if you prefer, you can fool some of the people all of the time.

 

Or, if you're of a more cynical bent, the old saying known as Canada Bill Jones' Motto: "It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money."

 

--

 

It other news of the Insurrection: QAnon follower who led the mob that chased Police Officer Eugene Goodman on Jan. 6 sentenced to 5 years in prison

[BNakagawa]

Elon Musk had an offer on the table to delete the twitter account that tracked his private jet for $50k.

 

Instead, he bought Twitter for $44B and had it deleted.

 

4D Chess move, for sure. 

[Lord Liaden]

59 minutes ago, Ternaugh said:

The math's funny. 45,000 "cards" at $99 each should be $4,455,000, not $1,000,000. It's not like Trump to lowball a figure like that (unless he's reporting to the IRS).

 

I've seen the former total cited a few times in various media.

[Old Man]

3 hours ago, unclevlad said:

There is a very real possibility that Musk is burning down his entire empire.  NOT just Twitter.  The other shareholders of Tesla can't be happy with him.  He sold another $3.5B in Tesla stock, which depresses the price, after saying in April he wouldn't finance the Twitter deal by selling stock.  Tesla stock's down 60%.  Securities law is intricate, but I think he's leaving himself open for a lawsuit. 

 

"A" lawsuit?    Last I checked Musk is already looking at slam dunk class action wrongful termination lawsuits in multiple states (if not countries), probable breach of contract suits with his (former) advertisers, more lawsuits for nonpayment of required severance and/or inadequate notice of layoff, Section 230 violations, investigations by the FTC for market manipulation and (now that he's blocking competitors from tweeting) antitrust concerns, and possibly even libel based on what he's been accusing journalists of.

 

I've read somewhere that narcissists who fail in a public way are prone to spiraling out of control and doubling or tripling down on their mistakes, and it seems likely that that's what we're seeing here. 

[Lord Liaden]

13 minutes ago, Old Man said:

I've read somewhere that narcissists who fail in a public way are prone to spiraling out of control and doubling or tripling down on their mistakes, and it seems likely that that's what we're seeing here. 

 

That is becoming a familiar pattern to all of us, isn't it.

[Old Man]

6 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

That is becoming a familiar pattern to all of us, isn't it.

 

On other forums I've wondered whether redpilling involves taking an actual pill; when Musk or Kanye or Bezos go off the deep end it feels extremely abrupt.  But I suppose it's more likely that they've just always been like that and what's actually happening is that their handlers suddenly lose containment.

[unclevlad]

27 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

"A" lawsuit?    Last I checked Musk is already looking at slam dunk class action wrongful termination lawsuits in multiple states (if not countries), probable breach of contract suits with his (former) advertisers, more lawsuits for nonpayment of required severance and/or inadequate notice of layoff, Section 230 violations, investigations by the FTC for market manipulation and (now that he's blocking competitors from tweeting) antitrust concerns, and possibly even libel based on what he's been accusing journalists of.

 

I've read somewhere that narcissists who fail in a public way are prone to spiraling out of control and doubling or tripling down on their mistakes, and it seems likely that that's what we're seeing here. 

 

Oh, those.  Yeah, just a few.  But those are Twitter.  What I was referring to was a lawsuit by the TESLA shareholders.  He may well lose control of Tesla, and hey, who knows, SpaceX as well perhaps, before this is all over.

 

The employment issues might depend on contract terms;  without knowing the contracts, it's possible they're within bounds for some, but also wrongful for some.  Inadequate notice...I do think he's wide open on that, for at least some.  

 

Heh.  The group of people who love Musk the most is, of course, the late night talk show hosts.  Second most tho, might be lawyers who focus on the sorts of cases you mention...they've got to have $$$ in their eyes.  

[Lord Liaden]

31 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

On other forums I've wondered whether redpilling involves taking an actual pill; when Musk or Kanye or Bezos go off the deep end it feels extremely abrupt.  But I suppose it's more likely that they've just always been like that and what's actually happening is that their handlers suddenly lose containment.

 

I think it may have something to do with believing they're infallible. Being human they inevitably will make a mistake or suffer a failure, but acknowledging that would undermine their self-image and world view, so they have to fight even harder to demonstrate that they weren't wrong, and/or it wasn't their fault. The more accusations and evidence to the contrary pile up, the more desperately they flail against it.

 

By the time they start to feel the survival of their ego is threatened, there's little their handlers can do to rein-in their excesses.

[Ternaugh]

The Boys weighs in:

 

 

[Cygnia]

Elon Musk Had His Most Absurd, Disturbing 24 Hours at Twitter Yet

Quote

Update: After this article was published, Twitter banned half a dozen prominent journalists who had covered Musk and were critical of him on the platform.

On Wednesday, Twitter chief Elon Musk banned accounts he said he never would in order to protect free speech, made up new rules to justify it, threatened legal action against a 20-year-old, pontificated on how doxing is banned on the platform, and then immediately posted a video doxing a man and asked his 121 million followers to identify him.

It was the most confusing and publicly volatile series of events yet in the richest man in the world's takeover of Twitter, which has been characterized by unmitigated chaos and the site transforming more and more into a bullhorn for its powerful owner. 

It began when Twitter banned the account @elonjet, which had 500 thousand followers and tweeted automated updates about Musk's personal flights using legal, publicly-available aviation data. Anyone can request that the FAA not broadcast that data, which Musk has also done, flight tracker site FlightAware told Motherboard. Previously, Musk had said of the @elonjet account, “My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk,” he tweeted on November 6. Musk has also said he is "against censorship that goes far beyond the law." 

The highly targeted ban against an account clearly annoying Musk and almost nobody else caused an immediate uproar, and it was followed by more bans. The personal account of 20-year-old @elonjet creator Jack Sweeney was banned, and so were all of his other flight tracking accounts, including those that tracked Mark Zuckerberg and Russian oligarchs. Twitter then retroactively added a new policy that banned accounts "dedicated to sharing someone's live location."

Musk then took to his personal account to launch a PR offensive. He said in a tweet, "Any account doxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation," but that "posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis" will be allowed. He then went on to claim that a "crazy stalker" in LA had blocked a car carrying his child, X, and jumped on the hood. He posted a video of an unknown man and asked his 121 million followers if anyone recognized the car or the person driving it. 

 

[wcw43921]

And while everyone's fixated on Musk, porn becomes a target.  Again.

[Lord Liaden]

2 hours ago, Ternaugh said:

The Boys weighs in:

 

 

 

I wouldn't buy either set, but if I had to buy one, I think this one would sicken me less. At least Homelander is prettier, and can convincingly simulate having class.