I mean just call it as it is: totally that. He’s so thin skinned and petty. He spent 44bil of various people’s money to do what, exactly? Apart from own the libs, that is
Elon's primary motivation, his 'Roko's Basilisk', is a massive DoD program, which requires Republicans to fund. Twitter helps him curry favors to earn these (potentially ~$1-2T) Republican-backed contracts.
The DoD program is a space constellation of ballistic missile defense satellites for tracking and targeting nuclear ballistic missiles, including HGVs and hypersonic cruise missiles".[110] " However, (UCS) warns developments could escalate tensions with Russia and China and called the project "fundamentally destabilizing".[111] They later called for a treaty halting development to prevent an arms race in space.[112]
Starlink's military satellite development is overseen internally at SpaceX by retired four-star general Terrence J. O'Shaughnessy.[113][114] O'Shaughnessy advocated before the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services for a layered space capability with lethal follow-on that incorporates machine learning and artificial intelligence to gather and act upon sensor data quickly.[115]
> O'Shaughnessy advocated before the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services for a layered space capability with lethal follow-on that incorporates machine learning and artificial intelligence to gather and act upon sensor data quickly
So basically a doomsday machine.
I understand the need for quick reaction but I really really would like to see a human in the chain to push the button. We've come way too close before like the Cuban crisis and Able Archer more specifically where all the data was screaming war but cool heads prevailed.
I agree with you 100%. For all of humanities fallibleness, every averted nuclear close call was due to having a human in the loop[0] in one way or another. For instance, in 1960 Norway's sunrise was interpreted by radar in Greenland as a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. Thankfully there were no automated responses, and humans in the loop realized the error quite quickly once they assessed all the surrounding facts
[1]: I couldn't help but think of this skit and pronunciation when seeing O'Shaughnessy from Key & Peel (video is linked to the pronunciation but its worth watching in its entirety if you like this kind of humor)
Oh yes this is the incident I was referring to, actually. I thought it was the same. Somehow I remembered the troop buildup of Able Archer confirmed the invasion fear for the Soviets. But it sounds like that played no part in it. I must have remembered it wrong.
> Somehow I remembered the troop buildup of Able Archer confirmed the invasion fear for the Soviets.
From what I remembered, and a quick scan of Wikipedia[1], you're not wrong.
"In response, the Soviet Union readied their nuclear forces and placed air units in East Germany and Poland on alert. The Soviet 4th Air Army began loading nuclear warheads onto combat planes in preparation for war."
Yes, like naming his drone ships after Iain M. Banks Culture ships. A universe where the good guys are the utopian communist space hippies, and the bad guys are billionaires with a monopoly on virtual Hells. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Detail)
This is one of the few posts I've seen touch on the question of: is there a pragmatic reason Elon would want to see a Republican or even "Trumpist" government.
In other words: does he actually care about any of that culture war shit or is it just about big contracts?
I think that probably comes from a belief that whatever happens to the wider world, his billions will insulate him from any inconvenience. "Who cares if the proles are ground under the boot, countries are destroyed and misery rules the land...as long as I have my billions FU I got mine". I know a disturbingly large number of people who fundamentally believe this, and not just extravagantly wealthy people.
Elon is a cokehead who just bought the biggest cartel.
We're watching a horrible social media addiction rage out of control in a person who has too many resources and power for anyone to tell him 'no'.
Elon was probably always a POS but on some level I feel bad for him like I feel bad for Notch. all that money, power, and opportunity and they can't help but to spend it all terminally online bickering with other terminally online people.
That was also running totally fine before a rich guy claimed ownership and started changing everything to his will, though the users were perfectly satisfied with how things were running till then.
People started to leave which annoyed him and he started to make ever more rules and eventually deleted all the channels. Which means that reputable channels for open-source projects were now owned by randos who just happened to be the first to join after the reboot. Chaos ensued.
The Twitter drama feels very similar. And that's not a good sign if we look at how Freenode played out. Freenode is now a fringe network. The previous management simply started a new network called Libera and two weeks later it was like the whole thing had never happened, just under a different name.
Twitter is a lot bigger sure but big things can fall too. And they have for lesser reasons. Think Yahoo or MySpace.
A lot of these owners seem to forget that the users are on their platform by free will. There is nothing tieing them down and it's only the tiny hassle of creating a new account that's a barrier to move.
If I got that first huge multimillion dollar payout he hit early in his career, I would've stopped there. I'd still just be quietly living in a modest house in a small town decades later
His twisted, broken personality is what enabled him to become a billionaire in the first place
Don't forget the birth lottery! I've lived in South Africa, and I've seen first-hand the human consequences of the policies that built his family wealth.
Did you hear about the twitter files? It shows some pretty serious election interference and also shows how various staff either lied directly to congress.
Excusing the selective leaking and the motivated journalists who have access to the documents to present a narrative through their view, the conversations to me revealed careful consideration and discussion rather than the vast conspiracy it’s presented as.
As long as we only get one carefully currated version, i call bullshit. Don't you agree that the taibbi posts are extremely suspect?
I thought the V2 would add context but its more of the same. I know plenty of accounts (and people) attacking the libs and advocating for action, one in particular active in RedneckRevolt, who were banned on way less hateful things (one helped find gunrange and explained how to make AP rounds). Reading about the internal mails of people at Twitter who chose to ban educational, pro-BPP accounts explaining to soft lefties why guns are good, and letting Proud boys and libsofticktocks who did the same without bans... Heh.
If it was both side (right and left) against the libs, why not, but this feel like propping up one side only.
