Tag: Loud Mouth Space Wanker

I wish I hadn’t…

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To cut a long story slightly shorter: I have been sleeping with the dog.

Not like that. Get out.

But the beagle is very bandaged up and not very mobile. From Wednesday, she’s going to be less bandaged up, but also not very mobile, but that’s another story. Anyway, she’s still trying to navigate the slings and arrows of her current situation, and quite regularly getting herself stuck. Either lying down, sitting down or standing up.

And so, at the moment, I’m spending my nights downstairs on a spare mattress and helping the beagle each time she gets stuck. It happens quite a lot each night.

It’s not been fun, I’ll be honest. My sleep is so disturbed that my smartwatch can’t even detect that it’s happened. Perhaps because it’s not really happening. And so I’ve been grabbing an hour or two’s nap during the day to try and keep myself going.

This morning, I couldn’t do that, because of reasons, and so I sat with the dog and I read the world news.

Dear lord. It’s not pretty out there, is it?

Because of the situation described above, and perhaps because of just a reasonable amount of self-preservation, I haven’t really been keeping too up to date with the situation in the USA. And of course, it’s always difficult to find objective, unbiased views when wanting(?) to learn about these things, because these days, the world is more polarised than a pair of expensive sunglasses.

But it’s easier to make judgements about the rights and wrongs, and about how I feel about what’s going on, when the actual information is coming directly from the goons themselves. In years to come, historians are going to have an absolute field day with all those primary sources.

They really just put it out there, don’t they?

The scary bits for me are twofold. OK, threefold. But the first fold is a fairly obvious one. Still, I guess that it shouldn’t be overlooked.

The fact that the (apparently, potentially) legitimately elected President of the USA is… well… like that.

250 years of democracy and it’s evolved to give us… him? What went wrong?

Obviously, a lot went wrong: there are many, many factors in how this came about, but honestly… what an absolute disaster for the entire world (minus Russia and China, obviously).

Number two – and I use that term with all of its meanings – that they are so open, so brazen, so completely shameless and unabashed about the things that they are doing and the way that they are doing them. Everyone keeps referring to that guy in Germany in the 1930s, and terrifyingly, that’s quite reasonable, but there have been plenty of other examples before and since and none of them have been pleasant, and none of them have worked out well. The thing is that many of those examples weren’t elected: they seized power via non-democratic means and then held on – and on, and on.

This twat won an election (apparently).

And that brings me on to the third fold. His supporters. It’s a cult. It’s just a well-managed cult of frighteningly stupid, easily-led people.
I don’t use the c-word lightly, but if it looks, smells and quacks like a cult… well…

It doesn’t seem to matter how outrageous the claim or the story (or the lie) that is used to justify the action: it’s lapped up like manna from heaven. There is literally not a second given to even contemplate questioning the motive or think critically about the situation.

Orange man good.
Weird – and I mean really weird – billionaire good.

That’s a cult. And it’s running one of the most powerful nations on earth. It’s unbelievable.

Ah Jesus.

I don’t think I’m going to surprise anyone in making the somewhat radical statement that I really don’t think that this is going to end well. And it’s going to be f******g miserable while it gets us there, as well.

I read the news today, oh my.

I wish I hadn’t.

Was I wrong about Twitter?

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Sort of. Maybe.

Two and bit years ago, I suggested that Twitter was on its way out.

So, is this the end for Twitter? To be honest, I’d been using it less and less over the past few years. But I’ll still miss it.
Maybe it’s for the best, given the direction it was clearly about to take. Of course, Musk doesn’t think so, but the replies to his tweet are exactly the reason that I’ll miss Twitter so much when it chooses (or I choose) to give up completely.

The fact is – as I actually hinted in that post – Twitter was only dying for some of us. If you happen to be a right-wing, anti-vax, Oompa Loompa fan, then Twitter is still very much the go-to destination to meet up with like-minded people. But for everyone else, despite its obvious uses, it’s becoming more and more untenable to keep using the site.

There are still many, many interesting, erudite, important, humorous and entertaining people on the app, and still plenty of useful information, from valid local and international sources, and it’s sad that those informal bonds and communities seem likely to die the death now.

The latest to leave – that I’m aware of, anyway: I’m sure that there are thousands of others – is The Stranglers, who posted this, this week:

Of course, the news that some “aging rockers” are leaving the app won’t break Elong Muskrat’s bank – especially with all the extra subsidies he’s now dragging in via his orange buddy – but they are the latest in a long line of people moving on, just like I did.

Surely then, there will come a tipping point, where the only people left on there will be rabid Nazis. We’re not too far away from that now, with them all happily and unironically paying $8 a month to the richest guy on the planet in return for “free speech” and protection from the consequences of their words.

But the further down the Trump route that he goes, the more Nazi salutes he gives, the greater his nasty wankery becomes, surely there will be a point at which there will be a mass exodus of the mainstream companies, personalities and sports teams from Twitter, because of his ownership.

We just really need a few brave (big) people to stick their heads up above the parapet and it could be so lovely watching the platform flounder.

I do think it’s coming.

On Elon

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I know. We really don’t want to hear anything about him, but we just have to. Constantly.
So instead of all the things that he wants you to hear, how about a different version: The Truth?

This video comes from here, and it’s quick, concise, and also equal parts tragic and funny.

It does all the work so that you don’t have to.

And so you don’t have to believe all the fanboys’ stories about their demigod.

Thank goodness he’s nowhere close to anyone in any position of power.

I’m sorry? He’s what, with whom?

Oh. Oh. I see.

Quiche

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“Fancy a quickie for dinner?”
“I think you’ll find that it’s pronounced QUICHE!”

But this is a quickie. Hugely busy day and still stuff to do before this evening, when we are also doing stuff.

So here are a couple of links:

Is it because it’s driving through a horrific bit of Sheffield where bus peltage is actually the least of your worries? Spoiler: it is.

Also, this:

Decency long left the building at X. It flows from the very top. When former executive Yoel Roth, whom Musk wrongly accused of being a pedophile, warned recently about hate speech on X, CEO Linda Yaccarino’s first reaction was to play down his concerns. On Monday, Musk followed up: “I have rarely seen evil in as pure a form as Yoel Roth.”

More final nails are being added at an alarming rate.

When you know…

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We’re not all experts at everything. If we were, not only would it be extremely taxing to keep up to date with all our areas of expertise (that being all of them), but also, it would rather diminish the use of the word “expert” in any sort of comparative sense. And so we should probably stick to our own lane, and get on with our own expert stuff, rather than trying to be a master of all trades, and a jack of none.

Or something.

I’ve mentioned on here more than once about the eye-opening experience of finding out just how many people considered themselves experts on microbiology when Covid came around. And just how misguided and plainly incorrect much of that “expertise” actually was. Because it’s reasonable to think that someone sharing their apparently learned opinion on something you don’t know about, should probably be talking sense until they start talking about something you know a lot about, and then you realise just how little they actually understand.

I’m not alone in feeling this way. This has been doing the rounds again today:

This, as the Loud Mouth Space Wanker drags what’s left of the rotting corpse of Twitter uphill in the driving rain, through the acidic, rocky mud towards the inevitability of the waiting teeth of the scrap grinder.
And while this is just an opinion piece, it’s an opinion piece by a real expert: one with over 18 years experience in covering media and technology stories:

Put it all together, and X isn’t just worth less than Musk paid for it, but likely less than its debt. Assume that the company’s revenue last year was $4.7 billion, based on results before it was taken private. If advertising has dropped by half, then this year’s sales should be a bit over $2.5 billion. Put that on the same enterprise-value-to-sales multiple as Snap, which is down to a mere 3 times, and X is worth around $8 billion.

Just because he has a lot of money (less now, of course) and a big mouth, doesn’t mean that he’s an expert at everything. Or perhaps, anything.

By all means stay away from his cars and rockets. It’s easily done.
There’s every chance that his software might not be around much longer for you to stay away from.