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On the opinion page of Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post, former Reddit CEO Ellen K. Pao opines:
Elon Musk’s vision of ‘free speech’ will be bad for Twitter
Tesla CEO has used platform in ugly ways. Now he gets to shape the company’s policies.
By Ellen K. Pao
Ellen K. Pao is a tech investor and advocate, the former CEO of reddit, and a cofounder and CEO of the diversity and inclusion nonprofit Project Include.
Today at 11:42 a.m. EDT
It takes a lot of money to become a board member of Twitter, but not a lot else apparently. With a large stock purchase, an abuser of the service — Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and the world’s richest man
Unlike in the good old days of a short time ago when the world’s richest man was the owner of the Washington Post. Or back when the New York Times was rescued from financial ruin by an intermittent world’s richest man who’d monopolized Mexican communications and had married into the most notorious Lebanese Phalangist warlord dynasty.
— has now essentially bought himself a warm welcome from Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. For those of us who care about equity and accountability, Musk’s appointment to such a prominent role at a platform that serves hundreds of millions of users daily is highly disconcerting — a slap in the face, even.
Musk has been open about his preference that Twitter do less to restrict speech that many see as hateful, abusive or dangerous. Given his new influence, the way he himself has used the platform bodes ill for its future. Musk paid \$20 million in fines to the Securities and Exchange Commission, and stepped down as Tesla’s chairman, after tweeting what the SEC said was misleading information about a potential transaction to take the company private; the settlement also required that any Musk tweets about the company’s finance be reviewed by lawyers. (He continues to flout SEC rules, failing to notify the agency immediately last month when he passed the threshold of owning 5 percent of Twitter’s shares. The 11-day delay in that declaration may have netted him \$156 million, experts say — since shares shot up after investors learned of his purchases.)
On nonfinancial subjects, Musk, who has nearly 81 million followers, often punches down in his tweets, displaying very little empathy. He called a British caver who helped to rescue trapped young Thai divers “a pedo guy” (beating a defamation suit over the slur but adding to his reputation as a bully). In February, he tweeted, then deleted, a meme comparing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler.
Perhaps not coincidentally, allegations of incidents involving racism and sexism at Tesla have been common — standing out even by tech-world’s low standards.
It’s common too denounce the low standards of the tech world because its pockets are so deep. But. obviously, Silicon Valley is highly genteel by the standards of almost every industry in history. Tesla, though, unlike, say, Google or Reddit is actually a heavy manufacturing company that employs lots of blue-collar workers who sometimes say or do crude things, upon which plaintiff’s attorneys try to pounce. Ergo:
In October, a federal jury concluded that employees’ oversensitivity wasn’t the problem: It awarded a Black former contractor \$137 million in restitution for discrimination.
I don’t make many predictions, but let me predict that the plaintiff (and his lawyer) won’t walk away with \$137 million when all the appeals are over.
And the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a suit in February alleging racial discrimination at the Fremont factory. There are clearly dangers to creating workplaces in which people feel free to say and do things that demean their co-workers. There are dangers to abetting such abuse on social media platforms, too.
How about lawsuits over the creation of “hostile environments” at work and at school for straight white males in which the Washington Post is a named co-defendant?
Musk calls himself a “free-speech absolutist,” but like many “free speech” advocates, he willfully ignores that private companies are free to establish some limits on their platforms. He hasn’t learned from the folks who left Facebook and subsequently raised alarms about the harms the platform can cause teenage girls and other users.
In contrast, the Washington Post and New York Times have benefited teenage girls by encouraging the transgender fad that has led thousands of teenage girls to have themselves poisoned, mutilated, and sterilized because those weren’t real teenage girls, they were boys on the inside.
… Musk’s appointment to Twitter’s board shows that we need regulation of social-media platforms to prevent rich people from controlling our channels of communication.
In contrast to Jeff Bezos’s outright personal ownership of the Washington Post or Carlos Slim’s bailout of the New York Times. You see, the Washington Post and the New York Times are good, so therefore Jeff Bezos and Carlos Slim are good. Sure, Carlos Slim is a member by marriage in Lebanon’s most notorious fascist warlord dynasty — the Gemayels — but did you read that in the New York Times or Washington Post? So, I guess that It Didn’t Happen.
Ellen K. Pao, by the way, used to a rich person before her gay black (now ex-) husband Buddy Fletcher’s Wall St. empire collapsed like a house of cards.
English
Arabic
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Ellen Pao she is consciously aware that she is an ugly human being, therefor all beauty must pay penance to that. She looks like a dude trying to pass as a woman:
Just absolute nasty trash. How often do you think Jeff Bezos invites her over for dinner? And imagine that conversation? Bezos is like the Pee Wee Herman of billionaires and Pao is like Medusa.
Every time I think I have finished and completed my iSteve involvement, at least for a time, he adds another inescapable nut, such as this.
There really is noting to add. The story speaks for itself.
That is one of the stupidest, least self-aware, things I’ve ever read in quite a while. Do these people have even the slightest ability to hear themselves? How does banning and shadow banning thousands of people, including a former President of the United States, have anything whatsoever to do with “equity”? (Whatever the hell that means). I thought this woman headed an outfit dedicated to “diversity” and “inclusion.” So banning and not including diverse viewpoints actually contributes to diversity and inclusion? War is peace, freedom is slavery…
“Many.” How many, hun? The “Royal Many” really means a few thousand nutcases who are themselves hateful, abusive, and dangerous.
What are you saying? Are you suggesting that the Israelis were in bed with actual fascists? You, anti-Semite, you, with your blood-libel!
By the way, do you know where Pierre Gemayel got the whole imitation-fascist (the Phalangists aren’t real fascists) aesthetic from? 1936 Berlin Olympics. He was the captain of the Lebanese soccer team there and then.
A genuine thanks.Replies: @Twinkie, @Reg Cæsar
Ukraine, through Zelensky's alliance with the Azov Battalion.
Of course the PLO's Yassir Arafat was a protege of the notorious Otto Skorzeny, an actual nazi who also did some fine work for Nasser and the delightful Paladin Group that trained some of your classic rock-era terrorists and guys like Gaddafi. Hitler remains popular in the Muslim world (why do they get a 'world?' Nobody else does.) and his book is a best seller, though to be fair they collectively produce fewer original books every year than Belgium. Not big readers of non-korans, the Muzzies.
Small world, as they say.Replies: @Twinkie
I was reading your older posts and saw a discussion of Luttwak. What do you think of his book about the Byzantine Empire, if you've read it?Replies: @Twinkie
I thought Twitter was a private company that could do whatever it wanted, and if you don’t like that, you can start your own platform. Or was that last week?
Twitter (TWTR) remains a privately owned joint stock corporation. Private here means non-government. Twitter Inc. stockholders own Twitter.
Elon Musk bought 9.2 percent of TWTR's common stock last week, meaning he now owns 9.2 percent of TWTR. He may buy more TWTR stock in the future.
This action entirely is entirely legitimate and proper and within the rules of free market capitalism.
Big stockholders of course are entitled to try to influence company policies, along with smaller stockholders.
I am not rich. I volunteer to control communications.
That was so much hypocrisy in one shot, the mother lode of stupidity, if I may. Bravo, Steve, for catching all of it.
As for this K(ung) Pao and stupidity v evil, I’ll go with the former. These people really are THAT stupid to not see their hypocrisy, though a serious lack of understanding of the Golden Rule is part of the problem too.
That’d be the Biblical Golden Rule, not Jeff Bezos’ one – He who hath the gold, maketh the rules.
Musk has 4, I think now 5, white sons and he fought in court for custody of them from his first ex-wife. That is all you need to know.
By the way, do you know where Pierre Gemayel got the whole imitation-fascist (the Phalangists aren't real fascists) aesthetic from? 1936 Berlin Olympics. He was the captain of the Lebanese soccer team there and then.Replies: @Mike Tre, @SunBakedSuburb, @Ghost of Bull Moose, @AP
One thing I appreciate about your contributions, is that you are not indentured to the absurd threats of antisemitism certain to be cast by some here for the high crime of noticing things.
A genuine thanks.
Ooh, Greece, France, Ireland, Sweden...Replies: @Mike Tre
Carlos Slim kind of reminds me of Jorge Hank, only instead of telecommunications monopoly and Lebanese descent, Jorge Hank is a former mayor of Tijuana and has a monopoly on casinos in Mexico and is of German descent.
Hank’s father was the mayor of Mexico City and was very politically connected. He would have been president of Mexico except he was born in Germany, so he couldn’t be president.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Hank_Rhon
Last I counted he owns 45 casinos, has 19 children and loads of exotic animals. He may not be as rich as Slim, but Forbes estimated his dad’s net worth to be 2.7 billion USD.
Her fellow diversicrat at the NYT, executive editor, Dean Baquet, sent out a memo after Musk got his seat saying that the requirement for NYT journos to have a Twitter profile and presence is now rescinded and though not an outright required boycott, that journos ought to scale back their overall use and browsing of Twitter should they remain.
https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-times-issues-twitter-reset-for-reporters-2022-4
Other bluecheck journos, such as the ‘National political reporter’ for Politico are hoping this will become a trend, but, I suspect, for probably different reasons than iSteve readers who are likely, like me, very appreciative for the NYT journos’ sacrifice in leaving Twitter.
Will having them away from the 15 year old girls and their lagging Tumblr perpetual outrage machine and moral panic make them become more sane? Be interesting to see.
I assume the main problem is if Twitter keeps exposing their lies and propaganda, the New York Times and Washington Post will go out of business, and all those reporters would lose their jobs.
Well, you know, if they made a habit of telling the truth, they wouldn't need to worry about this.
These people are showing clinical levels of paranoia. Incredibly, free speech is making them paranoid. They suffer profound psychological stress when they hear the truth if it contradicts their worldview.
The reporters at the Washington Post and the New York Times don't need a platform. They need a psychiatrist.
They also need to effing grow up and develop a healthy respect for the truth.Replies: @Alfa158
That been a very convenient trump card for the mindless lickspittles for some time. From 10 years ago when Firefox fired the guy who basically invented that browser (Private companies can hire/fire who they want!) to corporate retailers barring entry without a mask (private companies can make any policy they want!), its been a thin veil to enforce progressive tyranny. Because as we saw, you dare not not bake them their cake.
Here’s a reddit thread recapping Ellen Pao’s crackdown on reddit:
“A politician who is poor is a poor politician.”
While we’re going OT, I noticed something very strange today.
This afternoon I popped into McDonald’s. (I’m outing myself as a prole, yes.) I discovered that the store had been remodeled.
The new look is very … stark. The floors and ceiling are dark gray; the walls are covered with wood and are completely bare. The bright-colored posters of young cappuccino-colored urban professionals experiencing orgasmic joy while stuffing French fries into their mouths are gone.
But the most bizarre design element is that, for some inexplicable reason, there is now a painting of a brick wall and a steel fence on the wall where the self-service drink station used to be. (No more do-it-yourself refills for you, fatso!) A faded McDonald’s “smile” logo has been “spray-painted” on the fake fence. It makes the restaurant feel like a jail.
Is this some kind of weird pro-BLM statement or something? Because it’s a very odd look for a fast-food restaurant.
I took a picture:
The stark euro trash lobbies are part of the global standards that have finally been forced upon the US restaurants. Previously individual franchisees would contract with approved, US, decor companies to custom design and build a lobby to fit in with the community. The consultant class that now occupies upper management has replaced this process with a selection of 5 global standard lobbies. All look like the arrivals terminal in a Scandinavian train station. Also the lobby packages are the intellectual property of the design companies so any modification is contractually prohibited. To add a final kick in the teeth many of them are produced overseas and imported rather than being manufactured in Long Beach or Pennsylvania. Oh, and I am sure this will be a shock, the build quality is much lower and the price is higher.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
Brutalist designs have no place in fast food joints which I think should always be welcoming in a greasy, garish sort of way.Replies: @Stan Adams
Huh. A story on the ownership of Twitter, and I’m not getting any hits on a CTRL-F for “Singer” — as in “Paul Singer.” That’s odd:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/twitter-paul-singer-republican-jack-dorsey [3/1/20]
A billionaire Republican megadonor has purchased a “sizable” stake in Twitter and “plans to push” to oust CEO Jack Dorsey among other changes.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/29/tech/jack-dorsey-twitter/index.html
Jack Dorsey, the cofounder and public face of Twitter, will step down from his role as CEO, effective immediately
https://mondoweiss.net/2018/08/yorker-profile-neoconservative/
A long New Yorker profile of Paul Singer, Trump’s big donor, plays down the fact that Singer’s major political interest is Israel, and leaves out the word “neoconservative,”
And a discussion of who controls the New York Times — but no mention of the Sulzberger cabal? Must have been an oversight:
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/02/opinion/nocera-how-punch-protected-the-times.html
By the way, do you know where Pierre Gemayel got the whole imitation-fascist (the Phalangists aren't real fascists) aesthetic from? 1936 Berlin Olympics. He was the captain of the Lebanese soccer team there and then.Replies: @Mike Tre, @SunBakedSuburb, @Ghost of Bull Moose, @AP
“Are you suggesting that the Israelis were in bed with actual fascists?”
Ukraine, through Zelensky’s alliance with the Azov Battalion.
What if Musk wants to protect Blacks from the harm caused by seeing the Very Bad Word, so he bans blacks from Twitter. Twitter is a private company, so it can do what it wants, right? It’s not refusing to serve customers based on race. No one pays for their Twitter account.
Would that be legal?
Didn’t President Trump block someone on Twitter? IIRC, the jackass sued and won. Courts said that the President blocking someone violated free speech or maybe petitioning the government. Could Trump get back on Twitter based on that?
https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-times-issues-twitter-reset-for-reporters-2022-4Other bluecheck journos, such as the 'National political reporter' for Politico are hoping this will become a trend, but, I suspect, for probably different reasons than iSteve readers who are likely, like me, very appreciative for the NYT journos' sacrifice in leaving Twitter.
https://twitter.com/hollyotterbein/status/1512076303641440283
Will having them away from the 15 year old girls and their lagging Tumblr perpetual outrage machine and moral panic make them become more sane? Be interesting to see.Replies: @Thea, @Anon
The trend for a few years now is that new (Gen z) journalist don’t even bother with Twitter accounts. The kids tell me Twitter and Facebook are for old people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4KbK2OpC4Q
I am so sick and tired of all this legalistic baloney.
• He paid gov nuisance fines; and legal fees.
• He agreed to tw self-censor about some things; and pay legal fees.
• He delayed to file gov forms; and needs pay legal fees.
• He hires floor guys who talk dirty; and TSLA is paying legal fees.
• He’s being sued by vindictive, CA state bureaucrats; ditto.
Too much government. Too many licensed-lawyers in the legislature. Too many clueless, Ivy-educated, mealy-mouthed, leftist-lawyers. Too many laws.
absolutley hilarious
Their plan is to exhaust you by beung so brazenly stupid, just like the Soros Prosecutor plan is to overwhelm the system, just like the Obama immivasion plan.
There really is noting to add. The story speaks for itself.Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican, @Dieter Kief
Jeez, you’re practically calling Steve a rapist!
These people are so tiresome:
So, so tiresome….
Can’t they simply say, “speech we don’t like”?
By the way, do you know where Pierre Gemayel got the whole imitation-fascist (the Phalangists aren't real fascists) aesthetic from? 1936 Berlin Olympics. He was the captain of the Lebanese soccer team there and then.Replies: @Mike Tre, @SunBakedSuburb, @Ghost of Bull Moose, @AP
Right. And the Israelis provided cover when the Phalange’s Kataeb went into Sabra and Chatila (most famous massacre EVER), where a bunch of PLO fighters were holed up, and killed hundreds of Palestinian and Lebanese Muslims. In this dynamic the Israelis are Germans, the Pals are Jews and the Phalange are…Ukrainians?
Of course the PLO’s Yassir Arafat was a protege of the notorious Otto Skorzeny, an actual nazi who also did some fine work for Nasser and the delightful Paladin Group that trained some of your classic rock-era terrorists and guys like Gaddafi. Hitler remains popular in the Muslim world (why do they get a ‘world?’ Nobody else does.) and his book is a best seller, though to be fair they collectively produce fewer original books every year than Belgium. Not big readers of non-korans, the Muzzies.
Small world, as they say.
By the way, do you know where Pierre Gemayel got the whole imitation-fascist (the Phalangists aren't real fascists) aesthetic from? 1936 Berlin Olympics. He was the captain of the Lebanese soccer team there and then.Replies: @Mike Tre, @SunBakedSuburb, @Ghost of Bull Moose, @AP
Hi Twinkie,
I was reading your older posts and saw a discussion of Luttwak. What do you think of his book about the Byzantine Empire, if you’ve read it?
“A poor politician is a poor politician”….much snappier.
At times like these, I am very glad that I have never been involved in social media. It always seemed very silly and affectatious to me, and I personally declined to participate in it.
Nevertheless, in true Marshall McLuhan fashion, social media has remade the culture in its own image. We now live in a social media environment regardless of whether we as individuals choose to participate or not. Everything is governed by the subtextual rules of social media discourse.
But I don’t think this will last much longer. As the West’s suicidal sanctions against Russia begin to bite back, as energy embargoes make everything prohibitively expensive and power generation unreliable, and as the incipient war against China makes imported electronics components and semiconductors difficult to get, the “network effect” will go into reverse, the social media will not be supported, and the trillions of dollars of notional market cap represented by these companies will evaporate into nothingness.
I wonder if then people will begin to appreciate the change that came over them these last 20 years, i.e. that it came and went, and will not ever come back.
‘he willfully ignores that private companies are free to establish some limits on their platforms’
What a f@#\$ing genius. Limits means it’s not a platform.
https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-times-issues-twitter-reset-for-reporters-2022-4Other bluecheck journos, such as the 'National political reporter' for Politico are hoping this will become a trend, but, I suspect, for probably different reasons than iSteve readers who are likely, like me, very appreciative for the NYT journos' sacrifice in leaving Twitter.
https://twitter.com/hollyotterbein/status/1512076303641440283
Will having them away from the 15 year old girls and their lagging Tumblr perpetual outrage machine and moral panic make them become more sane? Be interesting to see.Replies: @Thea, @Anon
I am genuinely bewildered by the attitude of the New York Times and The Washington Post. Are they really that frightened of free speech? That’s insane. Why would the New York Times reporters want to leave the platform if there’s more free speech on it? How does that threaten them?
I assume the main problem is if Twitter keeps exposing their lies and propaganda, the New York Times and Washington Post will go out of business, and all those reporters would lose their jobs.
Well, you know, if they made a habit of telling the truth, they wouldn’t need to worry about this.
These people are showing clinical levels of paranoia. Incredibly, free speech is making them paranoid. They suffer profound psychological stress when they hear the truth if it contradicts their worldview.
The reporters at the Washington Post and the New York Times don’t need a platform. They need a psychiatrist.
They also need to effing grow up and develop a healthy respect for the truth.
They do exactly what every good business does which is find out what your customers want, deliver it, get paid. They have a core of subscribers who want to read a newspaper that tells them exactly what they want hear, what they want to believe, what makes them feel good. The Times interactively both listens to what their customers want and guides them to want that. There will never be a scintilla of deviation from the Party line because their readers don’t want to be perturbed by any input that contradicts what they want to hear. If what the customers want changes, the NYT will always be on the same page.Replies: @Alden
“Equity” means “whatever hurts white people is good”.
In my younger days, being a man meant you sometimes got ribbed and teased at work, sometimes rather cruelly. Did we go running to the boss to complain like little girls tattling to Teacher? We did not. And you know what, the experience really didn’t hurt us at all. I have nothing but contempt for these special snowflakes.
Obviously it’s not that uncommon for cruel teasing to go too far, especially among teenagers, but… “whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” and all that.
Stan, the self service drink stations were removed in most restaurants while lobbies were closed during lockdowns. Insane safety regulations provided the cover to finally get rid of them. The reality is that they had become vagrant magnets and impossible to monitor or maintain.
The stark euro trash lobbies are part of the global standards that have finally been forced upon the US restaurants. Previously individual franchisees would contract with approved, US, decor companies to custom design and build a lobby to fit in with the community. The consultant class that now occupies upper management has replaced this process with a selection of 5 global standard lobbies. All look like the arrivals terminal in a Scandinavian train station. Also the lobby packages are the intellectual property of the design companies so any modification is contractually prohibited. To add a final kick in the teeth many of them are produced overseas and imported rather than being manufactured in Long Beach or Pennsylvania. Oh, and I am sure this will be a shock, the build quality is much lower and the price is higher.
That is grim and uninviting. Are you sure it’s finished? If it is, it’s definitely designed to discouraging lingering or even sitting down to eat. If it has a drive-through, I’d use that.
Brutalist designs have no place in fast food joints which I think should always be welcoming in a greasy, garish sort of way.
This particular location first opened in 1969. The original drive-in building was demolished and rebuilt as a drive-through in 1983. The 1983 building was demolished and rebuilt in 2011. (How's that for useless trivia?)Evidently, the people running the McDonald's corporate empire don't agree with you. The new look is supposedly "more relevant to millennials":
https://www.ellsworthamerican.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2021/05/Mcds-full-view-1200x630.jpg
https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2020/10/05/NPPP/fd0e5df9-6e32-4b3f-8dda-13461adf7ba7-mcd4.jpgReplies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Kylie
I assume the main problem is if Twitter keeps exposing their lies and propaganda, the New York Times and Washington Post will go out of business, and all those reporters would lose their jobs.
Well, you know, if they made a habit of telling the truth, they wouldn't need to worry about this.
These people are showing clinical levels of paranoia. Incredibly, free speech is making them paranoid. They suffer profound psychological stress when they hear the truth if it contradicts their worldview.
The reporters at the Washington Post and the New York Times don't need a platform. They need a psychiatrist.
They also need to effing grow up and develop a healthy respect for the truth.Replies: @Alfa158
NYT probably doesn’t need to worry, their business model is very successful. They have almost 9 million subscribers and charge \$200 a year for home delivery.
They do exactly what every good business does which is find out what your customers want, deliver it, get paid. They have a core of subscribers who want to read a newspaper that tells them exactly what they want hear, what they want to believe, what makes them feel good. The Times interactively both listens to what their customers want and guides them to want that. There will never be a scintilla of deviation from the Party line because their readers don’t want to be perturbed by any input that contradicts what they want to hear. If what the customers want changes, the NYT will always be on the same page.
Making a hostile Tweet about Justin Trudeau, the leader of a major country, is hardly “punching down.”
A genuine thanks.Replies: @Twinkie, @Reg Cæsar
You like it when I go after the Jews, eh? 😉
In all seriousness, I appreciate the kind words – I think you meant well with your remark and I accept it in the same spirit. I’d like to think that – at least on this blog (or in real life, too, according to my wife) – I speak my mind forthrightly, right or wrong.
Let's just say I have an appreciation for the telling of how things are, regardless of a group's self-anointed protected-from-criticism status. :)
Of course the PLO's Yassir Arafat was a protege of the notorious Otto Skorzeny, an actual nazi who also did some fine work for Nasser and the delightful Paladin Group that trained some of your classic rock-era terrorists and guys like Gaddafi. Hitler remains popular in the Muslim world (why do they get a 'world?' Nobody else does.) and his book is a best seller, though to be fair they collectively produce fewer original books every year than Belgium. Not big readers of non-korans, the Muzzies.
Small world, as they say.Replies: @Twinkie
I don’t know how genuinely Nazi he was or whether he was, like a lot of other Nazis, opportunists. Truth is really stranger than fiction sometimes – Skorzeny actually worked for the Mossad after the war. How genuinely Nazi could he have been?
I’ll say this much about him. He was one of the coolest MoFos ever, along with Wild Bill Donovan.
I was reading your older posts and saw a discussion of Luttwak. What do you think of his book about the Byzantine Empire, if you've read it?Replies: @Twinkie
Of course. It’s not as interesting as his book on the “grand strategy” of the Roman Empire.
But, if you have the time, everything he’s written has useful and interesting insights, some more than others. If you don’t have the time, read the first chapter of “Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace” and maybe the book on Rome’s supposed grand strategies.
The first – the paradoxes of war – is truly magnificent – simple, elegant, and profoundly insightful. It’s like reading Sun Tzu at his best.
The second about the three different strategic frameworks the Romans supposedly engaged in to defend their borders may be anachronistic (the Romans didn’t actually operate like that with “grand strategies,” which is a very modern approach to war and peace), but is quite thought-provoking about how a modern power should defend its interests.
There are two people I find very original and whose work I read without fail on matters of war and national security – one is Martin van Creveld and the other is Edward Luttwak. Both are Jews, of course (though with very different sensibilities). 😉
Punching down= attacking someone I like
https://youtu.be/-Lp8Tza31r4
Sorry, OT to be sure, but somebody has to post this somewhere…..
Just sit back and dig it: THE definitive performance of this. A must see.
Look at that attack. Perfection. Check out how she stares down the first violinist, and gives kooky nods to the other soloists. And, on top of everything else, totally rockin’ the backless dress.
What a dream.
I wish my brother George were here.
Brutalist designs have no place in fast food joints which I think should always be welcoming in a greasy, garish sort of way.Replies: @Stan Adams
I don’t know. I’ll have to check back in a few weeks.
This particular location first opened in 1969. The original drive-in building was demolished and rebuilt as a drive-through in 1983. The 1983 building was demolished and rebuilt in 2011. (How’s that for useless trivia?)
Evidently, the people running the McDonald’s corporate empire don’t agree with you. The new look is supposedly “more relevant to millennials”:
As it happens, right up my alley. I apparently have a boundless capacity for enjoying useless trivia. Here's a look at the peak dining experience of my formative years. Scroll down to the Kirkwood location.
https://losttables.com/heaven/heaven.htm
Yes I'd forgotten the Brutalist millennials. Their taste in interior design is basically an even drearier variation of the already dreary mid-20th century modern. Sparse, angular and unwelcoming. They prefer environments in which character, history and warmth are absent. (N.B. I'm a neat freak who abhors clutter but likes a place to be welcoming.)
Expect to see more of this. Really gives you something to look forward to, doesn't it?Replies: @Stan Adams
Punching down = giving Tiny what he’s been asking for
A genuine thanks.Replies: @Twinkie, @Reg Cæsar
These are his cousins’ top Naver search terms for each country in Europe:
Ooh, Greece, France, Ireland, Sweden…
That quote by Carlos Hank Gonzalez is quite true in Mexico, and at home. It translates into something different in Spanish. Incompetence is an Adjective in the original quote in the place of “poor.” But that quote is what he’s most famous for.
I had it wrong about Carlos and eligibility to be Presidente. He was born in Mexico, but his father was born in Germany so that’s why he could not be president. The Mexican Constitution requires the both parents are born in Mexico to qualify for the presidency. News to me, but this may be where the oligarchy got the blueprint for looting a nation, working on the sidelines.
Just don’t gamble on the Greyhound races in Tijuana. They’re rigged with international betting. The electric rabbit is worth the admission fee, and the tacos are cheap. Thanks Jorge.
You don’t understand.
Ms Pao and her kind are not interested in “diversity” and “inclusion”.
They are interested only in Power — that they have it to destroy their enemies and twist the world in their warped vision. Who/whom is all that matters.
Regarding banning viewpoints yet being for “inclusion”, Orwell’s definition of “doublethink” comes to mind:
There really is noting to add. The story speaks for itself.Replies: @Jenner Ickham Errican, @Dieter Kief
I agree, this is a great iSteve article. The one about the anglosphere’s secret service findings in Ukraine/Russia is great too. – Btw.: Great articles like that are rare, that is their nature, so to speak. But when such occasions appear, Steve is often times admirably precise, unpretentious, fast, ironic and spot on.
They do exactly what every good business does which is find out what your customers want, deliver it, get paid. They have a core of subscribers who want to read a newspaper that tells them exactly what they want hear, what they want to believe, what makes them feel good. The Times interactively both listens to what their customers want and guides them to want that. There will never be a scintilla of deviation from the Party line because their readers don’t want to be perturbed by any input that contradicts what they want to hear. If what the customers want changes, the NYT will always be on the same page.Replies: @Alden
Newspapers and magazines make their money from advertising. And allegedly very wealthy people subscribe to the NYTimes. That’s why the NYSlimes can charge so much money for the ads they sell to Tiffany’s Bergdof’s auction houses etc.
This particular location first opened in 1969. The original drive-in building was demolished and rebuilt as a drive-through in 1983. The 1983 building was demolished and rebuilt in 2011. (How's that for useless trivia?)Evidently, the people running the McDonald's corporate empire don't agree with you. The new look is supposedly "more relevant to millennials":
https://www.ellsworthamerican.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2021/05/Mcds-full-view-1200x630.jpg
https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2020/10/05/NPPP/fd0e5df9-6e32-4b3f-8dda-13461adf7ba7-mcd4.jpgReplies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Kylie
No doubt this is the Millennial look or, I should say the look that is SUPPOSED to appeal to them – how would I know? Anyway, Stan, lots of modern hotel lobbies (and the rooms too) have this type of look – I think it sucks. (Your, Home2Suites, Alofts, Hotel Indigo’s, etc.)
The stark euro trash lobbies are part of the global standards that have finally been forced upon the US restaurants. Previously individual franchisees would contract with approved, US, decor companies to custom design and build a lobby to fit in with the community. The consultant class that now occupies upper management has replaced this process with a selection of 5 global standard lobbies. All look like the arrivals terminal in a Scandinavian train station. Also the lobby packages are the intellectual property of the design companies so any modification is contractually prohibited. To add a final kick in the teeth many of them are produced overseas and imported rather than being manufactured in Long Beach or Pennsylvania. Oh, and I am sure this will be a shock, the build quality is much lower and the price is higher.Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
Thanks, Sal. That explains the modern Wendy’s too, which I’ve been to a few times lately when I decided to prole out, like Stan.
I hate to sound like a “fan boy,” but for my money Steve Sailer is the most delightful poker of fun of all the pundits I read (and I read far too many). He is subtle and ironic when appropriate but also firm and unrelenting when appropriate. And he’s never rude and seldom exaggerates, which is quite remarkable and rare.
It is a mystery to me how he is able to maintain his cool with some of the tosspots around here, but he does. No minor accomplishment with so many would-be windup artists.
They just don’t do self-awareness, do they?
Some bluecheck tweeted “The people of Hungary re-elected Orban in a stunning rejection of democracy.”
Magnificent example of doublethink.
That’s partly what led to the horror of the Washington Post TikTok account. (Whose avatar I believe was even a try hard form of Gen Z nostalgia in being a character from Lego Star Wars)
As for this K(ung) Pao and stupidity v evil, I'll go with the former. These people really are THAT stupid to not see their hypocrisy, though a serious lack of understanding of the Golden Rule is part of the problem too.
That'd be the Biblical Golden Rule, not Jeff Bezos' one - He who hath the gold, maketh the rules.Replies: @Moses
No. It is you who does not see.
“These people” know exactly what they are doing. And they are winning.
Did it ever occur to you that getting away with blatant public hypocrisy, zero consequences, and using it successfully to cow enemies and get everything you want is the very definition of Power?
Public hypocrisy shows the wielder has Power enough to get away with it.
I believe that’s what some people, like her gay black husband, call throwing shade.
The McDonald’s where I live still haven’t reopened to dine in customers, which they blame on staffing issues. I am assuming this McDonald’s didn’t have the Playland that used to be synonymous with their locations. In certain locations given the quality in dine in patrons they would attract it is probably better to never reopen their dining rooms.
He was a brownshirt, so I’d say pretty genuinely nazi.
I don’t make many predictions, but let me predict that the plaintiff (and his lawyer) won’t walk away with \$137 million when all the appeals are over.
And most of the money they do get will end up in the pockets of the lawyer.
“You like it when I go after the Jews, eh? 😉”
Let’s just say I have an appreciation for the telling of how things are, regardless of a group’s self-anointed protected-from-criticism status. 🙂
Ooh, Greece, France, Ireland, Sweden...Replies: @Mike Tre
They could have denoted Scotland as “angry” but otherwise not so terribly inaccurate. lol
This particular location first opened in 1969. The original drive-in building was demolished and rebuilt as a drive-through in 1983. The 1983 building was demolished and rebuilt in 2011. (How's that for useless trivia?)Evidently, the people running the McDonald's corporate empire don't agree with you. The new look is supposedly "more relevant to millennials":
https://www.ellsworthamerican.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2021/05/Mcds-full-view-1200x630.jpg
https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2020/10/05/NPPP/fd0e5df9-6e32-4b3f-8dda-13461adf7ba7-mcd4.jpgReplies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Kylie
“This particular location first opened in 1969. The original drive-in building was demolished and rebuilt as a drive-through in 1983. The 1983 building was demolished and rebuilt in 2011. (How’s that for useless trivia?)”
As it happens, right up my alley. I apparently have a boundless capacity for enjoying useless trivia. Here’s a look at the peak dining experience of my formative years. Scroll down to the Kirkwood location.
https://losttables.com/heaven/heaven.htm
Yes I’d forgotten the Brutalist millennials. Their taste in interior design is basically an even drearier variation of the already dreary mid-20th century modern. Sparse, angular and unwelcoming. They prefer environments in which character, history and warmth are absent. (N.B. I’m a neat freak who abhors clutter but likes a place to be welcoming.)
Expect to see more of this. Really gives you something to look forward to, doesn’t it?
It’s hard to imagine anyone feeling nostalgic about the soulless fast-food restaurants of 2022.
I like to define equity as “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
Charles Murray has brought this up as well; after the Middlebury College kerfuffel, he said that his wife, female friends and colleagues, etc., were sympathetic and reassuring; his male poker buddies razzed him unmercifully about the whole thing.
Obviously it’s not that uncommon for cruel teasing to go too far, especially among teenagers, but… “whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” and all that.
I am glad you pointed this out because I think Steve’s good manners are too often taken for granted.
It is a mystery to me how he is able to maintain his cool with some of the tosspots around here, but he does. No minor accomplishment with so many would-be windup artists.
In other words he worked for an former Great Power wanting to hold on to Great Power status after losing years earlier to an coalition of Great Powers one of which had elevated to near Empire status in the interim. Took a chance and lost. That chance is now decried as ‘evil’ by the winners who prefer to frame such things as if they were morals or freedoms engagements.
At least Ellen Pao is loyal to her current oligarch boss.
Whining about how other richer billionaires are now “corrupting” journalism?
No you can’t make this stuff up. But every day WaPo tries its very best.
It is also amusing to see a female Asian “writer” stooging for a pure White male overseer. Did WaPo drop its love of the BiPOC and suddenly turn HBD?
Elon has earned another star in the firmament…
With all the opportunities she’s had to be on the fast track to wealth, power, and prestige… all she can do is gripe about how everyone else is more successful and influential than she is.
Plus, it’s got to be depressing to be an unattractive Asian woman in the US…
Just sit back and dig it: THE definitive performance of this. A must see.
Look at that attack. Perfection. Check out how she stares down the first violinist, and gives kooky nods to the other soloists. And, on top of everything else, totally rockin' the backless dress.
What a dream.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U-IXWaapx4
I wish my brother George were here.Replies: @vinteuil
Thanks for the link – Khatia Buniatishvili’s performance of the Rhapsody in Blue is quite brilliant. It reminds me of Yuja Wang’s performance a couple of years ago (in an even more revealing outfit).
But THE definitive performance? No way. It’s just too…classical. Not jazzy enough.
If there’s a definitive performer of this piece, it’s Leonard Bernstein.
I thought Twitter was a private company that could do whatever it wanted, and if you don’t like that, you can start your own platform. Or was that last week?
Twitter (TWTR) remains a privately owned joint stock corporation. Private here means non-government. Twitter Inc. stockholders own Twitter.
Elon Musk bought 9.2 percent of TWTR’s common stock last week, meaning he now owns 9.2 percent of TWTR. He may buy more TWTR stock in the future.
This action entirely is entirely legitimate and proper and within the rules of free market capitalism.
Big stockholders of course are entitled to try to influence company policies, along with smaller stockholders.
“No way. It’s just too…classical. Not jazzy enough.”
Yeah, that’s a totally understandable point of view. At a certain point it just gets down to preferences and tastes. Even the Goldilocks option (just riiiight in the middle!) is unacceptable, because it’s too compromised. Name your poison.
I think there’s a weird hard-to-obtain balance in the piece, where you have to manage classical precision and also have to swing at the same time. Hard to do. The best way is to somehow make it sound like you’re making the damn thing up on the spot. It’s interesting that some of the best players of this thing aren’t even American, and so don’t have “swing” in their blood at the outset.
One of the hardest bits in the entire repertoire is the last few bars of Rhapsody, where you’re trying to really swing and also be “classical” simultaneously. Brother, that’s a tough one. Nice work if you can get it.
Musk calls himself a “free-speech absolutist,” but like many “free speech” advocates, he willfully ignores that private companies are free to establish some limits on their platforms.
Got that? “Free to establish some limits.” Elon idea of limits is to limit TWTR’s censorship of non-Left opinions.
Loud talkers should be silenced by any means necessary.
Moses, I put the very Dalrymple quote that you’ve got above a number of times on here. In this example from a week and a half ago, under an iSteve post, I reiterated that quote (as Gamecock had inserted), for example.
This is just my feeling about this Pao lady. There are people in power that indeed put out blatant lies and hypocrisy and work to force people to accept them, for that exact purpose of humiliating them to show power. As for some of these NY Times writers, Moses, they may have advanced degrees of all sort, but are still the working definition of useful idiots. I’ve got a feeling Miss Pao doesn’t make an effort to see the hypocrisy in what she writes. She’s lazy-minded, go-with-the-political-flow stupid.
The people that let it get published? Different story.
There’s another factor: One doesn’t have to read the NY Times. That’s easy. Having to take all the kids out of the school district due to the school boards having collaborated (around the country) to spread this CRT stuff is another story… though I highly recommend it.
[EDIT:] oops, you’ve got Orwell, not Dalrymple, but same idea.
"Da Nang Dick" Blumenthal is infamous for having claimed to have been a Vietnam veteran when he is not, yet he still feels free to accuse others of dishonesty. The ability to evince righteous indignation while accusing your opponents of that which you do yourself is a key skill of the politician.
If Musk wasn’t a scam artist, I would believe you: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=elon+musk+debunked
“How about lawsuits over the creation of “hostile environments” at work and at school for straight white males in which the Washington Post is a named co-defendant?”
Sure, can you provide evidence?
https://www.theroot.com/what-if-white-people-are-wrong-1846719109
https://www.theroot.com/the-oppression-of-white-america-1827018691
The underlying counter factual assumption is that blacks collectively should have equivalent outcomes to whites because there are no neutral or black induced factors to explain the difference. But . . . wait for it . . . there is BOTH a neutral explanation and an self-induced explanation: (1) equality has no basis in science but the science of genetic differentiation with regard to behavior is real; and (2) community level failures and behavior habits of the black population are an more important cause of black underperformance AND the reason for collective reputation concerns by outsiders. In other words, discrimination is just another word for collective judgment and reaction to collective bad behavior which has been well established by non-blacks when reviewing the behavior of American blacks.
Grow up and quit reading drivel like The Root.
“In contrast, the Washington Post and New York Times have benefited teenage girls by encouraging the transgender fad that has led thousands of teenage girls to have themselves poisoned, mutilated, and sterilized because those weren’t real teenage girls, they were boys on the inside.”
Why lie: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/about-those-19-errors-part-two/
I agree, I don’t think people like Pao are flaunting their flagrant hypocrisy as a power move. I think it just doesn’t bother them. During Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, Connecticut’s odious Senator Richard Blumenthal said to him: “Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus” (“false in one thing, false in everything”).
“Da Nang Dick” Blumenthal is infamous for having claimed to have been a Vietnam veteran when he is not, yet he still feels free to accuse others of dishonesty. The ability to evince righteous indignation while accusing your opponents of that which you do yourself is a key skill of the politician.
As it happens, right up my alley. I apparently have a boundless capacity for enjoying useless trivia. Here's a look at the peak dining experience of my formative years. Scroll down to the Kirkwood location.
https://losttables.com/heaven/heaven.htm
Yes I'd forgotten the Brutalist millennials. Their taste in interior design is basically an even drearier variation of the already dreary mid-20th century modern. Sparse, angular and unwelcoming. They prefer environments in which character, history and warmth are absent. (N.B. I'm a neat freak who abhors clutter but likes a place to be welcoming.)
Expect to see more of this. Really gives you something to look forward to, doesn't it?Replies: @Stan Adams
Very interesting. Thanks for the link.
It’s hard to imagine anyone feeling nostalgic about the soulless fast-food restaurants of 2022.
Achmed, I owe you an apology for the accusatory tone of my comment. I wrote it poorly. I didn’t mean it that way.
It’s a good question – “Do these people realize their hypocrisy?” I think there are a few answers all of which may be true.
– They don’t define “hypocrisy” as we do. To us (if I may) “hypocrisy” means having a standard but treating different people differently. It’s bad. These ppl don’t see or value this idea. To them everything is who/whom. Punishing enemies and rewarding friends is the point.
– They are useful idiots and know not what they do. Many teachers of CRT and trans madness fall in this category. They’ve bought into the insanity because of media/social pressure and because it offers a substitute for religion with sin, redemption, tithes, clergy etc.
Regardless, pointing out their hypocrisy (as we define it) is utterly pointless unless it’s to mock them relentlessly in a bid for Power (which is the only thing that matters).
https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/PwYgsCIWQeikRZ8K81rdupcrsE8=/0x315:2265x1589/1600x900/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/46667736/GettyImages-465885822.0.jpg
Just absolute nasty trash. How often do you think Jeff Bezos invites her over for dinner? And imagine that conversation? Bezos is like the Pee Wee Herman of billionaires and Pao is like Medusa.Replies: @Mike Tre
Posted this two days ago. Still in purgatory.
Thanks for that thought – this was the genius of Leonard Bernstein, in a nutshell.
"How about lawsuits over the creation of “hostile environments” at work and at school for straight white males in which the Washington Post is a named co-defendant?"
Sure, can you provide evidence?
https://www.theroot.com/what-if-white-people-are-wrong-1846719109
https://www.theroot.com/the-oppression-of-white-america-1827018691Replies: @Curle
You link to sites parroting the same old nonsense, that if whites are collectively doing better than blacks then ipso dixit discrimination must exist somewhere and must be the cause.
The underlying counter factual assumption is that blacks collectively should have equivalent outcomes to whites because there are no neutral or black induced factors to explain the difference. But . . . wait for it . . . there is BOTH a neutral explanation and an self-induced explanation: (1) equality has no basis in science but the science of genetic differentiation with regard to behavior is real; and (2) community level failures and behavior habits of the black population are an more important cause of black underperformance AND the reason for collective reputation concerns by outsiders. In other words, discrimination is just another word for collective judgment and reaction to collective bad behavior which has been well established by non-blacks when reviewing the behavior of American blacks.
Grow up and quit reading drivel like The Root.
https://nypost.com/2022/04/11/elon-musk-reverses-decision-to-join-twitter-board-of-directors/
https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1513393645306712064
https://twitter.com/paraga/status/1513354622466867201Replies: @Jim Don Bob
Musk would have been prohibited from buying more than about 15% of Twitter had he joined the board. My money is on a hostile takeover which would be delightful.