Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

FWIW, the network effects of the supercharging network are the only thing here that sounds like a moat that would make Tesla more valuable in the long run than other car companies.

In the long run I think you're correct. They certainly can't fall back on build quality (which, relatively speaking, is shit).

One-pedal driving is pretty awesome, but that's no longer a Tesla-specific thing.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

yes, the gop is bad that way!

All incumbents will be bad that way. At any given time, one party will probably be benefitting more from it than the other.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

All incumbents will be bad that way. At any given time, one party will probably be benefitting more from it than the other.

"Redistricting is the original form of nine-dimensional chess, the purest (only self-interest applies) and most complicated (it depends on party, race, class, supreme court rulings, demographic, economic, and sociological trends) form of political warfare."--Molly Ivins.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

"Redistricting is the original form of nine-dimensional chess, the purest (only self-interest applies) and most complicated (it depends on party, race, class, supreme court rulings, demographic, economic, and sociological trends) form of political warfare."--Molly Ivins.

We had a state vote to appoint a commission with both parties evenly represented to do it. I think it came out pretty well. The prior districts ensured R majority, which was not representative of the general population.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

We had a state vote to appoint a commission with both parties evenly represented to do it. I think it came out pretty well. The prior districts ensured R majority, which was not representative of the general population.

I would kill for something like that. We had the democrats flee the state to attempt to prevent a re-redistricting in 2003. It happened anyways and we've been solidly, solidly republican ever since. Even though our population looks absolutely nothing like our representatives.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

I would kill for something like that. We had the democrats flee the state to attempt to prevent a re-redistricting in 2003. It happened anyways and we've been solidly, solidly republican ever since. Even though our population looks absolutely nothing like our representatives.

Get it on the ballot- it would be hard to campaign against it- they really didn't have much negative that could be said that didn't sound stupid/evil.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Correct as to first sentence. Partially correct as to second.

Some of the people saying Biden is illegitimate are fools and knaves. Some aren't. Some are lying and putting out false information on purpose. That group would be manipulators, propagandists, political operatives, etc.

This highlights a danger in moderation. Words are replacements for brute force and violence. (Unless you're Putin.) Manipulation is a way for men to try to get what they want by getting others to agree to it, or by tricking them. Advocacy and promotion often involve lies. Modern advertising is rife with lousy, sleazy tactics. And one of the bedrocks of our culture, religion, is based on telling people fabulous bullshit stories.

Within the concept of "moderation," or akin to it, is this idea that "misinformation" should be banned. As you note, platforms don't want to get into that. But a whole lot of people who "think they know best" and the politicians that pander to them definitely want to find ways to stop "misinformation" from spreading. (Just this week, Biden's admin [not Biden, but people below him] started a task force on "misinformation" in response to Musk buying Twitter.)

This thinking elevates words to the level of actions. They are not the same thing. (Eazy E was not actually killing people in Compton. Bret Easton Ellis may have given some serial killers some ideas, but he is not one himself. The Anarchist's Cookbook is not the same thing as a pipe bomb built using its schematics.)

Words are different from actions, as is the absence of them (silence is not violence).

No one may yell fire in a crowded theater. But that's a very limited form of exception, based on immediate fear of imminent arm. "Misinformation" regarding elections is not within that exception. It is, in fact, something politicians have been using since politicians have existed. LBJ famously joked about accusing an opponent of being a pigfucker to win a Congressional seat.

People are not going to stop doing what they want to do to get what they want. Take away the right to lie and manipulate and they'll simply revert to violence, the thing they used before advocacy and manipulative behaviors replaced it as instrumentality of combat among civilized people.

I get that you have a principled aversion to content moderation, and you analogize Twitter's decisions about which user content they will publish on their platform to a government deciding which speech it will ban. It would be interesting to see you, maybe just once, acknowledge the fact that Twitter is not the government, but a private business funded by investors who want to make money, and that it is not banning speech, rather deciding which speech it wants to subsidize to publish -- "subsidize" because of course Twitter doesn't (yet) charge users to tweet, and incurs real costs. Now you are again talking about "fire in a crowded theatre," a First Amendment principle, but of course Twitter is not the government.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

We had a state vote to appoint a commission with both parties evenly represented to do it. I think it came out pretty well. The prior districts ensured R majority, which was not representative of the general population.

I think it would be cool if more states did that.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Really good long post here about how Twitter is already doing the things Musk says it should do, and also about how Sebby is wrong, to wit:

Indeed, about the only actual practical point that Musk seems to disagree with Twitter about is a few specific content moderation decisions that he believes should have gone in a different direction. And this is, as always, the fundamental disconnect in any conversation about content moderation. Every individual — especially those with no experience doing any actual moderation — insists that they have the perfect way to do content moderation: just get rid of the content they don’t want and keep the content they do want.
But the reality is that it’s ridiculously more complicated than that, especially at scale. And no company has internalized that more than Twitter (though, I expect many of the people who understand this the best will not be around very long).

Now, I’m sure that Musk fans (and Techdirt haters, some of whom overlap), will quickly rush out the same tired talking points that have already been debunked. Studies have shown, repeatedly, that, no, Twitter does not engage in politically biased moderation. Indeed, the company had to put in place special safe space rules to protect prominent Republican accounts that violated its rules. Lots of people will point to individual examples of specific moderation choices that they personally don’t like, but refuse to engage on why or how they happened. We’ve already explained the whole “Biden Laptop” thing so it doesn’t help your case to bring it up again — not unless you’re able to explain why you’re not screaming about Twitter’s apparently anti-BLM bias for shutting down an account for leaking internal police files.

The simple fact is that content moderation at scale is impossible to do well, but Twitter actually does it better than most. That doesn’t mean you’ll agree with every decision. You won’t. People within the company don’t either. I don’t. I regularly call the company out for bad content moderation decisions. But I actually recognize that it’s not because of bias or a desire to be censorial. It’s because it’s impossible for everyone to agree on all of these decisions, and one thing the company absolutely needs to do is to try to craft policies that can be understood by a large content moderation team, around the globe, who can make relatively quick decisions at an astounding speed. And that leads to (1) a lot of scenarios that don’t neatly fit inside or outside of a policy, and (2) a lot of edge case judgment calls.

Indeed, so much of what people on the outside wrongly assume is “inconsistent” enforcement of policy is actually the exact opposite. A company like Twitter can’t keep changing policy on every decision. It needs to craft policy and stick with it for a while. So, something like the Biden laptop story comes along and someone points out that it seems pretty similar to the Blueleaks case, so if the company is being consistent, shouldn’t it block the NY Post’s account as well? And you can make an argument as to how it’s different, but there’s also a strong argument as to how it’s the same. And, so then you begin to realize that not blocking the NY Post in that scenario would actually be the “inconsistent” approach, since the “hacked materials” policy existed, and had been enforced against others before.

Now, some people like to claim that the Biden laptop didn’t involve “hacked” materials, but that’s great to be able to say in retrospect. At the time, it was extremely unclear. And, again, as described above, Twitter has to make these decisions without the benefit of hindsight. Indeed, they need to be made without the benefit of very much time to investigate at all.

These are all massive challenges, and even if you disagree with some of the decisions, it’s simply wrong to assume that the decisions are driven by bias. I’ve worked with people doing content moderation work at tons of different internet companies. And they do everything they can to avoid allowing bias to enter into their work. That doesn’t mean it never does, because of course, everyone is human. But on the whole, it’s incredible how much effort people put into being truly agnostic about political views, even ridiculous or abhorrent ones. And Twitter, pretty much above all others, is incredibly good at taking the politics out of its trust and safety efforts.

Lots of links in the original, including to another piece that says this:

Take, for example, the popular claim that Twitter blocking a NY Post tweet about Hunter Biden’s laptop is proof of bias. However, as we discussed at the time, Twitter very clearly had a policy forbidding the linking to “hacked” documents. And Twitter had actually used that same policy to shut down DDoSecrets’ account for… publishing documents that exposed law enforcement wrongdoing. So, here we have evidence that the same policy was used to block links to articles about police misconduct as well (which would generally be a key liberal talking point, less a conservative one) and the Biden laptop article.

Now, to be clear, we always thought this policy was stupid and were happy that Twitter changed its policy on this point soon after. But, the company did nothing to stop the actual discussions of Biden’s laptop (just links to that one story), and Twitter had already shown that it enforced that policy against publications that would be mostly seen as “left leaning” as well. That’s not proof of bias. Just bad policy.

[LessinSF]

My avatar and hero - https://www.reddit.com/r/interesting...e_from_a_book/

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by LessinSF

My avatar and hero - https://www.reddit.com/r/interesting...e_from_a_book/

I call bullshit. Who is looking at the morning papers five minutes after getting out of bed?

[LessinSF]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I call bullshit. Who is looking at the morning papers five minutes after getting out of bed?

Not the morning "papers," anymore, but I turn on my bedrrom TV first thing (even before getting out of bed) to see the market and whether Putin has gone nuclear. Then it is on while I shower, shit, shave, and brush my teeth.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by LessinSF

Not the morning "papers," anymore, but I turn on my bedrrom TV first thing (even before getting out of bed) to see the market and whether Putin has gone nuclear. Then it is on while I shower, shit, shave, and brush my teeth.

You shit after you shower?

[LessinSF]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

You shit after you shower?

Only becasue you have expressed interest in my morning devotions:

Wake
Turn on TV
Watch in bed for a few minutes
brush
shit
shower (and shave in the shower)
come downstairs
drink some orange juice and milk
go online
cocaine
pot
fentanyl
gummies
etc.

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally Posted by LessinSF

Only becasue you have expressed interest in my morning devotions:

Wake
Turn on TV
Watch in bed for a few minutes
brush
shit
shower (and shave in the shower)
come downstairs
drink some orange juice and milk
go online
cocaine
pot
fentanyl
gummies
etc.

You drink both milk and orange juice in the morning?