On the Truss story, the overnight front pages are the first ones to be (almost) universally damaging to Sunak's Government. From the Liz Truss story to the appalling Suella Braverman to Rishi Sunak's frankly disgraceful decision to boycott COP27 (which he might be about to U-turn on) this tory Government's sleaze is floating back to the surface like the turds in the sea that they encourage. Apologies to any of you having breakfast at this point. Their lackadaisical approach to national security would take my breath away if it any longer caused me surprise.
I was prepared to give Rishi Sunak time and grace but his Cabinet appointments revealed him to be a weak man or poor judgement: an indecisiveness which characterised his failure to take down Johnson at peak partygate, to the cost of this country.
He is also himself mired in sleaze and dodgy money.
This idea that Sunak and Truss are not joined at the hip also won't wash. They both stood by their Prime Minister Boris Johnson, one as his Chancellor of the Exchequer, the other as his Foreign Secretary.
And the dire economic situation that the country still remains in is due in good part to the actions of that Chancellor from 2020 to July 2022, and not a couple of weeks of temporary madness by Truss/Kwarteng.
And on thread. Labour is best ignoring Truss for that reason, downplaying her role in order to point the finger at Sunak (and his predecessors) for he economic mess.
Is…. is it over? Can we say Bolsonaro lost? Might there still be a rain forest?
Yes yes and yes.
Someone on here posted yesterday that the world really ought to step in and support Brazil financially to save the Amazon. It really does matter and yes we should. We could probably do so in conjunction with a carefully managed eco-tourism. Think of the Amazon as a giant Eden Project or Serengeti and you get the idea.
p.s. Good morning!
It's an interesting idea, but there are massive problems with it: *) There is a good chance that any monetary aid given disappears down a black hole, and the rainforest continues to be destroyed. How do you ensure it does not? *) It is a massive area. The cost to police any operations would be truly massive. *) As well as the size of the area, the transport network is very poor, hindering policing. This means more local police, who are easily bribed or cowed. Or increasing transport links, which then makes access for bad people easier... *) There is not the political will to do it in Brazil. Occasional good words about it, but too many in Brazil see it as a resource to be plundered.
Just adding another, more general point: IMV mass tourism is *not* a good way to preserve pristine wildernesses. Mass tourism is inherently resource-hungry and polluting. You can have 'carefully managed' small-volume tourism (e.g. the Antarctic), but the finds raised from that would be absolutely trifling compared to the policing costs.
Yeah well obviously not. I mean, really, this is to state the bleedin' obvious. That's why I put 'carefully managed.'
The idea that we can leave this places alone is I'm afraid out with the fairies. The world just ain't that way anymore. If you don't intervene they get obliterated. Yes it's very very sad. But the fact now remains that we have to hold our noses and accept a degree of compromise in terms of visitor numbers for the greater good.
That's why, despite my liking your earlier thoughtful comments, my idea is a better one. We need to step in globally to support Brazil in protecting the Amazon. Yes yes money abroad sometimes goes astray but that doesn't mean it shouldn't happen and there are ways of mitigating against it.
And if you don't educate the planet through interaction you don't educate.
Of course, much of this, as with most things, comes down to the fact that this planet cannot support 10 billion people.
And we have to 'carefully manage' and protect other places around the world, and do.
Generally speaking it's easier to police a clump of trees than it is a herd of elephants. Felling the latter takes one shot. Chopping down a forest tends to attract attention.
The basic point stands. If we want to save the Amazon it's no good simply lecturing Brazil from afar. Now that we have a pro-eco President again we need to give him our support.
On the Truss story, the overnight front pages are the first ones to be (almost) universally damaging to Sunak's Government. From the Liz Truss story to the appalling Suella Braverman to Rishi Sunak's frankly disgraceful decision to boycott COP27 (which he might be about to U-turn on) this tory Government's sleaze is floating back to the surface like the turds in the sea that they encourage. Apologies to any of you having breakfast at this point. Their lackadaisical approach to national security would take my breath away if it any longer caused me surprise.
I was prepared to give Rishi Sunak time and grace but his Cabinet appointments revealed him to be a weak man or poor judgement: an indecisiveness which characterised his failure to take down Johnson at peak partygate, to the cost of this country.
He is also himself mired in sleaze and dodgy money.
This idea that Sunak and Truss are not joined at the hip also won't wash. They both stood by their Prime Minister Boris Johnson, one as his Chancellor of the Exchequer, the other as his Foreign Secretary.
And the dire economic situation that the country still remains in is due in good part to the actions of that Chancellor from 2020 to July 2022, and not a couple of weeks of temporary madness by Truss/Kwarteng.
And on thread. Labour is best ignoring Truss for that reason, downplaying her role in order to point the finger at Sunak (and his predecessors) for he economic mess.
I agree.
The SNP, Labour, Greens and Lib Dems must set aside the Truss catastrophe and focus laser-like on Sunak’s self-inflicted mess.
The voters will *never* forget Truss. The woman is going to become legendary. All the takings are banked.
Is…. is it over? Can we say Bolsonaro lost? Might there still be a rain forest?
Yes yes and yes.
Someone on here posted yesterday that the world really ought to step in and support Brazil financially to save the Amazon. It really does matter and yes we should. We could probably do so in conjunction with a carefully managed eco-tourism. Think of the Amazon as a giant Eden Project or Serengeti and you get the idea.
p.s. Good morning!
It's an interesting idea, but there are massive problems with it: *) There is a good chance that any monetary aid given disappears down a black hole, and the rainforest continues to be destroyed. How do you ensure it does not? *) It is a massive area. The cost to police any operations would be truly massive. *) As well as the size of the area, the transport network is very poor, hindering policing. This means more local police, who are easily bribed or cowed. Or increasing transport links, which then makes access for bad people easier... *) There is not the political will to do it in Brazil. Occasional good words about it, but too many in Brazil see it as a resource to be plundered.
Just adding another, more general point: IMV mass tourism is *not* a good way to preserve pristine wildernesses. Mass tourism is inherently resource-hungry and polluting. You can have 'carefully managed' small-volume tourism (e.g. the Antarctic), but the finds raised from that would be absolutely trifling compared to the policing costs.
Quite apart from the need to keep it pristine, all that flying of tourists isn't great from the carbon perspective. Intact rainforest isn't a great wildlife experience either, unless you like insects. The majority lives up in the canopy and is difficult to see. More open areas like the Pantanal are better for wildlife spotting.
Basically, if you have a blue check mark on Twitter, and want to keep it, it's $20/month.
There are - approximately - 300,000 verified Twitter accounts.
That's $6m/month, or $72m a year. Admittedly, based on the assumption that there's 100% take up.
Putting a price on egotism. I like it!
Ad revenue: $3.2bn/year This nonsense: $72m/year
Don't be guilty of "silver bullet syndrome":
As this doesn't solve all the problems, it's not worth doing
Everything is iteration.
Yes, but it remains to be seen what percentage take-up you get from such a small pool of people. (Despite the ego factor, it won't be anything like 100%, and it is too small a pool.)
I agree that there is no silver bullet. You need to salami slice the 400m users - the goal being to get them to give you their payment details so that the barrier to incremental payments is reduced.
Other platforms do that by incentives for content providers to persuade their followers to part with cash in microtransactions (e.g. YT 'superchats' and 'memberships') I'm not sure that relationship exists on Twitter so they'll have to innovate.
Musk is also making it much harder as he spooks the advertisers, so he's going to have to fill that black hole as Twitter was just approaching break even.
Basically, if you have a blue check mark on Twitter, and want to keep it, it's $20/month.
There are - approximately - 300,000 verified Twitter accounts.
That's $6m/month, or $72m a year. Admittedly, based on the assumption that there's 100% take up.
Putting a price on egotism. I like it!
Ad revenue: $3.2bn/year This nonsense: $72m/year
Don't be guilty of "silver bullet syndrome":
As this doesn't solve all the problems, it's not worth doing
Everything is iteration.
The other handy thing about this is that getting a payment from a credit card is a pretty decent way to prove your identity on the internet, so it probably makes the verification process easier.
The feature I want from Twitter is that I send them like 5 DAI or whatever and they block my account for the next 8 hours so I can get some work done.
Bolsonaro tried everything . Last minute bribes to the electorate in a desperate bid to win during the final debate .
Good riddance to the stain on humanity.
I detest Bolsanaro, but Lula is pretty bloody awful too. Poor Brazilians.
Yes, his acquittal from the fraud charges was highly procedural and did not cast much doubt on the central charge that he took a bribe. Pretty remarkable that someone with that on their record was chosen as the candidate for his party again and has won. Bolsonaro's party look likely to have a majority in the Congress too.
Last time around Lula had money pouring in from the newly developing oil fields but the financial situation will be much tighter this time around.
On topic. I take the entirely opposite view. Truss will be back in No 10 within 12 months and she will win the next election, handsomely.
How do you think this will come about?
Truss is well ahead of me on this but one thing’s for sure - she’s on a different level to the rest of us and has games all this in advance. My best guess is she’s discrediting Sunak.
Leon/SeanT/MissyG/whoever is a nasty, racist, horrible bully and when he comes on the site the quality drops quickly. I now actively avoid the site when he is around.
Got to say I think you are comprehensively wrong in this assessment. I don't recognise any of what you claim about him. He is forthright and does a fine line in abuse but he is no bully. He doesn't expect anyone to be cowed by his postings and delights in people fighting back against him. I would suggest that it is undeniable that he is an asset to this site even though I disagree with him on the majority of what he posts.
Perhaps you missed when he came on here and posted a photo of somebody he called an autistic virgin and then said that was what I look like. What is that if not bullying? He then did it to several other posters.
On the Truss story, the overnight front pages are the first ones to be (almost) universally damaging to Sunak's Government. From the Liz Truss story to the appalling Suella Braverman to Rishi Sunak's frankly disgraceful decision to boycott COP27 (which he might be about to U-turn on) this tory Government's sleaze is floating back to the surface like the turds in the sea that they encourage. Apologies to any of you having breakfast at this point. Their lackadaisical approach to national security would take my breath away if it any longer caused me surprise.
I was prepared to give Rishi Sunak time and grace but his Cabinet appointments revealed him to be a weak man or poor judgement: an indecisiveness which characterised his failure to take down Johnson at peak partygate, to the cost of this country.
He is also himself mired in sleaze and dodgy money.
This idea that Sunak and Truss are not joined at the hip also won't wash. They both stood by their Prime Minister Boris Johnson, one as his Chancellor of the Exchequer, the other as his Foreign Secretary.
And the dire economic situation that the country still remains in is due in good part to the actions of that Chancellor from 2020 to July 2022, and not a couple of weeks of temporary madness by Truss/Kwarteng.
And on thread. Labour is best ignoring Truss for that reason, downplaying her role in order to point the finger at Sunak (and his predecessors) for he economic mess.
I agree.
The SNP, Labour, Greens and Lib Dems must set aside the Truss catastrophe and focus laser-like on Sunak’s self-inflicted mess.
The voters will *never* forget Truss. The woman is going to become legendary. All the takings are banked.
Agreed on the last point. She’ll be back in No 10 sooner than we think.
These MPs all need to have the whip removed and I hope they all lose their seats at the next election.
A Conservative MP was applauded by a group of antivaxers that included Piers Corbyn, brother of the former Labour leader, as he questioned the safety of coronavirus vaccinations during a Commons debate.
Sir Christopher Chope, the MP for Christchurch, claimed that the vaccines were “not perfectly safe” and that there was a question about “whether they are effective”.
Chope was one of a group of MPs who took part in a debate held last week on the safety of vaccinations. It took place at Westminster Hall after a petition demanding a public inquiry into the use of jabs during the Covid-19 pandemic reached 100,000 signatures — the threshold required for a topic to be considered in parliament......
....Andrew Bridgen, the MP for North West Leicestershire, questioned why “the [coronavirus] vaccine was given to people who had natural immunity because they had probably contracted the virus”. He also cited debunked statistics, claiming that there was an “84 per cent increase in the relative incidence of cardiac-related death among males aged 18 to 39” following vaccination.
The study to which Bridgen referred — which has not been peer-reviewed or published in an academic journal — was widely criticised by public health experts for lack of evidence and potential methodological failures. Fact-checkers described the study, conducted by the Florida Department of Health, as misleading.
....Other MPs who appeared to raise questions about the effectiveness of vaccines were Danny Kruger, the Tory MP for Devizes, and Apsana Begum, the Labour MP for Poplar & Limehouse.
Kruger questioned the independence of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, which determines whether vaccines are safe, and said it was time to stop “a remote power telling people what to do”.
Begum demanded that more be done to help those who have “experienced damage from the vaccine”.
On the Truss story, the overnight front pages are the first ones to be (almost) universally damaging to Sunak's Government. From the Liz Truss story to the appalling Suella Braverman to Rishi Sunak's frankly disgraceful decision to boycott COP27 (which he might be about to U-turn on) this tory Government's sleaze is floating back to the surface like the turds in the sea that they encourage. Apologies to any of you having breakfast at this point. Their lackadaisical approach to national security would take my breath away if it any longer caused me surprise.
I was prepared to give Rishi Sunak time and grace but his Cabinet appointments revealed him to be a weak man or poor judgement: an indecisiveness which characterised his failure to take down Johnson at peak partygate, to the cost of this country.
He is also himself mired in sleaze and dodgy money.
This idea that Sunak and Truss are not joined at the hip also won't wash. They both stood by their Prime Minister Boris Johnson, one as his Chancellor of the Exchequer, the other as his Foreign Secretary.
And the dire economic situation that the country still remains in is due in good part to the actions of that Chancellor from 2020 to July 2022, and not a couple of weeks of temporary madness by Truss/Kwarteng.
And on thread. Labour is best ignoring Truss for that reason, downplaying her role in order to point the finger at Sunak (and his predecessors) for he economic mess.
I agree.
The SNP, Labour, Greens and Lib Dems must set aside the Truss catastrophe and focus laser-like on Sunak’s self-inflicted mess.
The voters will *never* forget Truss. The woman is going to become legendary. All the takings are banked.
Agreed on the last point. She’ll be back in No 10 sooner than we think.
Occasionally a PBer will place such a shocking political bet that OGH and myself will make an intervention.
Here's the first step of the intervention process.
On the Truss story, the overnight front pages are the first ones to be (almost) universally damaging to Sunak's Government. From the Liz Truss story to the appalling Suella Braverman to Rishi Sunak's frankly disgraceful decision to boycott COP27 (which he might be about to U-turn on) this tory Government's sleaze is floating back to the surface like the turds in the sea that they encourage. Apologies to any of you having breakfast at this point. Their lackadaisical approach to national security would take my breath away if it any longer caused me surprise.
I was prepared to give Rishi Sunak time and grace but his Cabinet appointments revealed him to be a weak man or poor judgement: an indecisiveness which characterised his failure to take down Johnson at peak partygate, to the cost of this country.
He is also himself mired in sleaze and dodgy money.
This idea that Sunak and Truss are not joined at the hip also won't wash. They both stood by their Prime Minister Boris Johnson, one as his Chancellor of the Exchequer, the other as his Foreign Secretary.
And the dire economic situation that the country still remains in is due in good part to the actions of that Chancellor from 2020 to July 2022, and not a couple of weeks of temporary madness by Truss/Kwarteng.
And on thread. Labour is best ignoring Truss for that reason, downplaying her role in order to point the finger at Sunak (and his predecessors) for he economic mess.
I agree.
The SNP, Labour, Greens and Lib Dems must set aside the Truss catastrophe and focus laser-like on Sunak’s self-inflicted mess.
The voters will *never* forget Truss. The woman is going to become legendary. All the takings are banked.
Agreed on the last point. She’ll be back in No 10 sooner than we think.
Occasionally a PBer will place such a shocking political bet that OGH and myself will make an intervention.
Here's the first step of the intervention process.
On the Truss story, the overnight front pages are the first ones to be (almost) universally damaging to Sunak's Government. From the Liz Truss story to the appalling Suella Braverman to Rishi Sunak's frankly disgraceful decision to boycott COP27 (which he might be about to U-turn on) this tory Government's sleaze is floating back to the surface like the turds in the sea that they encourage. Apologies to any of you having breakfast at this point. Their lackadaisical approach to national security would take my breath away if it any longer caused me surprise.
I was prepared to give Rishi Sunak time and grace but his Cabinet appointments revealed him to be a weak man or poor judgement: an indecisiveness which characterised his failure to take down Johnson at peak partygate, to the cost of this country.
He is also himself mired in sleaze and dodgy money.
This idea that Sunak and Truss are not joined at the hip also won't wash. They both stood by their Prime Minister Boris Johnson, one as his Chancellor of the Exchequer, the other as his Foreign Secretary.
And the dire economic situation that the country still remains in is due in good part to the actions of that Chancellor from 2020 to July 2022, and not a couple of weeks of temporary madness by Truss/Kwarteng.
And on thread. Labour is best ignoring Truss for that reason, downplaying her role in order to point the finger at Sunak (and his predecessors) for he economic mess.
I agree.
The SNP, Labour, Greens and Lib Dems must set aside the Truss catastrophe and focus laser-like on Sunak’s self-inflicted mess.
The voters will *never* forget Truss. The woman is going to become legendary. All the takings are banked.
Agreed on the last point. She’ll be back in No 10 sooner than we think.
Occasionally a PBer will place such a shocking political bet that OGH and myself will make an intervention. value bet Here's the first step of the intervention process.
Basically, if you have a blue check mark on Twitter, and want to keep it, it's $20/month.
There are - approximately - 300,000 verified Twitter accounts.
That's $6m/month, or $72m a year. Admittedly, based on the assumption that there's 100% take up.
Putting a price on egotism. I like it!
Ad revenue: $3.2bn/year This nonsense: $72m/year
Don't be guilty of "silver bullet syndrome":
As this doesn't solve all the problems, it's not worth doing
Everything is iteration.
Suppose the charge drives off 5% of the verified users, and collectively verified users drive half of engagement, then the loss is 2.5% of engagement. If that follows through to a proportionate decline in ad revenue that's an $80m loss in ad revenue and a net $8m loss overall.
Maybe Musk is about to upend existing internet paradigms but thus far it's generally been pretty simple. Make access free, drive engagement, benefit from network effects, sell advertising.
Basically, if you have a blue check mark on Twitter, and want to keep it, it's $20/month.
There are - approximately - 300,000 verified Twitter accounts.
That's $6m/month, or $72m a year. Admittedly, based on the assumption that there's 100% take up.
Putting a price on egotism. I like it!
Ad revenue: $3.2bn/year This nonsense: $72m/year
Don't be guilty of "silver bullet syndrome":
As this doesn't solve all the problems, it's not worth doing
Everything is iteration.
Suppose the charge drives off 5% of the verified users, and collectively verified users drive half of engagement, then the loss is 2.5% of engagement. If that follows through to a proportionate decline in ad revenue that's an $80m loss in ad revenue and a net $8m loss overall.
Maybe Musk is about to upend existing internet paradigms but thus far it's generally been pretty simple. Make access free, drive engagement, benefit from network effects, sell advertising.
And that's before you reverse out the increase in ad revenue since they stayed to get their house in order with respect to hate and conspiracy speech. (Although Musk deleting his conspiracy tweet might indicate that someone has told him he's in the toilet if he goes down that path.)
NATO really needs to step up their missile defence contributions urgently.
NATO?
Its members. The US will inevitably do most the heavy lifting here but other countries like France and Germany need to step up too. These attacks will not defeat Ukraine but they are going to cause untold misery this winter.
Congratulations to @LulaOficial on his victory in Brazil’s election.
I look forward to working together on the issues that matter to the UK and Brazil, from growing the global economy to protecting the planet’s natural resources and promoting democratic values.
Is…. is it over? Can we say Bolsonaro lost? Might there still be a rain forest?
Yes yes and yes.
Someone on here posted yesterday that the world really ought to step in and support Brazil financially to save the Amazon. It really does matter and yes we should. We could probably do so in conjunction with a carefully managed eco-tourism. Think of the Amazon as a giant Eden Project or Serengeti and you get the idea.
p.s. Good morning!
It was exactly such actions that helped enable Bolsonaro and his ilk in the Amazon countries.
Quite a few years back some American tech millionaires and billionaires bought up large areas. This, entirely predictably, kicked off a foreigners-stealing-our-land thing.
Instead of trying to deal with the real problem - a socio-political structure that depends on using the rainforest as fresh resources, at all levels of society (rich and poor) - it was an attempt to fix the problem with a quick hack.
NATO really needs to step up their missile defence contributions urgently.
NATO?
Its members. The US will inevitably do most the heavy lifting here but other countries like France and Germany need to step up too. These attacks will not defeat Ukraine but they are going to cause untold misery this winter.
Agreed, I just think this is something non-NATO countries should also help with. E.g. Israel and Japan have missile defence capabilities. I definitely don't believe this is a matter only for NATO or NATO members.
On the Truss story, the overnight front pages are the first ones to be (almost) universally damaging to Sunak's Government. From the Liz Truss story to the appalling Suella Braverman to Rishi Sunak's frankly disgraceful decision to boycott COP27 (which he might be about to U-turn on) this tory Government's sleaze is floating back to the surface like the turds in the sea that they encourage. Apologies to any of you having breakfast at this point. Their lackadaisical approach to national security would take my breath away if it any longer caused me surprise.
I was prepared to give Rishi Sunak time and grace but his Cabinet appointments revealed him to be a weak man or poor judgement: an indecisiveness which characterised his failure to take down Johnson at peak partygate, to the cost of this country.
He is also himself mired in sleaze and dodgy money.
This idea that Sunak and Truss are not joined at the hip also won't wash. They both stood by their Prime Minister Boris Johnson, one as his Chancellor of the Exchequer, the other as his Foreign Secretary.
And the dire economic situation that the country still remains in is due in good part to the actions of that Chancellor from 2020 to July 2022, and not a couple of weeks of temporary madness by Truss/Kwarteng.
And on thread. Labour is best ignoring Truss for that reason, downplaying her role in order to point the finger at Sunak (and his predecessors) for he economic mess.
I agree.
The SNP, Labour, Greens and Lib Dems must set aside the Truss catastrophe and focus laser-like on Sunak’s self-inflicted mess.
The voters will *never* forget Truss. The woman is going to become legendary. All the takings are banked.
Agreed on the last point. She’ll be back in No 10 sooner than we think.
Occasionally a PBer will place such a shocking political bet that OGH and myself will make an intervention.
Here's the first step of the intervention process.
NATO really needs to step up their missile defence contributions urgently.
NATO?
Its members. The US will inevitably do most the heavy lifting here but other countries like France and Germany need to step up too. These attacks will not defeat Ukraine but they are going to cause untold misery this winter.
The Germans have delivered IRIS, with more to come. France and Italy will be sending SAMP-T, and some other system. NASAMS from the US is nearly there.
But there's a limit to what missile defence can achieve. Much easier to intercept the missiles weekend they're on the ground, before they've launched. With the number of missiles Russia may be buying from Iran this is the crucial step.
Basically, if you have a blue check mark on Twitter, and want to keep it, it's $20/month.
There are - approximately - 300,000 verified Twitter accounts.
That's $6m/month, or $72m a year. Admittedly, based on the assumption that there's 100% take up.
Putting a price on egotism. I like it!
Ad revenue: $3.2bn/year This nonsense: $72m/year
Don't be guilty of "silver bullet syndrome":
As this doesn't solve all the problems, it's not worth doing
Everything is iteration.
That only works if the iterations are net positive.
This look the opposite of that - and 'roll it out in two weeks or I'll fire the developer team' is not a great first iteration in terms of personnel management. One of the reasons for Musk's success is that smart engineers want to work for leading edge companies. There is no such existing incentive at Twitter.
NATO really needs to step up their missile defence contributions urgently.
NATO?
Its members. The US will inevitably do most the heavy lifting here but other countries like France and Germany need to step up too. These attacks will not defeat Ukraine but they are going to cause untold misery this winter.
The Germans have delivered IRIS, with more to come. France and Italy will be sending SAMP-T, and some other system. NASAMS from the US is nearly there.
But there's a limit to what missile defence can achieve. Much easier to intercept the missiles weekend they're on the ground, before they've launched. With the number of missiles Russia may be buying from Iran this is the crucial step.
Twitter might like to have tiers of membership, where if you go over 10 tweets a day you have to pay 10 bucks a month. Over 20 and you pay 50 bucks. Companies pay 1000 bucks a month. A tax on bots, corporate PR and gobshites.
Would work quite well, when something happens and you’re desperate to say something you’ll sign up.
Basically, if you have a blue check mark on Twitter, and want to keep it, it's $20/month.
There are - approximately - 300,000 verified Twitter accounts.
That's $6m/month, or $72m a year. Admittedly, based on the assumption that there's 100% take up.
Putting a price on egotism. I like it!
Ad revenue: $3.2bn/year This nonsense: $72m/year
Don't be guilty of "silver bullet syndrome":
As this doesn't solve all the problems, it's not worth doing
Everything is iteration.
That only works if the iterations are net positive.
This look the opposite of that - and 'roll it out in two weeks or I'll fire the developer team' is not a great first iteration in terms of personnel management. One of the reasons for Musk's success is that smart engineers want to work for leading edge companies. There is no such existing incentive at Twitter.
"and 'roll it out in two weeks or I'll fire the developer team' is not a great first iteration in terms of personnel management"
It's also pretty terrible in terms of project management. I don't know whether Twitter tends to use Agile methodology, but the CEO coming in and saying something like that means no, you definitely aren't. If teams keep trying to use Agile they'll fall foul of this bull-in-a-china-shop owner. If they stop then the whole team structures and existing planning will need to change over, meaning dedicating stacks of FTEs to the changeover before you can even get started. It's a recipe for chaos. Musk is a fucking idiot.
Twitter might like to have tiers of membership, where if you go over 10 tweets a day you have to pay 10 bucks a month. Over 20 and you pay 50 bucks. Companies pay 1000 bucks a month. A tax on bots, corporate PR and gobshites.
Would work quite well, when something happens and you’re desperate to say something you’ll sign up.
But who will fund covid twitter? Those endless doomsayers still wearing masks and calling the next wave that means we all should lockdown?
NATO really needs to step up their missile defence contributions urgently.
NATO?
Its members. The US will inevitably do most the heavy lifting here but other countries like France and Germany need to step up too. These attacks will not defeat Ukraine but they are going to cause untold misery this winter.
Agreed, I just think this is something non-NATO countries should also help with. E.g. Israel and Japan have missile defence capabilities. I definitely don't believe this is a matter only for NATO or NATO members.
Perhaps - but the NATO structure is being used to manage requests from and supplies to Ukraine. Israel has so far flat out refused, and Japan has political and constitutional issue about sending arms into conflicts. I agree that Israel in particular, with it's expertise in supplying missile defence systems, ought to change its policy. It would probably be more productive to push Japan on financial aid, which is just as needed.
Twitter might like to have tiers of membership, where if you go over 10 tweets a day you have to pay 10 bucks a month. Over 20 and you pay 50 bucks. Companies pay 1000 bucks a month. A tax on bots, corporate PR and gobshites.
Would work quite well, when something happens and you’re desperate to say something you’ll sign up.
Until a new, free, platform comes and takes its place.
Twitter might like to have tiers of membership, where if you go over 10 tweets a day you have to pay 10 bucks a month. Over 20 and you pay 50 bucks. Companies pay 1000 bucks a month. A tax on bots, corporate PR and gobshites.
Would work quite well, when something happens and you’re desperate to say something you’ll sign up.
That would entirely upend its business, and would probably collapse it.
Twitter might like to have tiers of membership, where if you go over 10 tweets a day you have to pay 10 bucks a month. Over 20 and you pay 50 bucks. Companies pay 1000 bucks a month. A tax on bots, corporate PR and gobshites.
Would work quite well, when something happens and you’re desperate to say something you’ll sign up.
That would entirely upend its business, and would probably collapse it.
A side benefit. 👌
Im not sure that’s true . There is value in being able to engage with an audience. People want to say something. I think people even might pay to post here for example.
Twitter might like to have tiers of membership, where if you go over 10 tweets a day you have to pay 10 bucks a month. Over 20 and you pay 50 bucks. Companies pay 1000 bucks a month. A tax on bots, corporate PR and gobshites.
Would work quite well, when something happens and you’re desperate to say something you’ll sign up.
That would entirely upend its business, and would probably collapse it.
Everyone's ideas for monetisation always seem to upend the fact that you need the mass audience for the advertising base.
As I said down thread the only other mechanism that has ever worked for monetizing social is getting people to pay content providers for 3rd party content and taking a slice of those transactions. (Which Twitter is not well set up for.)
Anything else will be have to be innovative, not just "charging for the existing service".
NATO really needs to step up their missile defence contributions urgently.
NATO?
Its members. The US will inevitably do most the heavy lifting here but other countries like France and Germany need to step up too. These attacks will not defeat Ukraine but they are going to cause untold misery this winter.
Agreed, I just think this is something non-NATO countries should also help with. E.g. Israel and Japan have missile defence capabilities. I definitely don't believe this is a matter only for NATO or NATO members.
Perhaps - but the NATO structure is being used to manage requests from and supplies to Ukraine. Israel has so far flat out refused, and Japan has political and constitutional issue about sending arms into conflicts. I agree that Israel in particular, with it's expertise in supplying missile defence systems, ought to change its policy. It would probably be more productive to push Japan on financial aid, which is just as needed.
Japan has sent military aid to Ukraine. The question of whether missile defence constitutes lethal aid is superficially easy but perhaps more complicated than I suspect. It feels doable to me. And yes, it's being done via NATO which is fine. I just think non-NATO aid is an excellent counterargument to the idiot tankies who like to blame NATO for Putin's imperial fascism. The more non-NATO countries contribute, the better.
Twitter might like to have tiers of membership, where if you go over 10 tweets a day you have to pay 10 bucks a month. Over 20 and you pay 50 bucks. Companies pay 1000 bucks a month. A tax on bots, corporate PR and gobshites.
Would work quite well, when something happens and you’re desperate to say something you’ll sign up.
That would entirely upend its business, and would probably collapse it.
Twitter might like to have tiers of membership, where if you go over 10 tweets a day you have to pay 10 bucks a month. Over 20 and you pay 50 bucks. Companies pay 1000 bucks a month. A tax on bots, corporate PR and gobshites.
Would work quite well, when something happens and you’re desperate to say something you’ll sign up.
That would entirely upend its business, and would probably collapse it.
Everyone's ideas for monetisation always seem to upend the fact that you need the mass audience for the advertising base.
As I said down thread the only other mechanism that has ever worked for monetizing social is getting people to pay content providers for 3rd party content and taking a slice of those transactions. (Which Twitter is not well set up for.)
Anything else will be have to be innovative, not just "charging for the existing service".
You may well be right, but I wonder how many blue tickers would say "to hell with this" if they were asked to cough up for their status? There was a boycott of Twitter by football journalists when the Super League story broke, and guess what? A whole load of them broke the boycott.
The reason why there is a lot of angst about Twitter is that for many people, egotism is a drug. Can they give it up? I'm not so sure.
Twitter might like to have tiers of membership, where if you go over 10 tweets a day you have to pay 10 bucks a month. Over 20 and you pay 50 bucks. Companies pay 1000 bucks a month. A tax on bots, corporate PR and gobshites.
Would work quite well, when something happens and you’re desperate to say something you’ll sign up.
That would entirely upend its business, and would probably collapse it.
Everyone's ideas for monetisation always seem to upend the fact that you need the mass audience for the advertising base.
As I said down thread the only other mechanism that has ever worked for monetizing social is getting people to pay content providers for 3rd party content and taking a slice of those transactions. (Which Twitter is not well set up for.)
Anything else will be have to be innovative, not just "charging for the existing service".
Agreed. I thought Musk might have some interesting ideas for expanding what Twitter does.
Twitter might like to have tiers of membership, where if you go over 10 tweets a day you have to pay 10 bucks a month. Over 20 and you pay 50 bucks. Companies pay 1000 bucks a month. A tax on bots, corporate PR and gobshites.
Would work quite well, when something happens and you’re desperate to say something you’ll sign up.
That would entirely upend its business, and would probably collapse it.
Everyone's ideas for monetisation always seem to upend the fact that you need the mass audience for the advertising base.
As I said down thread the only other mechanism that has ever worked for monetizing social is getting people to pay content providers for 3rd party content and taking a slice of those transactions. (Which Twitter is not well set up for.)
Anything else will be have to be innovative, not just "charging for the existing service".
It’s fairly clear that Musk wants to turn Twitter into a mega-platorm. Think all kinds of content, payments etc. Several of the Chinese social media apps went that way.
Twitter might like to have tiers of membership, where if you go over 10 tweets a day you have to pay 10 bucks a month. Over 20 and you pay 50 bucks. Companies pay 1000 bucks a month. A tax on bots, corporate PR and gobshites.
Would work quite well, when something happens and you’re desperate to say something you’ll sign up.
That would be fantastic. How much would they pay me to not be on it at all?
Twitter might like to have tiers of membership, where if you go over 10 tweets a day you have to pay 10 bucks a month. Over 20 and you pay 50 bucks. Companies pay 1000 bucks a month. A tax on bots, corporate PR and gobshites.
Would work quite well, when something happens and you’re desperate to say something you’ll sign up.
That would entirely upend its business, and would probably collapse it.
Everyone's ideas for monetisation always seem to upend the fact that you need the mass audience for the advertising base.
As I said down thread the only other mechanism that has ever worked for monetizing social is getting people to pay content providers for 3rd party content and taking a slice of those transactions. (Which Twitter is not well set up for.)
Anything else will be have to be innovative, not just "charging for the existing service".
Agreed. I thought Musk might have some interesting ideas for expanding what Twitter does.
He might still, but this one is a bust.
Premium membership is an OK idea, providing the benefits are tempting enough. Twitter already has this as you can pay for Twitter to make your Tweets go further. Premium members mean a base that you can learn more about for advertising purposes (which Twitter is quite bad at currently). I wouldn't charge a premium for sending a lot of Tweets, as that's what Twitter wants you to do.
Basically, if you have a blue check mark on Twitter, and want to keep it, it's $20/month.
There are - approximately - 300,000 verified Twitter accounts.
That's $6m/month, or $72m a year. Admittedly, based on the assumption that there's 100% take up.
Putting a price on egotism. I like it!
Ad revenue: $3.2bn/year This nonsense: $72m/year
Don't be guilty of "silver bullet syndrome":
As this doesn't solve all the problems, it's not worth doing
Everything is iteration.
Suppose the charge drives off 5% of the verified users, and collectively verified users drive half of engagement, then the loss is 2.5% of engagement. If that follows through to a proportionate decline in ad revenue that's an $80m loss in ad revenue and a net $8m loss overall.
Maybe Musk is about to upend existing internet paradigms but thus far it's generally been pretty simple. Make access free, drive engagement, benefit from network effects, sell advertising.
And that's before you reverse out the increase in ad revenue since they stayed to get their house in order with respect to hate and conspiracy speech. (Although Musk deleting his conspiracy tweet might indicate that someone has told him he's in the toilet if he goes down that path.)
That he even made the tweet in the first place, however, suggests he isn’t going to change. The owner of Twitter posting conspiracy theories and libel isn’t going to end well. Even if they’re soon deleted.
Twitter might like to have tiers of membership, where if you go over 10 tweets a day you have to pay 10 bucks a month. Over 20 and you pay 50 bucks. Companies pay 1000 bucks a month. A tax on bots, corporate PR and gobshites.
Would work quite well, when something happens and you’re desperate to say something you’ll sign up.
That would entirely upend its business, and would probably collapse it.
Everyone's ideas for monetisation always seem to upend the fact that you need the mass audience for the advertising base.
As I said down thread the only other mechanism that has ever worked for monetizing social is getting people to pay content providers for 3rd party content and taking a slice of those transactions. (Which Twitter is not well set up for.)
Anything else will be have to be innovative, not just "charging for the existing service".
It’s fairly clear that Musk wants to turn Twitter into a mega-platorm. Think all kinds of content, payments etc. Several of the Chinese social media apps went that way.
Yes. The question is...how do? Where does the content come from? The Chinese social media apps had...certain market advantages.
NATO really needs to step up their missile defence contributions urgently.
It gives me no satisfaction to say it but optimistic predictions of Putin running out of tanks, men, drones, missiles, willpower etc seem to be a regular occurrence. On the targeting of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure it seems surprising that VVP hasn’t concentrated on this before, unless with uncharacteristic strategic cunning he’s been waiting for the encroachment of winter.
The Institute for the study of war (ISW) have tried to put themseleves in Putin's mind to predict his likely actions. I'm summarising.
They think a nuclear attack is very unlikely. They predict a Spring '23 offensive, hoping a cold winter will have changed the West's enthusiasm for arming Ukraine. By then, some of his new untrained recruits may have bedded in. The last one is my own guess, so you can ignore it.
They didn't postulate how he'd like the political scene to change, but this forum might. Here's my tongue-in-cheek predictions.
Obviously, he'd like Angela back (Get rid of Nuclear, tie yourself to Russian gas), but that's unlikely. Encourage the loons in XR to run amok, and hope that Wee Jimmy succeeds. and means it when she threatens to have an independent Scotland leave NATO.
Remove Starmer for the triumphant return of Corbyn. A big ask, but the Tories are currently making themselves unelectable. Putin's aim of removing Western hegemony might need putting on the back-burner unless Trump is elected, but he's a loose cannon and might do more harm than good.
He must be an optimist, but his disdain of Western governments is a given. Six months is a long time when you're a mad poisoner who assumes something will turn up, and you control the communications.
Blue Check mark is mostly for the benefit of the masses not the checkmark owner.
It is so I know I am reading the account of the actual Elon Musk and not some conspiracy peddling crypto-shilling fake.
Though not everyone appears to understand its utility.
Delighted to see that The Daily Mail has had the good sense to quote me regarding the government’s sensible idea to disperse sewage in coastal waters in a safe manner whilst beaches are empty. The Daily Mail continues to be an example of rigorous & well researched journalism... https://mobile.twitter.com/MichaelTakeMP/status/1586844713373646854
(The non-existent ex MP, for a non existent constituency, Sir Michael Take...)
The Institute for the study of war (ISW) have tried to put themseleves in Putin's mind to predict his likely actions. I'm summarising.
They think a nuclear attack is very unlikely. They predict a Spring '23 offensive, hoping a cold winter will have changed the West's enthusiasm for arming Ukraine. By then, some of his new untrained recruits may have bedded in. The last one is my own guess, so you can ignore it.
They didn't postulate how he'd like the political scene to change, but this forum might. Here's my tongue-in-cheek predictions.
Obviously, he'd like Angela back (Get rid of Nuclear, tie yourself to Russian gas), but that's unlikely. Encourage the loons in XR to run amok, and hope that Wee Jimmy succeeds. and means it when she threatens to have an independent Scotland leave NATO.
Remove Starmer for the triumphant return of Corbyn. A big ask, but the Tories are currently making themselves unelectable. Putin's aim of removing Western hegemony might need putting on the back-burner unless Trump is elected, but he's a loose cannon and might do more harm than good.
He must be an optimist, but his disdain of Western governments is a given. Six months is a long time when you're a mad poisoner who assumes something will turn up, and you control the communications.
“Because of the Home Office decision not to book hotel space, the inevitable has happened”.
Conservative MP Sir Roger Gale tells @GMB that numbers at Manston asylum processing centre have gone from 2500 to 4000 in four days. Seems to blame Home Sec.
Twitter might like to have tiers of membership, where if you go over 10 tweets a day you have to pay 10 bucks a month. Over 20 and you pay 50 bucks. Companies pay 1000 bucks a month. A tax on bots, corporate PR and gobshites.
Would work quite well, when something happens and you’re desperate to say something you’ll sign up.
But who will fund covid twitter? Those endless doomsayers still wearing masks and calling the next wave that means we all should lockdown?
I stumbled across one of those a few weeks ago He was saying that the latest ‘wave’ of Covid had just peaked. I was amazed both that there was a wave worthy of the name and that anyone was still monitoring covid to that degree, but some people simply cannot move on. It’s very saddening when you meet someone who has been mentally boxed-in to that extent by the experience.
NATO really needs to step up their missile defence contributions urgently.
It gives me no satisfaction to say it but optimistic predictions of Putin running out of tanks, men, drones, missiles, willpower etc seem to be a regular occurrence. On the targeting of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure it seems surprising that VVP hasn’t concentrated on this before, unless with uncharacteristic strategic cunning he’s been waiting for the encroachment of winter.
To a certain extent Russia has run out of tanks, drones and missiles, which is why they're now taking tanks from Belarus and drones/missiles from Iran.
Another day of large Russian losses reported by Ukraine, 620 men, 32 APCs, after 950/52 yesterday. This suggests that Russia is attempting large-scale advances with its newly-mobilised, barely-trained, poorly-equipped forces, and suffering consequently high casualties.
I guess Putin can keep on doing this for as long as his people will follow his orders, and he can find someone willing to provide him with equipment and ammunition.
NATO really needs to step up their missile defence contributions urgently.
It gives me no satisfaction to say it but optimistic predictions of Putin running out of tanks, men, drones, missiles, willpower etc seem to be a regular occurrence. On the targeting of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure it seems surprising that VVP hasn’t concentrated on this before, unless with uncharacteristic strategic cunning he’s been waiting for the encroachment of winter.
Having to import weapons, including small cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, from Iran is *not* a sign of massive weapons stocks. Using increasingly-aged tanks and APC's likewise.
As for your latter point: Putin's excuses for his war have always been confused, but early on there was somewhat of a "Those poor Ukrainians are part of us; we need to remove those evil Nazis from ruling them (*)". Hitting vital infrastructure was somewhat against that - especially if he hoped to take over the country.
Now he's just in a "burn everything" punishment beating mode. It's a sign that he does not expect to take over all of Ukraine.
(*) " ... and replace them with a fascist such as myself", he'd never add.
NATO really needs to step up their missile defence contributions urgently.
There has been a real clampdown by Russia on news and images out of Sevastopol after the Ukrainian drone attack on the Black Sea Fleet. Suggestions that the replacement flagship for the sunk Moscow has also been seriously damaged. A huge wave of missiles is the predictable Russian response to any setback (it happened after the Crimea bridge attack too.) Be interesting to see what news leaks out about the damage inflicted by the attack.
“Because of the Home Office decision not to book hotel space, the inevitable has happened”.
Conservative MP Sir Roger Gale tells @GMB that numbers at Manston asylum processing centre have gone from 2500 to 4000 in four days. Seems to blame Home Sec.
He doesn’t know whether it was Patel or Braverman.
It's quite hard to determine exactly where this fiasco lies on the evil - incompetence continuum. Making the internment centre an absolute misery with a strong 'Jedem das Seine' vibe is no doubt a deterrent but the tories couldn't organise a heroin overdose on a Hartlepool council estate so maybe they're not doing it intentionally.
NATO really needs to step up their missile defence contributions urgently.
There has been a real clampdown by Russia on news and images out of Sevastopol after the Ukrainian drone attack on the Black Sea Fleet. Suggestions that the replacement flagship for the sunk Moscow has also been seriously damaged. A huge wave of missiles is the predictable Russian response to any setback (it happened after the Crimea bridge attack too.) Be interesting to see what news leaks out about the damage inflicted by the attack.
When Ukraine hit the landing ship in Berdyansk there were some satellite photos of the partially submerged ship. If we're lucky there will be breaks in the cloud to enable similar.
Interesting how world leaders in western countries have quickly congratulated Lula on his win .
This looks like an attempt to put pressure on Bolsonaro to not cause any drama .
Has it not already been declared? So hardly contraversial to congratulate the winner.
Indeed. Some weird posts this morning on this topic. Are we to endure this every time a hard right populist is defeated?
The Trump Legacy.
Trump lost, there was no doubt about it, once the votes had been counted.I said repeatedly at the time. Endlessly querying what he might or might not do merely legitimised those who seek to question free and fair elections.
NATO really needs to step up their missile defence contributions urgently.
There has been a real clampdown by Russia on news and images out of Sevastopol after the Ukrainian drone attack on the Black Sea Fleet. Suggestions that the replacement flagship for the sunk Moscow has also been seriously damaged. A huge wave of missiles is the predictable Russian response to any setback (it happened after the Crimea bridge attack too.) Be interesting to see what news leaks out about the damage inflicted by the attack.
Incidentally, there seems some evidence that the huge waves of missile attacks after the Crimea Bridge attack had been organised days before that attack - i.e. it was not in response to it.
Sir Christopher Chope, the MP for Christchurch, claimed that the vaccines were “not perfectly safe” and that there was a question about “whether they are effective”.
Someone should ask Dopey Chopey for a list of things that are "perfectly safe".
Comments
And on thread. Labour is best ignoring Truss for that reason, downplaying her role in order to point the finger at Sunak (and his predecessors) for he economic mess.
The idea that we can leave this places alone is I'm afraid out with the fairies. The world just ain't that way anymore. If you don't intervene they get obliterated. Yes it's very very sad. But the fact now remains that we have to hold our noses and accept a degree of compromise in terms of visitor numbers for the greater good.
That's why, despite my liking your earlier thoughtful comments, my idea is a better one. We need to step in globally to support Brazil in protecting the Amazon. Yes yes money abroad sometimes goes astray but that doesn't mean it shouldn't happen and there are ways of mitigating against it.
And if you don't educate the planet through interaction you don't educate.
Of course, much of this, as with most things, comes down to the fact that this planet cannot support 10 billion people.
Generally speaking it's easier to police a clump of trees than it is a herd of elephants. Felling the latter takes one shot. Chopping down a forest tends to attract attention.
The basic point stands. If we want to save the Amazon it's no good simply lecturing Brazil from afar. Now that we have a pro-eco President again we need to give him our support.
And on that note, I will bid you all a good day
The SNP, Labour, Greens and Lib Dems must set aside the Truss catastrophe and focus laser-like on Sunak’s self-inflicted mess.
The voters will *never* forget Truss. The woman is going to become legendary. All the takings are banked.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/30/23431931/twitter-paid-verification-elon-musk-blue-monthly-subscription
Basically, if you have a blue check mark on Twitter, and want to keep it, it's $20/month.
There are - approximately - 300,000 verified Twitter accounts.
That's $6m/month, or $72m a year. Admittedly, based on the assumption that there's 100% take up.
This nonsense: $72m/year
As this doesn't solve all the problems, it's not worth doing
Everything is iteration.
I see he has deleted his Pelosi conspiracy tweet.
https://twitter.com/MetroUK/status/1586832338239033350?t=SC3l3ufn3KFZt_B0iA2x8A&s=09
I agree that there is no silver bullet. You need to salami slice the 400m users - the goal being to get them to give you their payment details so that the barrier to incremental payments is reduced.
Other platforms do that by incentives for content providers to persuade their followers to part with cash in microtransactions (e.g. YT 'superchats' and 'memberships') I'm not sure that relationship exists on Twitter so they'll have to innovate.
Musk is also making it much harder as he spooks the advertisers, so he's going to have to fill that black hole as Twitter was just approaching break even.
The feature I want from Twitter is that I send them like 5 DAI or whatever and they block my account for the next 8 hours so I can get some work done.
Last time around Lula had money pouring in from the newly developing oil fields but the financial situation will be much tighter this time around.
It looks more like idiotic journalism to me.
NEW: a column in the Times argues that the only way to tackle obesity is through fat shaming (yes, you read that right).
It’s an astonishing argument to make, and unsurprisingly it falls to pieces under scrutiny.
Let’s take a look, and see if we can do better:
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1586761974708322304
A Conservative MP was applauded by a group of antivaxers that included Piers Corbyn, brother of the former Labour leader, as he questioned the safety of coronavirus vaccinations during a Commons debate.
Sir Christopher Chope, the MP for Christchurch, claimed that the vaccines were “not perfectly safe” and that there was a question about “whether they are effective”.
Chope was one of a group of MPs who took part in a debate held last week on the safety of vaccinations. It took place at Westminster Hall after a petition demanding a public inquiry into the use of jabs during the Covid-19 pandemic reached 100,000 signatures — the threshold required for a topic to be considered in parliament......
....Andrew Bridgen, the MP for North West Leicestershire, questioned why “the [coronavirus] vaccine was given to people who had natural immunity because they had probably contracted the virus”. He also cited debunked statistics, claiming that there was an “84 per cent increase in the relative incidence of cardiac-related death among males aged 18 to 39” following vaccination.
The study to which Bridgen referred — which has not been peer-reviewed or published in an academic journal — was widely criticised by public health experts for lack of evidence and potential methodological failures. Fact-checkers described the study, conducted by the Florida Department of Health, as misleading.
....Other MPs who appeared to raise questions about the effectiveness of vaccines were Danny Kruger, the Tory MP for Devizes, and Apsana Begum, the Labour MP for Poplar & Limehouse.
Kruger questioned the independence of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, which determines whether vaccines are safe, and said it was time to stop “a remote power telling people what to do”.
Begum demanded that more be done to help those who have “experienced damage from the vaccine”.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/antivaxers-applaud-tory-mp-christopher-chope-as-he-questions-safety-of-covid-vaccines-ktpsldhwm
Potentially a very important moment. With Turkey involved will the convoy be allow to sail undisturbed. If so, hard to see how any blockade can last
https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1586978828970344449
Here's the first step of the intervention process.
https://www.begambleaware.org/
Maybe Musk is about to upend existing internet paradigms but thus far it's generally been pretty simple. Make access free, drive engagement, benefit from network effects, sell advertising.
NATO really needs to step up their missile defence contributions urgently.
I look forward to working together on the issues that matter to the UK and Brazil, from growing the global economy to protecting the planet’s natural resources and promoting democratic values.
https://twitter.com/RishiSunak/status/1586983284181012482
This seems to be the reaction of most journalists.
https://mobile.twitter.com/JamesFallows/status/1586931244994105344
The “pay for blue check” scheme is really weird.
-Why would people who already have one, pay for it? Is the fear that surplus followers will leave? And so…?
-It debases people who keep one. Turns them into equivalent of advertorial-writers.
Very quick way to torpedo the site.
And the amount of revenue is minor in comparison to the potential damage.
Quite a few years back some American tech millionaires and billionaires bought up large areas. This, entirely predictably, kicked off a foreigners-stealing-our-land thing.
Instead of trying to deal with the real problem - a socio-political structure that depends on using the rainforest as fresh resources, at all levels of society (rich and poor) - it was an attempt to fix the problem with a quick hack.
But there's a limit to what missile defence can achieve. Much easier to intercept the missiles weekend they're on the ground, before they've launched. With the number of missiles Russia may be buying from Iran this is the crucial step.
This look the opposite of that - and 'roll it out in two weeks or I'll fire the developer team' is not a great first iteration in terms of personnel management.
One of the reasons for Musk's success is that smart engineers want to work for leading edge companies. There is no such existing incentive at Twitter.
Would work quite well, when something happens and you’re desperate to say something you’ll sign up.
It's also pretty terrible in terms of project management. I don't know whether Twitter tends to use Agile methodology, but the CEO coming in and saying something like that means no, you definitely aren't. If teams keep trying to use Agile they'll fall foul of this bull-in-a-china-shop owner. If they stop then the whole team structures and existing planning will need to change over, meaning dedicating stacks of FTEs to the changeover before you can even get started. It's a recipe for chaos. Musk is a fucking idiot.
Israel has so far flat out refused, and Japan has political and constitutional issue about sending arms into conflicts.
I agree that Israel in particular, with it's expertise in supplying missile defence systems, ought to change its policy. It would probably be more productive to push Japan on financial aid, which is just as needed.
This looks like an attempt to put pressure on Bolsonaro to not cause any drama .
Im not sure that’s true . There is value in being able to engage with an audience. People want to say something. I think people even might pay to post here for example.
As I said down thread the only other mechanism that has ever worked for monetizing social is getting people to pay content providers for 3rd party content and taking a slice of those transactions. (Which Twitter is not well set up for.)
Anything else will be have to be innovative, not just "charging for the existing service".
And yes, it's being done via NATO which is fine. I just think non-NATO aid is an excellent counterargument to the idiot tankies who like to blame NATO for Putin's imperial fascism. The more non-NATO countries contribute, the better.
The reason why there is a lot of angst about Twitter is that for many people, egotism is a drug. Can they give it up? I'm not so sure.
I thought Musk might have some interesting ideas for expanding what Twitter does.
He might still, but this one is a bust.
https://mobile.twitter.com/saletan/status/1586826085945180162
On Fox, @GOPChairwoman
says "Lee Zeldin was attacked. We had an assassination attempt against Brett Kavanaugh. And Democrats didn't repudiate that. Joe Biden didn't talk about the assassination attempt against Brett Kavanaugh."
She's wrong on both counts...
It is so I know I am reading the account of the actual Elon Musk and not some conspiracy peddling crypto-shilling fake.
On the targeting of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure it seems surprising that VVP hasn’t concentrated on this before, unless with uncharacteristic strategic cunning he’s been waiting for the encroachment of winter.
They think a nuclear attack is very unlikely. They predict a Spring '23 offensive, hoping a cold winter will have changed the West's enthusiasm for arming Ukraine. By then, some of his new untrained recruits may have bedded in. The last one is my own guess, so you can ignore it.
They didn't postulate how he'd like the political scene to change, but this forum might. Here's my tongue-in-cheek predictions.
Obviously, he'd like Angela back (Get rid of Nuclear, tie yourself to Russian gas), but that's unlikely. Encourage the loons in XR to run amok, and hope that Wee Jimmy succeeds. and means it when she threatens to have an independent Scotland leave NATO.
Remove Starmer for the triumphant return of Corbyn. A big ask, but the Tories are currently making themselves unelectable. Putin's aim of removing Western hegemony might need putting on the back-burner unless Trump is elected, but he's a loose cannon and might do more harm than good.
He must be an optimist, but his disdain of Western governments is a given. Six months is a long time when you're a mad poisoner who assumes something will turn up, and you control the communications.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/its-mad-to-record-petty-problems-as-crime-says-police-chief-zk08rl9b7
One of us is going to look an idiot after the next GE.
Delighted to see that The Daily Mail has had the good sense to quote me regarding the government’s sensible idea to disperse sewage in coastal waters in a safe manner whilst beaches are empty.
The Daily Mail continues to be an example of rigorous & well researched journalism...
https://mobile.twitter.com/MichaelTakeMP/status/1586844713373646854
(The non-existent ex MP, for a non existent constituency, Sir Michael Take...)
Good advice, thank you
Talking up when Britain had Bollocks! The only problem being that he chose a Polish regiment as the picture...
“Because of the Home Office decision not to book hotel space, the inevitable has happened”.
Conservative MP Sir Roger Gale tells @GMB that numbers at Manston asylum processing centre have gone from 2500 to 4000 in four days. Seems to blame Home Sec.
https://twitter.com/paulbranditv/status/1586995307941871616
He doesn’t know whether it was Patel or Braverman.
They have been rising daily since October 25th.
Another day of large Russian losses reported by Ukraine, 620 men, 32 APCs, after 950/52 yesterday. This suggests that Russia is attempting large-scale advances with its newly-mobilised, barely-trained, poorly-equipped forces, and suffering consequently high casualties.
I guess Putin can keep on doing this for as long as his people will follow his orders, and he can find someone willing to provide him with equipment and ammunition.
As for your latter point: Putin's excuses for his war have always been confused, but early on there was somewhat of a "Those poor Ukrainians are part of us; we need to remove those evil Nazis from ruling them (*)". Hitting vital infrastructure was somewhat against that - especially if he hoped to take over the country.
Now he's just in a "burn everything" punishment beating mode. It's a sign that he does not expect to take over all of Ukraine.
(*) " ... and replace them with a fascist such as myself", he'd never add.
In The Grocer. There is reported alarm amongst farmers about the return of Therese Coffey to Defra...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/10/31/pension-triple-lock-has-become-impossible-defend/