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

[sebastian_dangerfield]

I have no problem believing that Hunter Biden is a scoundrel. I have never heard anything that suggests that his deeds and misdeeds have been a matter of public concern,

He's the son of a President who was receiving Croesan sums for no show board seats of Ukrainian energy companies? Maybe that's a tad newsworthy? Maybe, just maybe? And maybe what you think is immaterial, as it's what the public in general thinks.

Are we seriously having this discussion?

but I have seen the Trump campaign essentially tell the media that they planned to smear Joe Biden, and I have heard about how Trump tried to use weapons shipments to Ukraine -- weapons shipments to Ukraine, to, you know, defend themselves against Russia! -- to extort Ukraine to manufacture dirt on the younger Biden for political purposes.

Also newsworthy. Hugely newsworthy. Now let me ask you, did Twitter preclude that story?

Oddly, that doesn't seem to bother you at all, or even creep into your consciousness.

How could it bother me? It was reported upon everywhere. We even had an impeachment about it. I think I heard all of the facts about that kind of newsworthy thing. It was not barred from discussion on Twitter, or anywhere.

(By the way, for a guy who routinely chides others for whataboutism and asserting false equivalencies, to hear "What about Trump?" is a surprising argument from you. Almost as surprising as it is misplaced.)

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Just stop. He doesn't "admit" anything about "ideologues (the woke) at lower levels." He says they make mistakes without an ideological valence, and then partisans of different stripes get bent out of shape, imaging that they're being discriminated against. See -- you're doing it. You're doing exactly what he says happens.

Do a Google search for "Twitter" and "employees." See how many stories you get about younger employees upset that Musk might allow more unbridled speech.

They can't be upset about their holdings. They just got a 38% premium.

It's not a "construct." It's the way that every single commercially successful internet platform business operates. It's a fact of life that you choose only to notice when it fits your personal bugaboos about "the woke".

I'm referring to the construct of moderation itself. And your defense admits its flaws. If the basis for preclusion of certain content is commercial, well then smart managers would preclude information that reflects poorly on advertisers. A concern about Musk is he will knuckle to Chinese censors to protect Tesla's market there.

The moderators inherently have several conflicts of interest. Some are political, some commercial. They couldn't be entirely neutral when Twitter was public, as that would be acting in a manner contrary to shareholders' interests.

And to the extent getting on board with fashionable political positions (wokeness, ESG, etc.) is currently viewed as a good population/govt manipulation tactic by many of Twitters advertisers, Twitter's moderation cannot be deemed neutral. They have to dance to the tune of those that pay them.

If you're going to pretend to care for free speech principles, shed a tear for Disney, which just had the State of Florida retaliate against it by changing its tax treatment for disagreeing with the Republican Governor.

Drive this through the cement between your ears: It is not a response to my concern about moderation to cite a story that is literally everywhere in the news.

Do you not grasp this? There is no preclusion of any story about DeSantis' ridiculous, bigoted law in Florida. If anything, one cannot escape the story.

Also, more whataboutism?

And do I need to exhibit disgust with DeSantis' idiotic law here? Isn't it axiomatic to every sane person that the law is odious, and he's a bottom feeding asshole to have pushed it? Of course it is. It's objectively awful. We all agree with that. Where we do not agree is in terms of our comfort with "moderation," and specifically how it was applied to the laptop story. Hence the back and forth.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I have no problem believing that Hunter Biden is a scoundrel.

I mean, he wrote a whole book about he was/is a drug addict who did shitty things.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Maybe he should listen to someone who has worked for successful internet platforms for years to get some domain expertise - would you know anyone like that?

At the risk of stating the obvious, it's the way pre-internet businesses work as well. Old-school media impose content-based restrictions. Your local TV station will not let you buy times in which you swear, your local bus company will not show ads with certain kinds of nudity, and your local newspaper will not run ads for prostitution. But these restrictions don't get much attention, because they've been around for a while and are part of the landscape, but moreover because you have to be willing to pay cash to run into them. Social media is different because they let people publish content for free, and so the cost of bad behavior is usually de minimis.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Dan Primack had some stuff on the outs that have been negotiated in the deal. Sounds like it's not going to close for months and during those months lots of shit can happen.

I would bet it goes through, because Twitter is getting its lunch eaten by Facebook and Google, from a business perspective, so I'm betting the deal looks pretty good to its investors, compared to Plan B. Because Elon Musk has a lot of money and can afford to amuse himself, he's probably willing to pay more for Twitter than others would.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

He's the son of a President who was receiving Croesan sums for no show board seats of Ukrainian energy companies?

Oh really? What do other people make for serving on the board seats of Ukrainian energy companies? Is it your general experience that

Maybe that's a tad newsworthy? Maybe, just maybe? And maybe what you think is immaterial, as it's what the public in general thinks.

Are we seriously having this discussion?

OK, we can have this discussion. I would not be surprised if a Ukrainian energy company paid him what seems like a lot of money to you (do you have any idea what directors of comparable companies make?) in the hopes of getting access. I have seen how directors get picked in this country, and NEWS FLASH it's not a meritocracy out there. Who you know matters, and people give you seats in the hopes that you will use your network, hopes that do not always pan out.)

But the internal workings of a Ukrainian energy company are not newsworthy in this country.

By "newsworthy" I am excluding the public's interest in invading other people's privacy. Lots of people are interested in porn or seeing the insides of other people's houses. That does not make porn or Zillow listings newsworthy. Similarly, a political party's interest in harming the other side does not make something newsworthy. If there were a Hunter Biden sex tape, and if Trump wanted it out there, it would not be newsworthy.

(By the way, for a guy who routinely chides others for whataboutism and asserting false equivalencies, to hear "What about Trump?" is a surprising argument from you. Almost as surprising as it is misplaced.)

You misunderstood. It's not "what about Trump?" The ONLY REASON ANYONE IS TALKING ABOUT HUNTER BIDEN IS TRUMP'S DESIRE TO GET PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT HUNTER BIDEN. The New York Post is not running stories about him out of some abstract sense that Hunter Biden's doings are newsworthy. They only did it when Joe ran for President. It's a transparent effort to create a controversy like the Hillary emails, and the very fact that it's a bogus story is part of the way that it becomes a story. People like you can pretend not to care and yet keep repeating "Hunter Biden's laptop" in a way that convinces other people that there is something sinister about Hunter Biden's laptop.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Do a Google search for "Twitter" and "employees." See how many stories you get about younger employees upset that Musk might allow more unbridled speech.

They can't be upset about their holdings. They just got a 38% premium.

I don't have to use Google to be familiar with Twitter employees. If the young ones are upset, it's because they're going to get a new CEO, and so there's going to be a lot of upheaval. If you try, just for a second, to think of Twitter as a business rather than some sort of playpen for the woke, you can maybe imagine this.

"Yeah, it's a great place to work" -- No one I knew at Tesla or Solar City

Also, they're employees, not day-traders. They could get a premium over what they could have gotten last week, but only if they're vested. And the stock was trading above 70 last year.

I'm referring to the construct of moderation itself. And your defense admits its flaws. If the basis for preclusion of certain content is commercial, well then smart managers would preclude information that reflects poorly on advertisers.

Perhaps. Or on the company. Are you familiar with anything anyone has said about Google over the last 15 years? It's a bigger concern for a company with market power, which no one thinks Twitter has.

A concern about Musk is he will knuckle to Chinese censors to protect Tesla's market there.

Yep.

You seem to think I am defending all the moderation that platforms do. Uh, no.

The moderators inherently have several conflicts of interest. Some are political, some commercial. They couldn't be entirely neutral when Twitter was public, as that would be acting in a manner contrary to shareholders' interests.

I don't know what you think a "political conflict of interest" is, and I don't think you do either.

And to the extent getting on board with fashionable political positions (wokeness, ESG, etc.) is currently viewed as a good population/govt manipulation tactic by many of Twitters advertisers, Twitter's moderation cannot be deemed neutral. They have to dance to the tune of those that pay them.

You can keep saying things like that, but the conclusion simply does not follow from the conclusion. As you have put it here, Twitter should be "deemed" biased towards "fashionable political positions" which some of its advertisers support. You would be laughed out of town with that kind of argument about just about any other company, but, well, it's Twitter, so there you go.

I understand that you are ideologically committed to the principle that Twitter is biased against you, will continue to believe it whatever the evidence, and will keep working to turn facts into proof of your beliefs. You've made that very clear. If you ever want to understand how the company works, that'll call for a different approach.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

OK, we can have this discussion. I would not be surprised if a Ukrainian energy company paid him what seems like a lot of money to you (do you have any idea what directors of comparable companies make?) in the hopes of getting access. I have seen how directors get picked in this country, and NEWS FLASH it's not a meritocracy out there. Who you know matters, and people give you seats in the hopes that you will use your network, hopes that do not always pan out.)

You'd think that after the disaster that was Theranos, most people would understand that the boards of companies seeking the eye of the government can be utterly and completely clueless about the actual goings on of the companies that they're supposedly overseeing.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I don't have to use Google to be familiar with Twitter employees. If the young ones are upset, it's because they're going to get a new CEO, and so there's going to be a lot of upheaval. If you try, just for a second, to think of Twitter as a business rather than some sort of playpen for the woke, you can maybe imagine this.

"Yeah, it's a great place to work" -- No one I knew at Tesla or Solar City

A friend of mine has been working on a project with one of his ventures and was shocked that any expenditure/k change over $50k needed to be personally approved. Not by a delegate on that project/division/interest. Personally. And this particular venture has a lot of things blow up/need to be rebuilt/designed. (Conversation about this was roughly 6 months ago.)

Another person I know lasted at Tesla about a year about 5 years ago.

I don't know how he gets anything done at all. Or keeps focus given all of the micromanaging.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

OK, we can have this discussion. I would not be surprised if a Ukrainian energy company paid him what seems like a lot of money to you (do you have any idea what directors of comparable companies make?) in the hopes of getting access. I have seen how directors get picked in this country, and NEWS FLASH it's not a meritocracy out there. Who you know matters, and people give you seats in the hopes that you will use your network, hopes that do not always pan out.)

But the internal workings of a Ukrainian energy company are not newsworthy in this country.

By "newsworthy" I am excluding the public's interest in invading other people's privacy. Lots of people are interested in porn or seeing the insides of other people's houses. That does not make porn or Zillow listings newsworthy. Similarly, a political party's interest in harming the other side does not make something newsworthy. If there were a Hunter Biden sex tape, and if Trump wanted it out there, it would not be newsworthy.



You misunderstood. It's not "what about Trump?" The ONLY REASON ANYONE IS TALKING ABOUT HUNTER BIDEN IS TRUMP'S DESIRE TO GET PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT HUNTER BIDEN. The New York Post is not running stories about him out of some abstract sense that Hunter Biden's doings are newsworthy. They only did it when Joe ran for President. It's a transparent effort to create a controversy like the Hillary emails, and the very fact that it's a bogus story is part of the way that it becomes a story. People like you can pretend not to care and yet keep repeating "Hunter Biden's laptop" in a way that convinces other people that there is something sinister about Hunter Biden's laptop.

1. Again, what you think is immaterial. $50k per month is a lot of money, objectively, to most Americans. And that’s just the board money. The investments/loans are unknown (to me... I’m sure you could find an estimate in some news story).

AND, the FBI is investigating Hunter.

Let me ask you this: If Chelsea Clinton, or a Trump or Obama kid, were discovered to be doing what Hunter did, and the FBI decided to start investigating it (as it did starting in 2019), would that have been a newsworthy story?

That’s rhetorical.

2. That Trump tried to push the story does not render it non-newsworthy. Like it or not, he’s newsworthy. And he was POTUS when he did it. The definition of newsworthy is objective, not what you or I think.

3. The Post is biased. Agreed. This does not render the story non-newsworthy.

4. Stop with “invading privacy” angle. Non-starter. Obvious dissembling.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I don't have to use Google to be familiar with Twitter employees. If the young ones are upset, it's because they're going to get a new CEO, and so there's going to be a lot of upheaval. If you try, just for a second, to think of Twitter as a business rather than some sort of playpen for the woke, you can maybe imagine this.

"Yeah, it's a great place to work" -- No one I knew at Tesla or Solar City

Also, they're employees, not day-traders. They could get a premium over what they could have gotten last week, but only if they're vested. And the stock was trading above 70 last year.



Perhaps. Or on the company. Are you familiar with anything anyone has said about Google over the last 15 years? It's a bigger concern for a company with market power, which no one thinks Twitter has.



Yep.

You seem to think I am defending all the moderation that platforms do. Uh, no.



I don't know what you think a "political conflict of interest" is, and I don't think you do either.



You can keep saying things like that, but the conclusion simply does not follow from the conclusion. As you have put it here, Twitter should be "deemed" biased towards "fashionable political positions" which some of its advertisers support. You would be laughed out of town with that kind of argument about just about any other company, but, well, it's Twitter, so there you go.

I understand that you are ideologically committed to the principle that Twitter is biased against you, will continue to believe it whatever the evidence, and will keep working to turn facts into proof of your beliefs. You've made that very clear. If you ever want to understand how the company works, that'll call for a different approach.

The only thing I’m ideologically opposed to is non-transparent moderation. But I’m not in favor of doing anything about it. Twitter can do whatever it likes and it can moderate anything, for any reason it likes. If people don’t like it, they can go elsewhere.

BUT, if Twitter wants to make indefensibly poor decisions, it can take shit for it. And it should not be trusted. And if a crazy billionaire sees bias and decides to buy it because of its bad decisions, and turn it into something that robs those mobs - right and left - who use Twitter to call for squelching of info and views they don’t like, well... Good. The market has spoken.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

I don't know how he gets anything done at all. Or keeps focus given all of the micromanaging.

I don't understand why Tesla is valued so highly. So they got a head start, but that's a ruthlessly competitive space with an awful lot of competitors.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

OK, we can have this discussion. I would not be surprised if a Ukrainian energy company paid him what seems like a lot of money to you (do you have any idea what directors of comparable companies make?) in the hopes of getting access. I have seen how directors get picked in this country, and NEWS FLASH it's not a meritocracy out there. Who you know matters, and people give you seats in the hopes that you will use your network, hopes that do not always pan out.)

It's worth noting, he had already been on some pretty significant boards, including Amtrak, had been CEO of a couple significant investment funds, a senior officer in MBNA, and had some other pretty good experience in things that drive a pretty high compensation as a norm. And he's got a Yale Law Degree.

Sure, his father's and brother's political connections helped every step of the way, but he had the kind of resume, built over many years, that fetches that kind of coin.

Yes, I would love to do something about income inequality in America, but I bet I could identify a dozen boards that would compensate him that well or better in the time it takes to quaff a beer down.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I don't understand why Tesla is valued so highly. So they got a head start, but that's a ruthlessly competitive space with an awful lot of competitors.

Yeah, if I played in the market I'd short that sucker.

I suspect their car business will be beaten to a pulp, since it's just put out mediocre overpriced product, but the battery business could be a survivor. If they're smart, they'll keep that and sell off the vanity business.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I wear that hat without apology. I'm also squarely in the camp of people like Bill Maher, and Taibbi.

I'm a reasonable, libertarian leaning person who suspects any preclusion of speech. I also think people have a right to fool others, and be fooled. The cure for liars and manipulators is poking holes in their bullshit.

I'm fine with moderation as a concept. And indeed, platforms can do anything they like. But when they do it badly, or suspiciously, or at the behest of people who ought not to control them (extremists on the right and left), they should be called out for doing so.

Is this an unreasonable position? Of course not. Now do your thing and offer an ad hominen about how Greenwald is a tool of Russian propaganda.

Thank you for keeping the joke going. This was a tough day, I had two people close to me get diagnosed with cancer, and call me for support given my experience, and I had to dial in to a funeral I couldn't attend. I needed to get another laugh like this.