Elon Musk May Have Done More Than Save Free Speech

Via

More Linky Links

More stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

-  Interesting - Japan PM reaffirms Web3 plans.

- I was unaware of this. I am suddenly more skeptical of childhood vaccines.

- My Family was Hunted by Nazi but I was Fired. Was sure this was going to be written by Rosanne Barr but instead I get an example of the Left (unsurprisedly) eating its own. The author is wrong - Twitter is not that sort of place - Seattle is.

- Think this would be a good law. Also in support of "farmers market-type" places for hunters to locally sell excess deer and other game meat.

More Linky Links

More stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Never met Wolfgang but I think I would have liked to pet him.

- Seems like a practical idea. Wonder how much government related buildings could go towards that 1-2%?

- Nobel physics laureate slams "climate emergency." Your turn Barack Obama.

- Russell Brand discusses Threads. On a related note Threads is down 20^ and user engagement down 50% from just this past Saturday.

Social Media

Noah Smith has a post on how Twitter and Social Media has liberated us by becoming less important. I have to disagree with Noah.

First off, any argument that makes the case that the "cool kids" no longer just toss off one-liner Tweets is a bad argument. The moral standing of "cool kid" experts has been a dumpster fire for a while now. No fault of Twitter or Social Media at all.

Next I would disagree that Twitter is in decline. When Elon Musk rate-limited users (verified accounts could read up to 6,000 Tweets a day while unverified accounts could read up to 600) - I did not see any degradation what so-ever. Perhaps it is just that I'm not Social Media or Twitter addicted or that I have a life. Perhaps because I thought Musk's stance on Free Speech was worth supporting and am a verified account - those 6,000 Tweets per day were plenty (maybe a reason to fork over that $8 per month - remember if a service is free that you're the product).

Finally, I would not be using Mark Zuckerberg's Threads of any evidence supporting my argument, You cannot be on Threads unless you're already on Instagram and just attaching things to a popular platform is the quickest way to ruin that platform. I'm tempted to see if Noah Smith was also arguing that Meta was the next big thing because that clearly was a huge misplay by Zuckerberg too.

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Bill Belichick is chasing the record for both all-time wins and all-time losses.  My guess he gets them both as the head coach of the Patriots. 

- Elon Musk sues the Watchell law firm to recoup fees from Twitter buy out. My money is on Musk.

- The Dutch PM resigns as the farmers in the Netherlands prevail. A victory for the working man.

- Big fan pf the 4-7-8 breathe exercises.

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- One of the all-time Tweets

- Tucker Carlson Episode 7. There were 1.1 million views at the time of this typing. How many now?

- How much could Batman bench press?

- Anheuser-Busch officially fires top two marketing executives responsible for ruining Bud Light. Still no official apology. 

Funny Because Its True

Via

Quotes for Today

Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear." - Martin Luther King Jr.

"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like half of you half as well as you deserve." - Bilbo Baggins

"$44 billion was not the cost of Twitter. It was the cost to restore free speech in a liberal world." - Elon Musk

"To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want." - Charlie Munger

More Linky Links

More stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Morgan Housel on Compounding Optimism. Coulnt me as a big Matt Ridley fan. 

- Analysis - true! (HT Some Its Just as Well)

- Tucker Carlson's Twitter Episode 3 - America's principles are at stake

- Science shows the Wim Hof method is good for curing inflamation. "The training program, or elements of it, could translate into a novel treatment modality for patients with inlamation conditions." 

Quotes for Today

Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"Twitter is the only social network that connects people over the ideas rather than over pre-exising relationships." - Naval Ravikant

"Every action you take is part of your permanenr record." - Sam Zell

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." - Abraham Lincoln

"Normalize not 'letting yourself go' just because you hit 30, 40, 50, 60, or some other arbitrary age." - Zuby

More Linky Links

More stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- I have a Twitter blue check though its funny I don't identify as a sex worker. I'd disagree that traffic is down on Twitter as well, however, I wasn't following any of the anti-Elon crowd to begin with.

- Kevin Feige on getting comfortable with failure.

- Interesting - an AI Chatbot was asked to read the Durham Report and give Top 5 observations about General Flynn. And then - the AI was asked what should be done. (Via)

- The new Netflix.

Tucker and Twitter

Tucker Carlson just announced that Twitter will be his new platform. This is something I had predicted. And it is something that will make Twitter the most trusted news source in the world and overnight make that $44 billion Elon Musk spent on Twitter seem like a bargain.

There is currently no official deal between Tucker and Musk.

Quotes for Today

Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"Men cannot improve society by setting fire to it: they must seek out its old virtues, and bring them back into the light." - Russell Kirk 

"The most courageous decision that you can make each day is to be in a good mood." - Voltaire

"Almost every conspiracy theory that people had about Twitter turned out to be true." - Elon Musk

"A personal metric: how much of the day is spent doing things out of obligation rather than out of interest?" - Naval Ravikant

Kill Big Bird

Have a new post up on Substack.

The snit NPR and PBS find themselves in over being labeled as "State affiliated" or "Government-funded" on Twitter just brings back the debate of why taxpayers are supporting these outlets that nobody watches or listens to anymore.

Would be funny if an era of small government started with a Twitter protest.

Elon Musk and Twitter Calling 'em Like They See 'em

 

Guilty as Charged

Via

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

-  Sensitive US military emails spill online. Very bad look for Microsoft. We're in the very best of hands.

- Yikes - Antidepressants no better than placebo for about 85% of people

- The Washington Post hit piece on Elon Musk. They gave more oxygen to this non-story than to all the Twitter Files stories combined. 

- How to cure hiccups.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb on Twitter

Twitter is like a large café, well, almost. You can sit at a table and listen to Albert Einstein, Max Planck and Paul Dirac trying to have a conversation while being constantly interrupted by two loud truck drivers in MAGA hats. - Nassim Nicolas Taleb

To be fair there's also a loud table of purple hair woke hipsters loudly pestering people about whatever the current thing is. Someone should introduce Mr. Taleb to the mute button.

Linky Links

 Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Kurt Vonnegut's letter to school children just a few months before his death.

- Elon Musk reveals "secret" Twitter labels still causing shadowbans on conservatives. Guessing Elon has a crack team going through the code line by line. 

- My personal favorite version of America the Beautiful

- Gabe Kaplan to retire as High Stakes Poker commentator. What a versatile guy. Standup comedian, TV star, expert poker player, and perhaps the best poker commentator ever. Also was a heck of a pick-up basketball player when younger.

More Linky Links

More stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Patriots (re)hire Bill O'Brien as their Offensive Coordinator

- Whiskey on the American frontier. (From the archives) 

- NRC certifies first US small modular reactor design. Great news!

- Interesting profile of Ester Crawford - the woman behind Twitter Blue. Paul Graham is a fan which is high praise indeed.