You know it’s time to step away from the internet when you spend all morning on Facebook in a weightlifting discussion group arguing with a human meat locker that Elon Musk is not the entrepreneur of his dreams. But damn it, I’m not ready to step away.
Yeah but nah. It's like comparing Covid to the black death, or comparing the hole in the ozone layer to climate change. In each case the former is awful, but the latter is an existential threat.
Yes, both are repellant, but Musk is an Ayn Rand fever dream, Trump is pure Sinclair Lewis. Musk wants his projects to function, Trump's project IS dysfunction. Everything Trump touches turns to shit (by design), only some things Musk touches turn to shit (by mistake). Musk is destroying Twitter, Trump could destroy the liberal world order, global peace and security, and life as we know it.
BTW, sorry for the rude intro to my comment, on re-reading it sounds harder than I meant. I always look forward to your thoughts popping-up in my in box on a Friday.
I disagree. Trump is a direct clear and present danger but BBC Verify has named Musk as a consistent source of misinformation about everything from covid to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to … I dunno, Andrew Tate and hating on Greta Thunberg. Musk is personally pushing lies like Putin’s bitch but he’s also manipulating his platform to push lies.
An excellent thesis JB, however I must admit I had to do a double take to check there wasn’t a certain Uncle Clive in there - who could definitely partake in the Bunglefuck, making for a somewhat ungodly ménage a trois…
Clive did spring to mind as an antipodean rep of the Bunglefuck brigade. Of course he's a very low rent version. He'd love to think he was up there with Don and Elon, but we all know he's just a local boy made bad.
I spent most of a day - well, all of the morning and some of the afternoon - CACKLING LIKE A WITCH about X and the serial bungles. I laughed so much I decided to write a blog about it although that’s not usually my purview. It’s here, for anyone who needs a belly laugh.
Since I posted it, Bloomberg reported that, by rebranding Twitter, Musk wiped $4billion -$20billion off its value.
AND Al Jazeera reported that Indonesia blocked X.com because of porn. Apparently Twitter is in talks with govt officials instead of sending their standard poop emoji, so I wonder how that happened. Maybe Musk reached out first?
Space Karen is the gift that keeps on giving. All hail the social media platform briefly named “er”!
PS I 100% agree with everything you said, Birmo. Entitled cis white male assholes born with silver spoons, neither with a legitimate degree to their name, both reliant on spin to give them credit to which neither is due.
I do think Musk has book smarts of a sort while Trump is a fucking dufus. What is scary, is Musk's age Trump was still only a minor threat with very limited reach, imagine if ol Musky is allowed/able to continue evolving and gaining power and influence like a shit filled Katamari ball from hell the way Trump did-Trump 2.0 if you will.
Bring me my finest whetstone Jenkins! That guillotine isn't going to sharpen itself!
You’re well supported here by those pictures, that remind me of the deep discomfort I felt as a kid watching Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka, an obviously mad misanthrope that operates outside any known laws or conventions. Like Wonka, Trump and Musk demand the love of the people while never really bothering to hide the snarling bastard just a layer of skin below the surface. How anyone could fall under their clumsy spell is beyond me.
And as you alluded to both share an army of supporters who despite all evidence to the contrary claim that their idols ridiculous decisions are actually brilliant 4 dimensional chess moves that we are all too smooth brained to see.
Well this is a classic! Not a connection I would have made before reading this. I wonder if there are other “brother from another mother” matches? Ritchie Shitsack might pair well with Boris or maybe he just stands alone as a giant turd floating in the Thames - never to be washed away! You are in fine form, well done.
Since you are not using ZuckX, I have to ask you here: how come SpaceX and CarX are not a shit stained crater of bankruptcy and litigation? Given both The Horrid Service Formally known as Twitter and PayPal both reflect his true managerial abilities, CarX and SpaceX still running must mean god loves fools and narcissistic shitlords.
This is worth an essay on its own, but I have to get to beer. So I'll quickly dispose of PayPal. He didn't set up Paypal. That was Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek, with Thiel and Levchin coming up with the idea for a digital payments company after a speech by Thiel in the late 1990s at Stanford University about global market opportunities. Musk had set up X.com as an online bank, but it wasn't doing much and he suggested a merger when it became obvious that Thiel and Levchin's technology for a digital wallet was way more advanced and gaining first mover advantage. The companies merged, which gave him a piece of a great idea in Paypal, but he can't seriously claim paternity. It wasn't like Jobs returning to Apple with the software he'd developed at Next. The technology from X.com wasn't used in any significant way by Paypal and they got rid of Musk because he was obsessed with his old x.com bullshit and leaning into destroying the brand loyalty PayPal had already built up. A similar story at Tesla, at least as regards the foundation mythology. He didn't found the company, he just invested early. Kudos to him for that and maybe for the business model of first developing high end high performance electric vehicles before pushing the technology down and out into the wider market. But again, it was an investment play. He didn't come up with the idea and build it from scratch. The world is full of those opportunities and full of people who go after them successfully. They just don't get the attention that he does. SpaceX? I'll give him that. He founded it. He built it. It's a great story. But that leads us to Twitter, or 'X' as it is now. And, hoo boy. It will not end well and is good chance to take down his other ventures I reckon.
So you don't give it much chance of becoming the Anglosphere WeChat and being as dominant here as that is in the Sinosphere? I know there's an awful lot of "if" in that plan, and many ellipses, but that's a pretty big plan. And as a platform, twitter did/does seem to work pretty well, I think? Perhaps it's no WhatsApp, but isn't it somewhere to start?
To be sure, starting to build a new thing from the position of being $44 billion behind doesn't sound like such a good idea...
Perhaps losing the brand recognition is not such a big deal if what you're trying to turn it into has a different audience and a different business model, even if the mechanics look fairly similar.
Yeah but nah. It's like comparing Covid to the black death, or comparing the hole in the ozone layer to climate change. In each case the former is awful, but the latter is an existential threat.
Yes, both are repellant, but Musk is an Ayn Rand fever dream, Trump is pure Sinclair Lewis. Musk wants his projects to function, Trump's project IS dysfunction. Everything Trump touches turns to shit (by design), only some things Musk touches turn to shit (by mistake). Musk is destroying Twitter, Trump could destroy the liberal world order, global peace and security, and life as we know it.
These are really good points, Roy. Worth a column on their own.
BTW, sorry for the rude intro to my comment, on re-reading it sounds harder than I meant. I always look forward to your thoughts popping-up in my in box on a Friday.
Pfft, not even close to rude. Go read some of my one-star Amazon reviews!
I disagree. Trump is a direct clear and present danger but BBC Verify has named Musk as a consistent source of misinformation about everything from covid to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to … I dunno, Andrew Tate and hating on Greta Thunberg. Musk is personally pushing lies like Putin’s bitch but he’s also manipulating his platform to push lies.
The Bunglefuck Brothers. Yes!
An excellent thesis JB, however I must admit I had to do a double take to check there wasn’t a certain Uncle Clive in there - who could definitely partake in the Bunglefuck, making for a somewhat ungodly ménage a trois…
Clive did spring to mind as an antipodean rep of the Bunglefuck brigade. Of course he's a very low rent version. He'd love to think he was up there with Don and Elon, but we all know he's just a local boy made bad.
Dammit, now I have that unholy image in my head
You’re welcome :)
I spent most of a day - well, all of the morning and some of the afternoon - CACKLING LIKE A WITCH about X and the serial bungles. I laughed so much I decided to write a blog about it although that’s not usually my purview. It’s here, for anyone who needs a belly laugh.
https://www.darkmatterzine.com/hilarious-but-true-twitterx-news/
Since I posted it, Bloomberg reported that, by rebranding Twitter, Musk wiped $4billion -$20billion off its value.
AND Al Jazeera reported that Indonesia blocked X.com because of porn. Apparently Twitter is in talks with govt officials instead of sending their standard poop emoji, so I wonder how that happened. Maybe Musk reached out first?
Space Karen is the gift that keeps on giving. All hail the social media platform briefly named “er”!
PS I 100% agree with everything you said, Birmo. Entitled cis white male assholes born with silver spoons, neither with a legitimate degree to their name, both reliant on spin to give them credit to which neither is due.
This is why you're my favourite.
Yes the bunglefuck bros indeed!
I do think Musk has book smarts of a sort while Trump is a fucking dufus. What is scary, is Musk's age Trump was still only a minor threat with very limited reach, imagine if ol Musky is allowed/able to continue evolving and gaining power and influence like a shit filled Katamari ball from hell the way Trump did-Trump 2.0 if you will.
Bring me my finest whetstone Jenkins! That guillotine isn't going to sharpen itself!
Katamari... now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time... a very long time...
You’re well supported here by those pictures, that remind me of the deep discomfort I felt as a kid watching Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka, an obviously mad misanthrope that operates outside any known laws or conventions. Like Wonka, Trump and Musk demand the love of the people while never really bothering to hide the snarling bastard just a layer of skin below the surface. How anyone could fall under their clumsy spell is beyond me.
I knew I should have gone with my first instinct to make this a Willy Wonka comparison. He really was the most evil of billionaires.
And as you alluded to both share an army of supporters who despite all evidence to the contrary claim that their idols ridiculous decisions are actually brilliant 4 dimensional chess moves that we are all too smooth brained to see.
Is it the decisons, or just the continuous colour and movement? Frankly, Musk is a lightweight in the pure rage-amplifier stakes.
Well this is a classic! Not a connection I would have made before reading this. I wonder if there are other “brother from another mother” matches? Ritchie Shitsack might pair well with Boris or maybe he just stands alone as a giant turd floating in the Thames - never to be washed away! You are in fine form, well done.
https://insidestory.org.au/harry-frankfurts-warning/ - all you need to know about bullshitters
Brilliant as always 🤣❤️
Since you are not using ZuckX, I have to ask you here: how come SpaceX and CarX are not a shit stained crater of bankruptcy and litigation? Given both The Horrid Service Formally known as Twitter and PayPal both reflect his true managerial abilities, CarX and SpaceX still running must mean god loves fools and narcissistic shitlords.
This is worth an essay on its own, but I have to get to beer. So I'll quickly dispose of PayPal. He didn't set up Paypal. That was Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek, with Thiel and Levchin coming up with the idea for a digital payments company after a speech by Thiel in the late 1990s at Stanford University about global market opportunities. Musk had set up X.com as an online bank, but it wasn't doing much and he suggested a merger when it became obvious that Thiel and Levchin's technology for a digital wallet was way more advanced and gaining first mover advantage. The companies merged, which gave him a piece of a great idea in Paypal, but he can't seriously claim paternity. It wasn't like Jobs returning to Apple with the software he'd developed at Next. The technology from X.com wasn't used in any significant way by Paypal and they got rid of Musk because he was obsessed with his old x.com bullshit and leaning into destroying the brand loyalty PayPal had already built up. A similar story at Tesla, at least as regards the foundation mythology. He didn't found the company, he just invested early. Kudos to him for that and maybe for the business model of first developing high end high performance electric vehicles before pushing the technology down and out into the wider market. But again, it was an investment play. He didn't come up with the idea and build it from scratch. The world is full of those opportunities and full of people who go after them successfully. They just don't get the attention that he does. SpaceX? I'll give him that. He founded it. He built it. It's a great story. But that leads us to Twitter, or 'X' as it is now. And, hoo boy. It will not end well and is good chance to take down his other ventures I reckon.
So you don't give it much chance of becoming the Anglosphere WeChat and being as dominant here as that is in the Sinosphere? I know there's an awful lot of "if" in that plan, and many ellipses, but that's a pretty big plan. And as a platform, twitter did/does seem to work pretty well, I think? Perhaps it's no WhatsApp, but isn't it somewhere to start?
To be sure, starting to build a new thing from the position of being $44 billion behind doesn't sound like such a good idea...
Perhaps losing the brand recognition is not such a big deal if what you're trying to turn it into has a different audience and a different business model, even if the mechanics look fairly similar.
Facebook is much closer to being WeChat. Also, China is a single, huge, somewhat corrupt regulatory system. The west is a dog’s breakfast.