BF2S Forums DAST Chat

uziq wrote:

yes but STEM megabrains tend to rally around/behind oligarchs.

convo yesterday:

them: "how IS twitter doing?"
me: "massive losses in value and ad revenue since musk took over"
them: "and yet he's winning."

why the hell even ask someone something like that if you've already decided he's won before the conversation even takes place? the fact that these (otherwise intelligent, even!) people keep looking for validation for trump, musk, etc. all selectively-credulous and doe-eyed is super freaky and deeply saddening to me. it's like they're trapped in a dreamlike state and there's nothing you can do to help.

hundreds of millions into trump, and given headship of a fake department as a reward. "masterful gambit, sir," as they say. people have bumper stickers for their teslas saying stuff like, "I bought mine before I knew he was an asshole." widely panned for stuff like nazi pandering, driving his kid away, sucking all the energy out of companies, faking everything from credentials, to video game profiles when he failed to stat pad his engineering. the only thing he's "won" is the generational wealth lottery.

tl;dr

i may have mentioned at one point that one guy was gushing like a fanboy over having gotten a private message from a "musk" account and all the possible money to be made. very dubious story there, and may have resulted in a trailer-bound, chronically ill, jarringly homophobic senior getting scammed.

people still have me (and others in my circles) pegged as conservative-sympathetic. they'll rattle off some horrible joke or hot take and then look at me (or others) as if fully expecting agreement, and then fumble for words when we react like they just suggested kicking puppies.

uziq wrote:

god bless government by scientists and engineers.

"we have no impact in this. the earth's environment has always changed."

musk is winning in the sense that he took a bunch of saudi investment fund money (and numerous others') and purchased himself a mouthpiece that arguably turned an election. it curried favour with trump so that he's (for now) part of the inner sanctum of the white house. that sort of influence and power is probably worth a couple dozen billion -- lord knows enough billionaires have been funding superpacs and lobby groups and whatever else to advertise for their own interests by spending similar sums of money. musk, in a very late-19 century press baron kind of way, identified the channels/networks of communications as the locus of real power. that's canny. i won't say smart, but he obviously recognised the power of apps like twitter in our new demagogic-populist present.

trump was banned from twitter before musk's takeover, sent off to his own reservation to talk to the MAGA echo chamber. musk has ruined twitter as a social network, but as a thinly veiled propaganda tool i guess he is 'winning'. he's in the white house. i doubt he actually cares as to whether twitter itself is a profitable business, or whether the numbers of bots is going up or genuine engagement going down. he couldn't give a shit. beyond the politics, it's an egoistic plush-toy for him with which to validate his own feelings and have all his jokes laughed at.

one thing i do find interesting to think about vis-a-vis the '21st century social media press baron' angle is whether or not musk is, in a way, getting high on his own supply. while there were some capital-grade motherfuckers in the history of press barons, right up to the contemporary examples like rupert murdoch and the barclay brothers, it's pretty clear they were always distanced from a lot of the rubbish distributed using their press organs while furthering other aims. musk seems to have in effect been groomed and become radicalised by his own algorithms. a very odd spectacle.

whether it will last or achieve any worthwhile aims of his, we shall have to wait and see. it's just as foreseeable that in the next 4 years his increasingly erratic behaviour will all blow up in his face, and he'll be left with nothing, a weirdo with fascist inclinations. well, maybe. perhaps we're in for another decade of the world being led to the precipice by maladjusted dweebs with pet theories about racial replacement. will this pivot to owning a social media network and bandying around with trump do lasting damage to his other business concerns? or will he succeed in using his close ties to the white house to send all of his stocks to mars?

Last edited by uziq (2025-01-30 09:49:57)

the saudis needing cash, that's a funny one.

think again about why these people want access to the levers of global social media networks. it's not about a quick return on investment.

they're blowing $3 trillion building a large divot in the desert, i highly doubt they're actually exerting that much pressure on musk. they now have a pretty direct line to the trump white house.

their main interest in owning half of twitter/X is to ever prevent an arab spring v2 happening again. that's more than worth their money, i imagine.

Work hard for what you want.

Last edited by SuperJail Warden (2025-08-13 11:03:53)

Wild times, jews bombing US allies, fascists getting shot, farmers can't give their soy-beans away.

At least Hegseth has finally got his preferred gender-neutral pronoun - good for him/her
Will Kennedy Jr get to be Secretary of Pestilence?

a lot of northwest republicans in my groups are politically disengaged and have basically given up on their side winning here. i'd like them to go to republican meets and drag down the mood.


"it's not like we can win anyway."

not hurting my feelings if they skip the vote, but shut up about the results if you don't, you know.

deafening silence on "rigged elections" when trump won, though, lol.

Last edited by unnamednewbie13 (2025-09-16 10:56:51)

Transport Minister Tom Koutsantonis said there was "nothing to celebrate about a man being murdered in cold blood".

"I don't understand how anyone can celebrate that kind of violence," he said.

"This isn't about left or right, this is about a man who got assassinated for speaking.

what was he speaking about, tom? WHAT WAS HE SPEAKING ABOUT?! there's a whole cvs receipt of the bullet points of shit kirk's said. i'm sick of people telling you how to feel about this stuff. where are they when a school is shot up? crickets? any misgivings, tom, for all the unnecessary shit kirk and people like him stir up for other people, up to and including lethal attacks?

like rush, one less hatemongering public figure. employee should be free to repost their mind on this. sick of the internet being used as a place to dig up this weak-ass dirt on people to rattle the security of their real-life jobs. ❄️

"american bigot shot dead, wife vows to carry on his intolerance hobby," is getting more international attention than it deserves.

not going to hold it against anyone if their well of sympathy is all dried up for insurance ceos, either.

Last edited by unnamednewbie13 (2025-09-16 21:11:33)

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

what was he speaking about, tom? WHAT WAS HE SPEAKING ABOUT?!

Reductio ad Hitlerum - At the end of the day Hitler only used words, he never actually fired a shot, dropped a bomb or pushed anyone into an oven.

So yeah, words.

Whats interesting is we have recently had two apparently sane young people ready to blow up their lives to take down high-profile people at the 'top end of society' who they don't like.

When else has this happened?

This is a little bit different maybe in that they're lone assassins taking it on themselves to go after high profile targets and succeeding (thanks to modern weapons) in the knowledge that they will be toast.

Its not as if they're one of fifty plotting to murder Caesar with small chance of individual death, or one of 10,000 revolutionaries.

Seems like a newish phenomenon.

When people jump from bridges they always regret it on the way down. How quickly do you think this guy had a realization that he shouldn't have done that?