Just to reinforce this point the Savanta MRP published earlier this week which had a Labour majority of 314 and the Tories on 69 seats showed Stretford as:
That MRP came in for a heck of a lot of criticism here on PB. I think your post shows that is should be taken seriously. I’m sure that in the privacy of their own forums, Conservative strategists are indeed extremely worried.
Well, I mean, if you think the next general election will be exactly like 650 mid-term by-elections, yes.
Your criticism is valid for normal VI polling, however MRP is not a poll.
(1) It's still based on how people say now how they'll vote, right? (2) The result was entirely consistent with a mid-term by-election.
Consequently we can conclude that this is evidence to support the proposition that "how people say in mid term they'll vote in a general election tomorrow" coincides with "how they would vote in a mid-term by-election tomorrow", which we know doesn't correlate well with "how they will end up voting in a general election in a couple of years time".
Just to reinforce this point the Savanta MRP published earlier this week which had a Labour majority of 314 and the Tories on 69 seats showed Stretford as:
That MRP came in for a heck of a lot of criticism here on PB. I think your post shows that is should be taken seriously. I’m sure that in the privacy of their own forums, Conservative strategists are indeed extremely worried.
Well, I mean, if you think the next general election will be exactly like 650 mid-term by-elections, yes.
Your criticism is valid for normal VI polling, however MRP is not a poll.
(1) It's still based on how people say now how they'll vote, right? (2) The result was entirely consistent with a mid-term by-election.
Consequently we can conclude that this is evidence to support the proposition that "how people say in mid term they'll vote in a general election tomorrow" coincides with "how they would vote in a mid-term by-election tomorrow", which we know doesn't correlate well with "how they will end up voting in a general election in a couple of years time".
For months now my mum's home has insisted on masks, as per gov guidelines (even though they were not laws), and the home had a pile of masks at the door for those visitors that forgot to bring one.
So I would duly don a mask when walking through the home to mum's room.
During that walk you would see that residents were not wearing masks (the guidelines didn't specify this). The carers were generally wearing masks but not always and those that were wearing one tended to cover their mouth but not nose. Occasionally a staff member would take a photo for posting on the home's Facebook page and then they made sure that all visitors and carers had a mask worn properly for the photo!
In short, the whole thing was a farce.
As soon as I got to mum's room I took it off, of course, and would only put it back on when prompted by a passing carer, and then took it off again. The government should have changed these guidelines months ago. I won't go on about how all this has affected my mum because I've done this before but I'm still simmering with rage over this.
Just to reinforce this point the Savanta MRP published earlier this week which had a Labour majority of 314 and the Tories on 69 seats showed Stretford as:
That MRP came in for a heck of a lot of criticism here on PB. I think your post shows that is should be taken seriously. I’m sure that in the privacy of their own forums, Conservative strategists are indeed extremely worried.
Well, I mean, if you think the next general election will be exactly like 650 mid-term by-elections, yes.
Your criticism is valid for normal VI polling, however MRP is not a poll.
(1) It's still based on how people say now how they'll vote, right? (2) The result was entirely consistent with a mid-term by-election.
Consequently we can conclude that this is evidence to support the proposition that "how people say in mid term they'll vote in a general election tomorrow" coincides with "how they would vote in a mid-term by-election tomorrow", which we know doesn't correlate well with "how they will end up voting in a general election in a couple of years time".
I’m a huge advocate of “swingback” theory (which is one reason I’m confident that the SNP will hold SLab at bay), but occasionally, just occasionally, the rule doesn’t hold. I’m slowly coming round to the conclusion that we are about to witness a rare exception for the Tory performance at the next UK GE.
Mr. Dickson, as ever with trends etc it depends the point you pick. The Conservatives won't, most likely, do as badly as the nadir Truss delivered. I agree, however, that they won't see a significant swing back their way and will be out of office next time.
Just to reinforce this point the Savanta MRP published earlier this week which had a Labour majority of 314 and the Tories on 69 seats showed Stretford as:
That MRP came in for a heck of a lot of criticism here on PB. I think your post shows that is should be taken seriously. I’m sure that in the privacy of their own forums, Conservative strategists are indeed extremely worried.
Well, I mean, if you think the next general election will be exactly like 650 mid-term by-elections, yes.
Your criticism is valid for normal VI polling, however MRP is not a poll.
(1) It's still based on how people say now how they'll vote, right? (2) The result was entirely consistent with a mid-term by-election.
Consequently we can conclude that this is evidence to support the proposition that "how people say in mid term they'll vote in a general election tomorrow" coincides with "how they would vote in a mid-term by-election tomorrow", which we know doesn't correlate well with "how they will end up voting in a general election in a couple of years time".
Just to reinforce this point the Savanta MRP published earlier this week which had a Labour majority of 314 and the Tories on 69 seats showed Stretford as:
That MRP came in for a heck of a lot of criticism here on PB. I think your post shows that is should be taken seriously. I’m sure that in the privacy of their own forums, Conservative strategists are indeed extremely worried.
Well, I mean, if you think the next general election will be exactly like 650 mid-term by-elections, yes.
Your criticism is valid for normal VI polling, however MRP is not a poll.
(1) It's still based on how people say now how they'll vote, right? (2) The result was entirely consistent with a mid-term by-election.
Consequently we can conclude that this is evidence to support the proposition that "how people say in mid term they'll vote in a general election tomorrow" coincides with "how they would vote in a mid-term by-election tomorrow", which we know doesn't correlate well with "how they will end up voting in a general election in a couple of years time".
Just to reinforce this point the Savanta MRP published earlier this week which had a Labour majority of 314 and the Tories on 69 seats showed Stretford as:
That MRP came in for a heck of a lot of criticism here on PB. I think your post shows that is should be taken seriously. I’m sure that in the privacy of their own forums, Conservative strategists are indeed extremely worried.
Well, I mean, if you think the next general election will be exactly like 650 mid-term by-elections, yes.
Your criticism is valid for normal VI polling, however MRP is not a poll.
(1) It's still based on how people say now how they'll vote, right? (2) The result was entirely consistent with a mid-term by-election.
Consequently we can conclude that this is evidence to support the proposition that "how people say in mid term they'll vote in a general election tomorrow" coincides with "how they would vote in a mid-term by-election tomorrow", which we know doesn't correlate well with "how they will end up voting in a general election in a couple of years time".
Just to reinforce this point the Savanta MRP published earlier this week which had a Labour majority of 314 and the Tories on 69 seats showed Stretford as:
That MRP came in for a heck of a lot of criticism here on PB. I think your post shows that is should be taken seriously. I’m sure that in the privacy of their own forums, Conservative strategists are indeed extremely worried.
Well, I mean, if you think the next general election will be exactly like 650 mid-term by-elections, yes.
Your criticism is valid for normal VI polling, however MRP is not a poll.
(1) It's still based on how people say now how they'll vote, right? (2) The result was entirely consistent with a mid-term by-election.
Consequently we can conclude that this is evidence to support the proposition that "how people say in mid term they'll vote in a general election tomorrow" coincides with "how they would vote in a mid-term by-election tomorrow", which we know doesn't correlate well with "how they will end up voting in a general election in a couple of years time".
Maj 28 v Maj 80 is certainly not “completely wrong”. It’s actually bloody good. They got the vast majority of the 650 seats spot on.
No it was completely wrong, predicted Major 1992 scrape home not the landslide Boris won
It probably means they got 26 seats wrong. That gets you to Birmingham Northfield, which the Conservatives ended up with a majority of 1640. The key thing here is that Westminster majorities are blooming hard to predict and very sensitive to small shifts in the right places.
What was the prediction of turnout in the MRP. The same vote levels in one seat on very different levels on turnout could have very different implications for the overall result.
Just to reinforce this point the Savanta MRP published earlier this week which had a Labour majority of 314 and the Tories on 69 seats showed Stretford as:
That MRP came in for a heck of a lot of criticism here on PB. I think your post shows that is should be taken seriously. I’m sure that in the privacy of their own forums, Conservative strategists are indeed extremely worried.
Well, I mean, if you think the next general election will be exactly like 650 mid-term by-elections, yes.
Your criticism is valid for normal VI polling, however MRP is not a poll.
(1) It's still based on how people say now how they'll vote, right? (2) The result was entirely consistent with a mid-term by-election.
Consequently we can conclude that this is evidence to support the proposition that "how people say in mid term they'll vote in a general election tomorrow" coincides with "how they would vote in a mid-term by-election tomorrow", which we know doesn't correlate well with "how they will end up voting in a general election in a couple of years time".
Maj 28 v Maj 80 is certainly not “completely wrong”. It’s actually bloody good. They got the vast majority of the 650 seats spot on.
No it was completely wrong, predicted Major 1992 scrape home not the landslide Boris won
It probably means they got 26 seats wrong. That gets you to Birmingham Northfield, which the Conservatives ended up with a majority of 1640. The key thing here is that Westminster majorities are blooming hard to predict and very sensitive to small shifts in the right places.
MRP got 93.5% right. Most of the wrongs were because they underestimated the Conservative national vote margin over Labour (predicted 8.8% vs 11.8% actual).
Still a little bit better prediction than just using UNS, apparently. So an error in polling in general rather than a fault in MRP.
Just to reinforce this point the Savanta MRP published earlier this week which had a Labour majority of 314 and the Tories on 69 seats showed Stretford as:
That MRP came in for a heck of a lot of criticism here on PB. I think your post shows that is should be taken seriously. I’m sure that in the privacy of their own forums, Conservative strategists are indeed extremely worried.
Well, I mean, if you think the next general election will be exactly like 650 mid-term by-elections, yes.
Your criticism is valid for normal VI polling, however MRP is not a poll.
(1) It's still based on how people say now how they'll vote, right? (2) The result was entirely consistent with a mid-term by-election.
Consequently we can conclude that this is evidence to support the proposition that "how people say in mid term they'll vote in a general election tomorrow" coincides with "how they would vote in a mid-term by-election tomorrow", which we know doesn't correlate well with "how they will end up voting in a general election in a couple of years time".
Just to reinforce this point the Savanta MRP published earlier this week which had a Labour majority of 314 and the Tories on 69 seats showed Stretford as:
That MRP came in for a heck of a lot of criticism here on PB. I think your post shows that is should be taken seriously. I’m sure that in the privacy of their own forums, Conservative strategists are indeed extremely worried.
Well, I mean, if you think the next general election will be exactly like 650 mid-term by-elections, yes.
Your criticism is valid for normal VI polling, however MRP is not a poll.
(1) It's still based on how people say now how they'll vote, right? (2) The result was entirely consistent with a mid-term by-election.
Consequently we can conclude that this is evidence to support the proposition that "how people say in mid term they'll vote in a general election tomorrow" coincides with "how they would vote in a mid-term by-election tomorrow", which we know doesn't correlate well with "how they will end up voting in a general election in a couple of years time".
Maj 28 v Maj 80 is certainly not “completely wrong”. It’s actually bloody good. They got the vast majority of the 650 seats spot on.
No it was completely wrong, predicted Major 1992 scrape home not the landslide Boris won
It probably means they got 26 seats wrong. That gets you to Birmingham Northfield, which the Conservatives ended up with a majority of 1640. The key thing here is that Westminster majorities are blooming hard to predict and very sensitive to small shifts in the right places.
Opinium managed it, 12% Tory lead in final poll, spot on
Just to reinforce this point the Savanta MRP published earlier this week which had a Labour majority of 314 and the Tories on 69 seats showed Stretford as:
That MRP came in for a heck of a lot of criticism here on PB. I think your post shows that is should be taken seriously. I’m sure that in the privacy of their own forums, Conservative strategists are indeed extremely worried.
Well, I mean, if you think the next general election will be exactly like 650 mid-term by-elections, yes.
Your criticism is valid for normal VI polling, however MRP is not a poll.
(1) It's still based on how people say now how they'll vote, right? (2) The result was entirely consistent with a mid-term by-election.
Consequently we can conclude that this is evidence to support the proposition that "how people say in mid term they'll vote in a general election tomorrow" coincides with "how they would vote in a mid-term by-election tomorrow", which we know doesn't correlate well with "how they will end up voting in a general election in a couple of years time".
I’m a huge advocate of “swingback” theory (which is one reason I’m confident that the SNP will hold SLab at bay), but occasionally, just occasionally, the rule doesn’t hold. I’m slowly coming round to the conclusion that we are about to witness a rare exception for the Tory performance at the next UK GE.
My hunch is that it comes down to the economy - a government in control of events makes sure that there's a decent splash of feel good four years after the last election.
In which case:
1. Maybe the government was in trouble from the minute it had to spend money on Covid and stop afterwards. Right policy, electorally unfortunate timing.
2. The economic prognosis for the next two years matters. Is there a pathway where the average voter, navigating by whether money or month runs out first, will feel good over the next two years?
For months now my mum's home has insisted on masks, as per gov guidelines (even though they were not laws), and the home had a pile of masks at the door for those visitors that forgot to bring one.
So I would duly don a mask when walking through the home to mum's room.
During that walk you would see that residents were not wearing masks (the guidelines didn't specify this). The carers were generally wearing masks but not always and those that were wearing one tended to cover their mouth but not nose. Occasionally a staff member would take a photo for posting on the home's Facebook page and then they made sure that all visitors and carers had a mask worn properly for the photo!
In short, the whole thing was a farce.
As soon as I got to mum's room I took it off, of course, and would only put it back on when prompted by a passing carer, and then took it off again. The government should have changed these guidelines months ago. I won't go on about how all this has affected my mum because I've done this before but I'm still simmering with rage over this.
I'll admit I didn't know the ongoing guidance on this. The only care home I have recent experience of (elderly neighbour of my in-laws is a resident; she's almost a surrogate grandma to my wife so we visit regularly) hasn't required masks since at least the spring, I think.
Just to reinforce this point the Savanta MRP published earlier this week which had a Labour majority of 314 and the Tories on 69 seats showed Stretford as:
That MRP came in for a heck of a lot of criticism here on PB. I think your post shows that is should be taken seriously. I’m sure that in the privacy of their own forums, Conservative strategists are indeed extremely worried.
Well, I mean, if you think the next general election will be exactly like 650 mid-term by-elections, yes.
Your criticism is valid for normal VI polling, however MRP is not a poll.
(1) It's still based on how people say now how they'll vote, right? (2) The result was entirely consistent with a mid-term by-election.
Consequently we can conclude that this is evidence to support the proposition that "how people say in mid term they'll vote in a general election tomorrow" coincides with "how they would vote in a mid-term by-election tomorrow", which we know doesn't correlate well with "how they will end up voting in a general election in a couple of years time".
Maj 28 v Maj 80 is certainly not “completely wrong”. It’s actually bloody good. They got the vast majority of the 650 seats spot on.
No it was completely wrong, predicted Major 1992 scrape home not the landslide Boris won
It probably means they got 26 seats wrong. That gets you to Birmingham Northfield, which the Conservatives ended up with a majority of 1640. The key thing here is that Westminster majorities are blooming hard to predict and very sensitive to small shifts in the right places.
Indeed, and more the majority structures mean that there are substantial "cliffs" in the graph. A surprising number of people don't realise that a simple 1% UNS doesn't just equal x seats.
The trouble is he liked being cool. CEO of a rocket company and a disruptive electric car company. Dating an alternative pop musician. Appearing in SNL comedy sketches.
Now he is widely despised and is digging a hole to appeal to the populist right as the one group he still has onside. He's been forced to buy a social media platform at a widely inflated price and is losing money fast. His piggy bank (Tesla shares) have fallen in value by 60% this year. His promise of unlimited free speech have been undermined by a combination of his own thin skin and the wishes of advertisers.
I suspect he won't know when to stop digging.
He also hasn't clocked that the group he's courting will still not really like him and accept him unless or until he adopts all their major beliefs.
Of the big two remaining, he probably won't have any serious issues with going full antivaxxer, but signing up to full climate change denial will run into the issue that the entire reason for Tesla was climate change.
It'll be interesting to see which element of his ego gives way.
Just to reinforce this point the Savanta MRP published earlier this week which had a Labour majority of 314 and the Tories on 69 seats showed Stretford as:
That MRP came in for a heck of a lot of criticism here on PB. I think your post shows that is should be taken seriously. I’m sure that in the privacy of their own forums, Conservative strategists are indeed extremely worried.
Well, I mean, if you think the next general election will be exactly like 650 mid-term by-elections, yes.
Your criticism is valid for normal VI polling, however MRP is not a poll.
(1) It's still based on how people say now how they'll vote, right? (2) The result was entirely consistent with a mid-term by-election.
Consequently we can conclude that this is evidence to support the proposition that "how people say in mid term they'll vote in a general election tomorrow" coincides with "how they would vote in a mid-term by-election tomorrow", which we know doesn't correlate well with "how they will end up voting in a general election in a couple of years time".
Maj 28 v Maj 80 is certainly not “completely wrong”. It’s actually bloody good. They got the vast majority of the 650 seats spot on.
No it was completely wrong, predicted Major 1992 scrape home not the landslide Boris won
It probably means they got 26 seats wrong. That gets you to Birmingham Northfield, which the Conservatives ended up with a majority of 1640. The key thing here is that Westminster majorities are blooming hard to predict and very sensitive to small shifts in the right places.
Opinium managed it, 12% Tory lead in final poll, spot on
You're not comparing like-with-like there, are you?
It's one thing to get the national shares right, but the art is in turning those into seat counts. Saying that X got the (probably easier) bit right and Y got the (probably harder) bit wrong doesn't tell us all that much.
I'd expect a clear Labour lead in voting terms, at the next election, probably similar to that achieved by the Conservatives in 2010.
Something like 41%, 34%.
Absolutely in line with my expectations, both in vote share and margin. Could/should be enough to give LAB a small overall majority, the swing in the 'marginals' ie where the current CON lead over LAB is up to 30% is likely to be greater than UNS. Reflecting unwind of 2010 and 2019.
Just to reinforce this point the Savanta MRP published earlier this week which had a Labour majority of 314 and the Tories on 69 seats showed Stretford as:
That MRP came in for a heck of a lot of criticism here on PB. I think your post shows that is should be taken seriously. I’m sure that in the privacy of their own forums, Conservative strategists are indeed extremely worried.
Well, I mean, if you think the next general election will be exactly like 650 mid-term by-elections, yes.
Your criticism is valid for normal VI polling, however MRP is not a poll.
(1) It's still based on how people say now how they'll vote, right? (2) The result was entirely consistent with a mid-term by-election.
Consequently we can conclude that this is evidence to support the proposition that "how people say in mid term they'll vote in a general election tomorrow" coincides with "how they would vote in a mid-term by-election tomorrow", which we know doesn't correlate well with "how they will end up voting in a general election in a couple of years time".
MRP innately contains a wide spread of error, because a handful of votes in different places can wildly affect seat spreads, but to the extent it is accurate it only becomes so in the final 7-10 days of an election campaign when real v oting intention firms up.
A seat that used to be marginal for Labour but now where they pile up the votes, which isn't necessarily helpful under the FPTP system.
Which is one of several reasons that FPTP with piles of safe seats isn't a great system.
The more efficiently distributed Tory vote is a function of their percentage vote. Once that vote drops below a certain point the gearing works the other way and becomes a bloodbath, with the Labour vote being more efficient.
Overall this result is good for Labour, getting a 10% swing in such a low turnout.
And in so safe a seat. That is unusually good, according to Prof Curtis, FWIW.
That's my reading too and not because I want it to be.
I continue to think the Conservatives are in for an absolute shellacking at the next General Election. There's so much anger around and most of it is directed at them.
Just to reinforce this point the Savanta MRP published earlier this week which had a Labour majority of 314 and the Tories on 69 seats showed Stretford as:
That MRP came in for a heck of a lot of criticism here on PB. I think your post shows that is should be taken seriously. I’m sure that in the privacy of their own forums, Conservative strategists are indeed extremely worried.
Well, I mean, if you think the next general election will be exactly like 650 mid-term by-elections, yes.
Your criticism is valid for normal VI polling, however MRP is not a poll.
(1) It's still based on how people say now how they'll vote, right? (2) The result was entirely consistent with a mid-term by-election.
Consequently we can conclude that this is evidence to support the proposition that "how people say in mid term they'll vote in a general election tomorrow" coincides with "how they would vote in a mid-term by-election tomorrow", which we know doesn't correlate well with "how they will end up voting in a general election in a couple of years time".
Maj 28 v Maj 80 is certainly not “completely wrong”. It’s actually bloody good. They got the vast majority of the 650 seats spot on.
No it was completely wrong, predicted Major 1992 scrape home not the landslide Boris won
It probably means they got 26 seats wrong. That gets you to Birmingham Northfield, which the Conservatives ended up with a majority of 1640. The key thing here is that Westminster majorities are blooming hard to predict and very sensitive to small shifts in the right places.
Opinium managed it, 12% Tory lead in final poll, spot on
Getting it spot on is an impressive achievement, but much easier than predicting actual seat numbers because it doesn't take into account all the variations in each seat eg other parties performance, area variations (eg red wall), specific seat issues, like the candidate, etc, etc.
You are not comparing like with like. Struggling to think of an analogy but try guessing how many rooms are in a house and how many bricks are in it. One is much easier than the other.
The trouble is he liked being cool. CEO of a rocket company and a disruptive electric car company. Dating an alternative pop musician. Appearing in SNL comedy sketches.
Now he is widely despised and is digging a hole to appeal to the populist right as the one group he still has onside. He's been forced to buy a social media platform at a widely inflated price and is losing money fast. His piggy bank (Tesla shares) have fallen in value by 60% this year. His promise of unlimited free speech have been undermined by a combination of his own thin skin and the wishes of advertisers.
I suspect he won't know when to stop digging.
He also hasn't clocked that the group he's courting will still not really like him and accept him unless or until he adopts all their major beliefs.
Of the big two remaining, he probably won't have any serious issues with going full antivaxxer, but signing up to full climate change denial will run into the issue that the entire reason for Tesla was climate change.
It'll be interesting to see which element of his ego gives way.
Disagree, I think the alt-right are pretty tolerant of a bit of heterodoxy, as long as you're sticking it to the libs on some issue they care about. I think this is part if the reason people like this get nazified: If you're bigotted about even a single issue progressives will be mean to you, whereas nazis only need a single piece of bigotry to be welcoming, then they work on expanding it from there.
Musk has now done enough that he'll be able to sell Teslas to American conservatives. I have no idea whether he'll sell enough to make up for the liberal customers he'll lose.
On the swing in Stretford last night however and Deltapoll it would be a hung parliament or small Labour majority only
Deriving a straight swing from what was already a safe seat for one party and a poor one for the other, and applying it crudely across the country as a UNS, is however obviously a flawed approach.
The trouble is he liked being cool. CEO of a rocket company and a disruptive electric car company. Dating an alternative pop musician. Appearing in SNL comedy sketches.
Now he is widely despised and is digging a hole to appeal to the populist right as the one group he still has onside. He's been forced to buy a social media platform at a widely inflated price and is losing money fast. His piggy bank (Tesla shares) have fallen in value by 60% this year. His promise of unlimited free speech have been undermined by a combination of his own thin skin and the wishes of advertisers.
I suspect he won't know when to stop digging.
He also hasn't clocked that the group he's courting will still not really like him and accept him unless or until he adopts all their major beliefs.
Of the big two remaining, he probably won't have any serious issues with going full antivaxxer, but signing up to full climate change denial will run into the issue that the entire reason for Tesla was climate change.
It'll be interesting to see which element of his ego gives way.
Disagree, I think the alt-right are pretty tolerant of a bit of heterodoxy, as long as you're sticking it to the libs on some issue they care about. I think this is part if the reason people like this get nazified: If you're bigotted about even a single issue progressives will be mean to you, whereas nazis only need a single piece of bigotry to be welcoming, then they work on expanding it from there.
Musk has now done enough that he'll be able to sell Teslas to American conservatives. I have no idea whether he'll sell enough to make up for the liberal customers he'll lose.
He'd be losing customers anyway as the EV market becomes more competitive. Courting the alt-right could be a very smart business move. They're against EVs for cultural reasons and hence represent an untapped market, but in the future they'll probably end up being forced to buy EVs and will naturally favour the marque with the alt-right boss.
A seat that used to be marginal for Labour but now where they pile up the votes, which isn't necessarily helpful under the FPTP system.
Which is one of several reasons that FPTP with piles of safe seats isn't a great system.
The more efficiently distributed Tory vote is a function of their percentage vote. Once that vote drops below a certain point the gearing works the other way and becomes a bloodbath, with the Labour vote being more efficient.
Overall this result is good for Labour, getting a 10% swing in such a low turnout.
And in so safe a seat. That is unusually good, according to Prof Curtis, FWIW.
That's my reading too and not because I want it to be.
I continue to think the Conservatives are in for an absolute shellacking at the next General Election. There's so much anger around and most of it is directed at them.
Any different though than a normal mid term?
Any different though than 87-90?
If you believe the wikiworm for opinion polls in that Parliament, Conservative were ahead until about April '89, and the worst it got for them was about L44C33 around March/April '90. The worst single poll for the Conservatives was L57C29.
So in terms of "bad for the Conservatives", yes this is worse than that. Not as good for Labour, but in 1990 the LibDems were still working out who they were.
Besides- a lot of that was fury about the Poll Tax, which is why it and its only friend in Cabinet had to go. Once Major came in, the polls were closeish right up to polling day. The Conservatives have changed leader twice this year, without getting close in the polls. And there isn't a flick-of-a-switch policy change they can make to stop people being cross with them.
A seat that used to be marginal for Labour but now where they pile up the votes, which isn't necessarily helpful under the FPTP system.
Which is one of several reasons that FPTP with piles of safe seats isn't a great system.
The more efficiently distributed Tory vote is a function of their percentage vote. Once that vote drops below a certain point the gearing works the other way and becomes a bloodbath, with the Labour vote being more efficient.
Overall this result is good for Labour, getting a 10% swing in such a low turnout.
And in so safe a seat. That is unusually good, according to Prof Curtis, FWIW.
That's my reading too and not because I want it to be.
I continue to think the Conservatives are in for an absolute shellacking at the next General Election. There's so much anger around and most of it is directed at them.
Any different though than a normal mid term?
Any different though than 87-90?
What is your take on the affect Reform UK will have in the next GE? A major worry for the CP?
And, following @ydoethur 's advice, ...Ahmed first, one of two changes to the England side that took an unassailable 2-0 lead in Multan. Leicestershire’s leg-spinning all-rounder was named as a straight swap for Will Jacks, while Ollie Pope has been relieved of the gloves to focus on his batting, Ben Foakes returning and Jimmy Anderson told to rest his 40-year-old legs...
Two days ago a car carrying Musk’s two year old child from the airstrip was followed by an unknown driver. Musk himself was not present. The driver wore black gloves and balaclava and cut the Musk car off. He then jumped on the bonnet of Musk’s car to look through the windscreen. His intention was presumably not to take a selfie.
I am not surprised in the least that Musk is on a mission to shut down accounts that seek to amplify the movements of his jet in real time, even if he can’t stop the information at source. He had previously offered the kid running the ElonJet account $5k to shut it down, but the kid rebuffed him and asked for a $50k car instead.
Now you have members of the hostile US press piling into this story and amplifying the same data, thinking it a great way to antagonise someone they have a pathological hatred of. Shame on them, when you consider this was sparked by a 2 year old being threatened by a masked assailant.
He is just a fruitcake with far too much power, time he was cut down to size.
Yes, he is a whiny bell-end who paid far too much for a media company and has taken his eye off the ball on his other businesses.
Right wing tycoons buying up media companies in order to push their own agendas is nothing new, but previously more at a national rather than global level.
Twitter can be a great source of news, but best to stay away from Musks psychodrama.
For those of us who are not wholeheartedly supportive of the 'woke' agenda, the breakdown and trauma people are experiencing over Musk and Twitter is quite enjoyable to watch. The reality is that this was an organisation that had vast control over public discourse, but had been entirely captured by a particular political outlook which was increasingly asserting itself by way of 'content moderation'. Elon Musk may be making a bit of an idiot of himself at times; but fundamentally, he is conducting an act of great altruism and public service.
That's one take on it. A more rational one is that every social media site has to engage in content moderation. And Musk is demonstrating that he hasn't the first clue about how to go about it.
Absolutely right. And he can paint the fleeing advertisers as 'pressured by activists' or whatever, but the fact is they see his platform is a brand risk and it's quite easy to invest their money elsewhere.
If Twitter fails, it won't be because the user base collapses, it'll be revenue loss and/or infrastructure breakdown.
Two days ago a car carrying Musk’s two year old child from the airstrip was followed by an unknown driver. Musk himself was not present. The driver wore black gloves and balaclava and cut the Musk car off. He then jumped on the bonnet of Musk’s car to look through the windscreen. His intention was presumably not to take a selfie.
I am not surprised in the least that Musk is on a mission to shut down accounts that seek to amplify the movements of his jet in real time, even if he can’t stop the information at source. He had previously offered the kid running the ElonJet account $5k to shut it down, but the kid rebuffed him and asked for a $50k car instead.
Now you have members of the hostile US press piling into this story and amplifying the same data, thinking it a great way to antagonise someone they have a pathological hatred of. Shame on them, when you consider this was sparked by a 2 year old being threatened by a masked assailant.
He is just a fruitcake with far too much power, time he was cut down to size.
Yes, he is a whiny bell-end who paid far too much for a media company and has taken his eye off the ball on his other businesses.
Right wing tycoons buying up media companies in order to push their own agendas is nothing new, but previously more at a national rather than global level.
Twitter can be a great source of news, but best to stay away from Musks psychodrama.
For those of us who are not wholeheartedly supportive of the 'woke' agenda, the breakdown and trauma people are experiencing over Musk and Twitter is quite enjoyable to watch. The reality is that this was an organisation that had vast control over public discourse, but had been entirely captured by a particular political outlook which was increasingly asserting itself by way of 'content moderation'. Elon Musk may be making a bit of an idiot of himself at times; but fundamentally, he is conducting an act of great altruism and public service.
I'm sorry you feel that way.
Personally I think finding enjoyment in "trolling the other side" thing is incredibly dangerous.
I think the basic reality is, that this perspective (rise above it all) has been tried and just doesn't work unfortunately; you become completely irrelevant in the discourse. This has been the experience of 'moderate centrists' in the culture wars of the past few years. Musk has a lot of flaws and is making mistakes, but fundamentally I think the big picture is that this is all a long overdue shift in the 'overton window'; it is very messy and imperfect, but could not have been achieved any other way.
One must either subscribe to one of two views?
Utter horseshit. One is allowed to be nuanced.
Indeed, if your view isn't nuanced, if you are so certain of your own moral superiority, then it's probably time to start looking at yourself. Because it's when people are convinced that it's a fight, and it's them in the right, well, that's when terrible things happen.
It's when people start justifying truly awful behaviour, because it's their side (and their side is the side of light, and the other is the side of darkness and their side is in the right), and the ends justify the means.
I also read that, found the wording interesting. From the description, I'd have said it burst, rather than exploded, but maybe that's down to my own (idiosyncratic?) interpretation of those terms. The article later uses 'burst'.
More importantly, what happened to the fish? I'm guessing it didn't end well for them, but that doesn't seem to be reported. I'd like to imagine a few got washed into drains and escape, eventually, to the open sea. Could be a film, Auf Wiedersehen, Pets but I'm guessing that as they were tropical fish they would be unlikely to do well in the wilds of Berlin
Just to reinforce this point the Savanta MRP published earlier this week which had a Labour majority of 314 and the Tories on 69 seats showed Stretford as:
That MRP came in for a heck of a lot of criticism here on PB. I think your post shows that is should be taken seriously. I’m sure that in the privacy of their own forums, Conservative strategists are indeed extremely worried.
Well, I mean, if you think the next general election will be exactly like 650 mid-term by-elections, yes.
Your criticism is valid for normal VI polling, however MRP is not a poll.
(1) It's still based on how people say now how they'll vote, right? (2) The result was entirely consistent with a mid-term by-election.
Consequently we can conclude that this is evidence to support the proposition that "how people say in mid term they'll vote in a general election tomorrow" coincides with "how they would vote in a mid-term by-election tomorrow", which we know doesn't correlate well with "how they will end up voting in a general election in a couple of years time".
Except I'm sure the turnout yesterday bore no relation to what people say to pollsters about their likelihood to vote in a general election.
Considering how important the modelling of turnout in different groups is in making an accurate overall projection, I should think the resemblance between the MRP and the by-election result is best viewed as fortuitous.
I also read that, found the wording interesting. From the description, I'd have said it burst, rather than exploded, but maybe that's down to my own (idiosyncratic?) interpretation of those terms. The article later uses 'burst'.
More importantly, what happened to the fish? I'm guessing it didn't end well for them, but that doesn't seem to be reported. I'd like to imagine a few got washed into drains and escape, eventually, to the open sea. Could be a film, Auf Wiedersehen, Pets but I'm guessing that as they were tropical fish they would be unlikely to do well in the wilds of Berlin
Tbf, the aftermath looks like an explosion occurred.
I also read that, found the wording interesting. From the description, I'd have said it burst, rather than exploded, but maybe that's down to my own (idiosyncratic?) interpretation of those terms. The article later uses 'burst'.
More importantly, what happened to the fish? I'm guessing it didn't end well for them, but that doesn't seem to be reported. I'd like to imagine a few got washed into drains and escape, eventually, to the open sea. Could be a film, Auf Wiedersehen, Pets but I'm guessing that as they were tropical fish they would be unlikely to do well in the wilds of Berlin
Tbf, the aftermath looks like an explosion occurred.
It does. Will be interesting to learn the mode of failure when it's investigated.
Two days ago a car carrying Musk’s two year old child from the airstrip was followed by an unknown driver. Musk himself was not present. The driver wore black gloves and balaclava and cut the Musk car off. He then jumped on the bonnet of Musk’s car to look through the windscreen. His intention was presumably not to take a selfie.
I am not surprised in the least that Musk is on a mission to shut down accounts that seek to amplify the movements of his jet in real time, even if he can’t stop the information at source. He had previously offered the kid running the ElonJet account $5k to shut it down, but the kid rebuffed him and asked for a $50k car instead.
Now you have members of the hostile US press piling into this story and amplifying the same data, thinking it a great way to antagonise someone they have a pathological hatred of. Shame on them, when you consider this was sparked by a 2 year old being threatened by a masked assailant.
He is just a fruitcake with far too much power, time he was cut down to size.
Yes, he is a whiny bell-end who paid far too much for a media company and has taken his eye off the ball on his other businesses.
Right wing tycoons buying up media companies in order to push their own agendas is nothing new, but previously more at a national rather than global level.
Twitter can be a great source of news, but best to stay away from Musks psychodrama.
For those of us who are not wholeheartedly supportive of the 'woke' agenda, the breakdown and trauma people are experiencing over Musk and Twitter is quite enjoyable to watch. The reality is that this was an organisation that had vast control over public discourse, but had been entirely captured by a particular political outlook which was increasingly asserting itself by way of 'content moderation'. Elon Musk may be making a bit of an idiot of himself at times; but fundamentally, he is conducting an act of great altruism and public service.
That's one take on it. A more rational one is that every social media site has to engage in content moderation. And Musk is demonstrating that he hasn't the first clue about how to go about it.
Absolutely right. And he can paint the fleeing advertisers as 'pressured by activists' or whatever, but the fact is they see his platform is a brand risk and it's quite easy to invest their money elsewhere.
If Twitter fails, it won't be because the user base collapses, it'll be revenue loss and/or infrastructure breakdown.
Bloomberg reckons Musk has raised around $40bn from seeing Tesla stock in the last year and a bit. He put about $27bn of his own cash into buying Tesla so he likely has sufficient to pay down most of the debt associated with the purchase, if he so chose - or cover the interest costs for a while.
His remaining Tesla stock is worth somewhere around $65bn.
A seat that used to be marginal for Labour but now where they pile up the votes, which isn't necessarily helpful under the FPTP system.
Which is one of several reasons that FPTP with piles of safe seats isn't a great system.
The more efficiently distributed Tory vote is a function of their percentage vote. Once that vote drops below a certain point the gearing works the other way and becomes a bloodbath, with the Labour vote being more efficient.
Overall this result is good for Labour, getting a 10% swing in such a low turnout.
And in so safe a seat. That is unusually good, according to Prof Curtis, FWIW.
That's my reading too and not because I want it to be.
I continue to think the Conservatives are in for an absolute shellacking at the next General Election. There's so much anger around and most of it is directed at them.
Any different though than a normal mid term?
Any different though than 87-90?
If you believe the wikiworm for opinion polls in that Parliament, Conservative were ahead until about April '89, and the worst it got for them was about L44C33 around March/April '90. The worst single poll for the Conservatives was L57C29.
So in terms of "bad for the Conservatives", yes this is worse than that. Not as good for Labour, but in 1990 the LibDems were still working out who they were.
Besides- a lot of that was fury about the Poll Tax, which is why it and its only friend in Cabinet had to go. Once Major came in, the polls were closeish right up to polling day. The Conservatives have changed leader twice this year, without getting close in the polls. And there isn't a flick-of-a-switch policy change they can make to stop people being cross with them.
“LibDems were still working out who they were.”
Here we are in 2022, and like to think they are getting somewhere with that.
Obviously I rely on you old codgers for your 97-92 and all that, but I’m going on my Dad telling me this is beginning to look like 92 all over again everyday day now Rishi government has wiped slate clean of everything that has gone before.
Changing leaders and direction and relaunching mid term, without going to membership, is a powerful tool. Starmer’s Labour are now looking so old hat and yesterdays option, and the massively inexperienced option to boot.
Two days ago a car carrying Musk’s two year old child from the airstrip was followed by an unknown driver. Musk himself was not present. The driver wore black gloves and balaclava and cut the Musk car off. He then jumped on the bonnet of Musk’s car to look through the windscreen. His intention was presumably not to take a selfie.
I am not surprised in the least that Musk is on a mission to shut down accounts that seek to amplify the movements of his jet in real time, even if he can’t stop the information at source. He had previously offered the kid running the ElonJet account $5k to shut it down, but the kid rebuffed him and asked for a $50k car instead.
Now you have members of the hostile US press piling into this story and amplifying the same data, thinking it a great way to antagonise someone they have a pathological hatred of. Shame on them, when you consider this was sparked by a 2 year old being threatened by a masked assailant.
He is just a fruitcake with far too much power, time he was cut down to size.
Yes, he is a whiny bell-end who paid far too much for a media company and has taken his eye off the ball on his other businesses.
Right wing tycoons buying up media companies in order to push their own agendas is nothing new, but previously more at a national rather than global level.
Twitter can be a great source of news, but best to stay away from Musks psychodrama.
For those of us who are not wholeheartedly supportive of the 'woke' agenda, the breakdown and trauma people are experiencing over Musk and Twitter is quite enjoyable to watch. The reality is that this was an organisation that had vast control over public discourse, but had been entirely captured by a particular political outlook which was increasingly asserting itself by way of 'content moderation'. Elon Musk may be making a bit of an idiot of himself at times; but fundamentally, he is conducting an act of great altruism and public service.
That's one take on it. A more rational one is that every social media site has to engage in content moderation. And Musk is demonstrating that he hasn't the first clue about how to go about it.
Absolutely right. And he can paint the fleeing advertisers as 'pressured by activists' or whatever, but the fact is they see his platform is a brand risk and it's quite easy to invest their money elsewhere.
If Twitter fails, it won't be because the user base collapses, it'll be revenue loss and/or infrastructure breakdown.
Bloomberg reckons Musk has raised around $40bn from seeing Tesla stock in the last year and a bit. He put about $27bn of his own cash into buying Tesla so he likely has sufficient to pay down most of the debt associated with the purchase, if he so chose - or cover the interest costs for a while.
His remaining Tesla stock is worth somewhere around $65bn.
A seat that used to be marginal for Labour but now where they pile up the votes, which isn't necessarily helpful under the FPTP system.
Which is one of several reasons that FPTP with piles of safe seats isn't a great system.
The more efficiently distributed Tory vote is a function of their percentage vote. Once that vote drops below a certain point the gearing works the other way and becomes a bloodbath, with the Labour vote being more efficient.
Overall this result is good for Labour, getting a 10% swing in such a low turnout.
And in so safe a seat. That is unusually good, according to Prof Curtis, FWIW.
That's my reading too and not because I want it to be.
I continue to think the Conservatives are in for an absolute shellacking at the next General Election. There's so much anger around and most of it is directed at them.
Any different though than a normal mid term?
Any different though than 87-90?
If you believe the wikiworm for opinion polls in that Parliament, Conservative were ahead until about April '89, and the worst it got for them was about L44C33 around March/April '90. The worst single poll for the Conservatives was L57C29.
So in terms of "bad for the Conservatives", yes this is worse than that. Not as good for Labour, but in 1990 the LibDems were still working out who they were.
Besides- a lot of that was fury about the Poll Tax, which is why it and its only friend in Cabinet had to go. Once Major came in, the polls were closeish right up to polling day. The Conservatives have changed leader twice this year, without getting close in the polls. And there isn't a flick-of-a-switch policy change they can make to stop people being cross with them.
“LibDems were still working out who they were.”
Here we are in 2022, and like to think they are getting somewhere with that.
Obviously I rely on you old codgers for your 97-92 and all that, but I’m going on my Dad telling me this is beginning to look like 92 all over again everyday day now Rishi government has wiped slate clean of everything that has gone before.
Changing leaders and direction and relaunching mid term, without going to membership, is a powerful tool. Starmer’s Labour are now looking so old hat and yesterdays option, and the massively inexperienced option to boot.
I don't get the fixation on here of drawing parallels from past elections. It won't be 1992, it won't be 1997, it won't be 2010. It'll be 2024. Sunak is not Major; Starmer is neither Blair nor Kinnock. The world is different, the political landscape is different.
Sounds glib, but it's true. We won't be seeing a repeat of any election here; that's not how history works.
A seat that used to be marginal for Labour but now where they pile up the votes, which isn't necessarily helpful under the FPTP system.
Which is one of several reasons that FPTP with piles of safe seats isn't a great system.
The more efficiently distributed Tory vote is a function of their percentage vote. Once that vote drops below a certain point the gearing works the other way and becomes a bloodbath, with the Labour vote being more efficient.
Overall this result is good for Labour, getting a 10% swing in such a low turnout.
And in so safe a seat. That is unusually good, according to Prof Curtis, FWIW.
That's my reading too and not because I want it to be.
I continue to think the Conservatives are in for an absolute shellacking at the next General Election. There's so much anger around and most of it is directed at them.
Any different though than a normal mid term?
Any different though than 87-90?
What is your take on the affect Reform UK will have in the next GE? A major worry for the CP?
It’s a really good question. What exactly did happen in 2019. The way polls and elections had gone for years it looked like Farage would get a sizeable GE vote, but the Conservatives were so clever how they swallowed it all whole - to such extent HY can now honestly post “based on what happened last time you can add reform to Con - look, conservatives actually on 36!”
I’m not so sure though. It’s was gobbled up on promise of Boris PM getting Brexit done, and all the trade deals and growth and sunlit uplands from that promise. These voters done even have to switch to reform or labour, merely stay home. Maybe voters swallowed last time can be spewed out this time angry at being let down?
I also read that, found the wording interesting. From the description, I'd have said it burst, rather than exploded, but maybe that's down to my own (idiosyncratic?) interpretation of those terms. The article later uses 'burst'.
More importantly, what happened to the fish? I'm guessing it didn't end well for them, but that doesn't seem to be reported. I'd like to imagine a few got washed into drains and escape, eventually, to the open sea. Could be a film, Auf Wiedersehen, Pets but I'm guessing that as they were tropical fish they would be unlikely to do well in the wilds of Berlin
Any sharks in there may end up on a killing Spree.
A seat that used to be marginal for Labour but now where they pile up the votes, which isn't necessarily helpful under the FPTP system.
Which is one of several reasons that FPTP with piles of safe seats isn't a great system.
The more efficiently distributed Tory vote is a function of their percentage vote. Once that vote drops below a certain point the gearing works the other way and becomes a bloodbath, with the Labour vote being more efficient.
Overall this result is good for Labour, getting a 10% swing in such a low turnout.
And in so safe a seat. That is unusually good, according to Prof Curtis, FWIW.
That's my reading too and not because I want it to be.
I continue to think the Conservatives are in for an absolute shellacking at the next General Election. There's so much anger around and most of it is directed at them.
Any different though than a normal mid term?
Any different though than 87-90?
If you believe the wikiworm for opinion polls in that Parliament, Conservative were ahead until about April '89, and the worst it got for them was about L44C33 around March/April '90. The worst single poll for the Conservatives was L57C29.
So in terms of "bad for the Conservatives", yes this is worse than that. Not as good for Labour, but in 1990 the LibDems were still working out who they were.
Besides- a lot of that was fury about the Poll Tax, which is why it and its only friend in Cabinet had to go. Once Major came in, the polls were closeish right up to polling day. The Conservatives have changed leader twice this year, without getting close in the polls. And there isn't a flick-of-a-switch policy change they can make to stop people being cross with them.
“LibDems were still working out who they were.”
Here we are in 2022, and like to think they are getting somewhere with that.
Obviously I rely on you old codgers for your 97-92 and all that, but I’m going on my Dad telling me this is beginning to look like 92 all over again everyday day now Rishi government has wiped slate clean of everything that has gone before.
Changing leaders and direction and relaunching mid term, without going to membership, is a powerful tool. Starmer’s Labour are now looking so old hat and yesterdays option, and the massively inexperienced option to boot.
I don't get the fixation on here of drawing parallels from past elections. It won't be 1992, it won't be 1997, it won't be 2010. It'll be 2024. Sunak is not Major; Starmer is neither Blair nor Kinnock. The world is different, the political landscape is different.
Sounds glib, but it's true. We won't be seeing a repeat of any election here; that's not how history works.
That posts a keeper 😇
You will likely be posting as silanedrip2 or something by then though, and deny all knowledge
I also read that, found the wording interesting. From the description, I'd have said it burst, rather than exploded, but maybe that's down to my own (idiosyncratic?) interpretation of those terms. The article later uses 'burst'.
More importantly, what happened to the fish? I'm guessing it didn't end well for them, but that doesn't seem to be reported. I'd like to imagine a few got washed into drains and escape, eventually, to the open sea. Could be a film, Auf Wiedersehen, Pets but I'm guessing that as they were tropical fish they would be unlikely to do well in the wilds of Berlin
I heard on Deuschlandfunk (national radio) news about 2 hours ago that the fish have been transferred to another aquarium in Berlin. I have no idea how they managed to do that.
A seat that used to be marginal for Labour but now where they pile up the votes, which isn't necessarily helpful under the FPTP system.
Which is one of several reasons that FPTP with piles of safe seats isn't a great system.
The more efficiently distributed Tory vote is a function of their percentage vote. Once that vote drops below a certain point the gearing works the other way and becomes a bloodbath, with the Labour vote being more efficient.
Overall this result is good for Labour, getting a 10% swing in such a low turnout.
And in so safe a seat. That is unusually good, according to Prof Curtis, FWIW.
That's my reading too and not because I want it to be.
I continue to think the Conservatives are in for an absolute shellacking at the next General Election. There's so much anger around and most of it is directed at them.
Any different though than a normal mid term?
Any different though than 87-90?
If you believe the wikiworm for opinion polls in that Parliament, Conservative were ahead until about April '89, and the worst it got for them was about L44C33 around March/April '90. The worst single poll for the Conservatives was L57C29.
So in terms of "bad for the Conservatives", yes this is worse than that. Not as good for Labour, but in 1990 the LibDems were still working out who they were.
Besides- a lot of that was fury about the Poll Tax, which is why it and its only friend in Cabinet had to go. Once Major came in, the polls were closeish right up to polling day. The Conservatives have changed leader twice this year, without getting close in the polls. And there isn't a flick-of-a-switch policy change they can make to stop people being cross with them.
“LibDems were still working out who they were.”
Here we are in 2022, and like to think they are getting somewhere with that.
Obviously I rely on you old codgers for your 97-92 and all that, but I’m going on my Dad telling me this is beginning to look like 92 all over again everyday day now Rishi government has wiped slate clean of everything that has gone before.
Changing leaders and direction and relaunching mid term, without going to membership, is a powerful tool. Starmer’s Labour are now looking so old hat and yesterdays option, and the massively inexperienced option to boot.
I don't get the fixation on here of drawing parallels from past elections. It won't be 1992, it won't be 1997, it won't be 2010. It'll be 2024. Sunak is not Major; Starmer is neither Blair nor Kinnock. The world is different, the political landscape is different.
Sounds glib, but it's true. We won't be seeing a repeat of any election here; that's not how history works.
That posts a keeper 😇
You will likely be posting as silanedrip2 or something by then though, and deny all knowledge
Haha, I'll take my medicine if I'm wrong (which I am more often than not). I've only ever used this profile.
I also read that, found the wording interesting. From the description, I'd have said it burst, rather than exploded, but maybe that's down to my own (idiosyncratic?) interpretation of those terms. The article later uses 'burst'.
More importantly, what happened to the fish? I'm guessing it didn't end well for them, but that doesn't seem to be reported. I'd like to imagine a few got washed into drains and escape, eventually, to the open sea. Could be a film, Auf Wiedersehen, Pets but I'm guessing that as they were tropical fish they would be unlikely to do well in the wilds of Berlin
I heard on Deuschlandfunk (national radio) news about 2 hours ago that the fish have been transferred to another aquarium in Berlin. I have no idea how they managed to do that.
Two days ago a car carrying Musk’s two year old child from the airstrip was followed by an unknown driver. Musk himself was not present. The driver wore black gloves and balaclava and cut the Musk car off. He then jumped on the bonnet of Musk’s car to look through the windscreen. His intention was presumably not to take a selfie.
I am not surprised in the least that Musk is on a mission to shut down accounts that seek to amplify the movements of his jet in real time, even if he can’t stop the information at source. He had previously offered the kid running the ElonJet account $5k to shut it down, but the kid rebuffed him and asked for a $50k car instead.
Now you have members of the hostile US press piling into this story and amplifying the same data, thinking it a great way to antagonise someone they have a pathological hatred of. Shame on them, when you consider this was sparked by a 2 year old being threatened by a masked assailant.
He is just a fruitcake with far too much power, time he was cut down to size.
Yes, he is a whiny bell-end who paid far too much for a media company and has taken his eye off the ball on his other businesses.
Right wing tycoons buying up media companies in order to push their own agendas is nothing new, but previously more at a national rather than global level.
Twitter can be a great source of news, but best to stay away from Musks psychodrama.
For those of us who are not wholeheartedly supportive of the 'woke' agenda, the breakdown and trauma people are experiencing over Musk and Twitter is quite enjoyable to watch. The reality is that this was an organisation that had vast control over public discourse, but had been entirely captured by a particular political outlook which was increasingly asserting itself by way of 'content moderation'. Elon Musk may be making a bit of an idiot of himself at times; but fundamentally, he is conducting an act of great altruism and public service.
That's one take on it. A more rational one is that every social media site has to engage in content moderation. And Musk is demonstrating that he hasn't the first clue about how to go about it.
Absolutely right. And he can paint the fleeing advertisers as 'pressured by activists' or whatever, but the fact is they see his platform is a brand risk and it's quite easy to invest their money elsewhere.
If Twitter fails, it won't be because the user base collapses, it'll be revenue loss and/or infrastructure breakdown.
Bloomberg reckons Musk has raised around $40bn from seeing Tesla stock in the last year and a bit. He put about $27bn of his own cash into buying Tesla so he likely has sufficient to pay down most of the debt associated with the purchase, if he so chose - or cover the interest costs for a while.
His remaining Tesla stock is worth somewhere around $65bn.
A point that seems to have been missed in nearly all reporting on Twitter. Musk didn't remove moderation - he changed the ratio of automated content removal to human moderators. That is, he massively downsized the human element in preference for more “AI”.
Two days ago a car carrying Musk’s two year old child from the airstrip was followed by an unknown driver. Musk himself was not present. The driver wore black gloves and balaclava and cut the Musk car off. He then jumped on the bonnet of Musk’s car to look through the windscreen. His intention was presumably not to take a selfie.
I am not surprised in the least that Musk is on a mission to shut down accounts that seek to amplify the movements of his jet in real time, even if he can’t stop the information at source. He had previously offered the kid running the ElonJet account $5k to shut it down, but the kid rebuffed him and asked for a $50k car instead.
Now you have members of the hostile US press piling into this story and amplifying the same data, thinking it a great way to antagonise someone they have a pathological hatred of. Shame on them, when you consider this was sparked by a 2 year old being threatened by a masked assailant.
He is just a fruitcake with far too much power, time he was cut down to size.
Yes, he is a whiny bell-end who paid far too much for a media company and has taken his eye off the ball on his other businesses.
Right wing tycoons buying up media companies in order to push their own agendas is nothing new, but previously more at a national rather than global level.
Twitter can be a great source of news, but best to stay away from Musks psychodrama.
For those of us who are not wholeheartedly supportive of the 'woke' agenda, the breakdown and trauma people are experiencing over Musk and Twitter is quite enjoyable to watch. The reality is that this was an organisation that had vast control over public discourse, but had been entirely captured by a particular political outlook which was increasingly asserting itself by way of 'content moderation'. Elon Musk may be making a bit of an idiot of himself at times; but fundamentally, he is conducting an act of great altruism and public service.
I'm sorry you feel that way.
Personally I think finding enjoyment in "trolling the other side" thing is incredibly dangerous.
I think the basic reality is, that this perspective (rise above it all) has been tried and just doesn't work unfortunately; you become completely irrelevant in the discourse. This has been the experience of 'moderate centrists' in the culture wars of the past few years. Musk has a lot of flaws and is making mistakes, but fundamentally I think the big picture is that this is all a long overdue shift in the 'overton window'; it is very messy and imperfect, but could not have been achieved any other way.
One must either subscribe to one of two views?
Utter horseshit. One is allowed to be nuanced.
Indeed, if your view isn't nuanced, if you are so certain of your own moral superiority, then it's probably time to start looking at yourself. Because it's when people are convinced that it's a fight, and it's them in the right, well, that's when terrible things happen.
It's when people start justifying truly awful behaviour, because it's their side (and their side is the side of light, and the other is the side of darkness and their side is in the right), and the ends justify the means.
I am not arguing against nuance, in the end I probably ultimately have a similar point of view on this to you. I am not in any way supporting everything Elon Musk has said or done, particularly not the attacks he sometimes carries out on people seemingly on a whim; a dislikeable trait.
But what I have observed over the past few years is that a certain cultural situation has emerged where those on the 'left' are allowed to descend to extremely abusive behaviour online and in person, justified by references to 'grievances' and 'social justice'; whereas those on the 'right' are prohibited from doing so. As we have continuously failed to get this genie back in to the bottle, I think the only other option we have is to open up the floor for a fair fight. The hope is that the majority of people will just tire of the extremists on both sides and we will move on. Perhaps this is naive, but it is no answer to just keep on letting the 'left' control all areas of public discourse and to decide what is or isn't acceptable with reference to a zeitgeist they are continually reinventing, whilst we just watch from the wings making politely critical comments.
A seat that used to be marginal for Labour but now where they pile up the votes, which isn't necessarily helpful under the FPTP system.
Which is one of several reasons that FPTP with piles of safe seats isn't a great system.
The more efficiently distributed Tory vote is a function of their percentage vote. Once that vote drops below a certain point the gearing works the other way and becomes a bloodbath, with the Labour vote being more efficient.
Overall this result is good for Labour, getting a 10% swing in such a low turnout.
And in so safe a seat. That is unusually good, according to Prof Curtis, FWIW.
That's my reading too and not because I want it to be.
I continue to think the Conservatives are in for an absolute shellacking at the next General Election. There's so much anger around and most of it is directed at them.
Any different though than a normal mid term?
Any different though than 87-90?
If you believe the wikiworm for opinion polls in that Parliament, Conservative were ahead until about April '89, and the worst it got for them was about L44C33 around March/April '90. The worst single poll for the Conservatives was L57C29.
So in terms of "bad for the Conservatives", yes this is worse than that. Not as good for Labour, but in 1990 the LibDems were still working out who they were.
Besides- a lot of that was fury about the Poll Tax, which is why it and its only friend in Cabinet had to go. Once Major came in, the polls were closeish right up to polling day. The Conservatives have changed leader twice this year, without getting close in the polls. And there isn't a flick-of-a-switch policy change they can make to stop people being cross with them.
“LibDems were still working out who they were.”
Here we are in 2022, and like to think they are getting somewhere with that.
Obviously I rely on you old codgers for your 97-92 and all that, but I’m going on my Dad telling me this is beginning to look like 92 all over again everyday day now Rishi government has wiped slate clean of everything that has gone before.
Changing leaders and direction and relaunching mid term, without going to membership, is a powerful tool. Starmer’s Labour are now looking so old hat and yesterdays option, and the massively inexperienced option to boot.
I don't get the fixation on here of drawing parallels from past elections. It won't be 1992, it won't be 1997, it won't be 2010. It'll be 2024. Sunak is not Major; Starmer is neither Blair nor Kinnock. The world is different, the political landscape is different.
Sounds glib, but it's true. We won't be seeing a repeat of any election here; that's not how history works.
That posts a keeper 😇
You will likely be posting as silanedrip2 or something by then though, and deny all knowledge
Haha, I'll take my medicine if I'm wrong (which I am more often than not). I've only ever used this profile.
“I've only ever used this profile” if true, early days for you posting on PB then 🙂 I’ve only been here one year and used 2, my first one, Jade, was cancelled as it was widely decided I was a bot, mostly on my bad gramma and spellings.
I also read that, found the wording interesting. From the description, I'd have said it burst, rather than exploded, but maybe that's down to my own (idiosyncratic?) interpretation of those terms. The article later uses 'burst'.
More importantly, what happened to the fish? I'm guessing it didn't end well for them, but that doesn't seem to be reported. I'd like to imagine a few got washed into drains and escape, eventually, to the open sea. Could be a film, Auf Wiedersehen, Pets but I'm guessing that as they were tropical fish they would be unlikely to do well in the wilds of Berlin
Any sharks in there may end up on a killing Spree.
Two days ago a car carrying Musk’s two year old child from the airstrip was followed by an unknown driver. Musk himself was not present. The driver wore black gloves and balaclava and cut the Musk car off. He then jumped on the bonnet of Musk’s car to look through the windscreen. His intention was presumably not to take a selfie.
I am not surprised in the least that Musk is on a mission to shut down accounts that seek to amplify the movements of his jet in real time, even if he can’t stop the information at source. He had previously offered the kid running the ElonJet account $5k to shut it down, but the kid rebuffed him and asked for a $50k car instead.
Now you have members of the hostile US press piling into this story and amplifying the same data, thinking it a great way to antagonise someone they have a pathological hatred of. Shame on them, when you consider this was sparked by a 2 year old being threatened by a masked assailant.
He is just a fruitcake with far too much power, time he was cut down to size.
Yes, he is a whiny bell-end who paid far too much for a media company and has taken his eye off the ball on his other businesses.
Right wing tycoons buying up media companies in order to push their own agendas is nothing new, but previously more at a national rather than global level.
Twitter can be a great source of news, but best to stay away from Musks psychodrama.
For those of us who are not wholeheartedly supportive of the 'woke' agenda, the breakdown and trauma people are experiencing over Musk and Twitter is quite enjoyable to watch. The reality is that this was an organisation that had vast control over public discourse, but had been entirely captured by a particular political outlook which was increasingly asserting itself by way of 'content moderation'. Elon Musk may be making a bit of an idiot of himself at times; but fundamentally, he is conducting an act of great altruism and public service.
That's one take on it. A more rational one is that every social media site has to engage in content moderation. And Musk is demonstrating that he hasn't the first clue about how to go about it.
Absolutely right. And he can paint the fleeing advertisers as 'pressured by activists' or whatever, but the fact is they see his platform is a brand risk and it's quite easy to invest their money elsewhere.
If Twitter fails, it won't be because the user base collapses, it'll be revenue loss and/or infrastructure breakdown.
Bloomberg reckons Musk has raised around $40bn from seeing Tesla stock in the last year and a bit. He put about $27bn of his own cash into buying Tesla so he likely has sufficient to pay down most of the debt associated with the purchase, if he so chose - or cover the interest costs for a while.
His remaining Tesla stock is worth somewhere around $65bn.
A point that seems to have been missed in nearly all reporting on Twitter. Musk didn't remove moderation - he changed the ratio of automated content removal to human moderators. That is, he massively downsized the human element in preference for more “AI”.
Yes, ChatGPT’s cousins are moderating Twitter,
According to various sources, Musk is trying a lot harder than the ancien regime to get material featuring child sexual exploitation off Twitter. I think all posters on PB would welcome any move in this direction, but it isn't really something we've seen reported here because a certain element on PB has decided that Musk belongs in the Trump category of 'threat to all that is sacred' and so every single development in his life/career is served up to us using partial information, as an example of how stupid and wrong he is.
A seat that used to be marginal for Labour but now where they pile up the votes, which isn't necessarily helpful under the FPTP system.
Which is one of several reasons that FPTP with piles of safe seats isn't a great system.
The more efficiently distributed Tory vote is a function of their percentage vote. Once that vote drops below a certain point the gearing works the other way and becomes a bloodbath, with the Labour vote being more efficient.
Overall this result is good for Labour, getting a 10% swing in such a low turnout.
And in so safe a seat. That is unusually good, according to Prof Curtis, FWIW.
That's my reading too and not because I want it to be.
I continue to think the Conservatives are in for an absolute shellacking at the next General Election. There's so much anger around and most of it is directed at them.
Any different though than a normal mid term?
Any different though than 87-90?
If you believe the wikiworm for opinion polls in that Parliament, Conservative were ahead until about April '89, and the worst it got for them was about L44C33 around March/April '90. The worst single poll for the Conservatives was L57C29.
So in terms of "bad for the Conservatives", yes this is worse than that. Not as good for Labour, but in 1990 the LibDems were still working out who they were.
Besides- a lot of that was fury about the Poll Tax, which is why it and its only friend in Cabinet had to go. Once Major came in, the polls were closeish right up to polling day. The Conservatives have changed leader twice this year, without getting close in the polls. And there isn't a flick-of-a-switch policy change they can make to stop people being cross with them.
“LibDems were still working out who they were.”
Here we are in 2022, and like to think they are getting somewhere with that.
Obviously I rely on you old codgers for your 97-92 and all that, but I’m going on my Dad telling me this is beginning to look like 92 all over again everyday day now Rishi government has wiped slate clean of everything that has gone before.
Changing leaders and direction and relaunching mid term, without going to membership, is a powerful tool. Starmer’s Labour are now looking so old hat and yesterdays option, and the massively inexperienced option to boot.
I don't get the fixation on here of drawing parallels from past elections. It won't be 1992, it won't be 1997, it won't be 2010. It'll be 2024. Sunak is not Major; Starmer is neither Blair nor Kinnock. The world is different, the political landscape is different.
Sounds glib, but it's true. We won't be seeing a repeat of any election here; that's not how history works.
That posts a keeper 😇
You will likely be posting as silanedrip2 or something by then though, and deny all knowledge
Haha, I'll take my medicine if I'm wrong (which I am more often than not). I've only ever used this profile.
“I've only ever used this profile” if true, early days for you posting on PB then 🙂 I’ve only been here one year and used 2, my first one, Jade, was cancelled as it was widely decided I was a bot, mostly on my bad gramma and spellings.
I've been on since December 2013 according to VF, but am generally an infrequent poster (and especially was for the first few years).
If Elon Musk had not gutted Twitter’s legal department he might have had a few lawyers warning him about the implications for a social media platform when it begins to take editorial decisions.
Ludicrously rich businessmen are ten to a trilllion pounds but we have one here who thinks of himself as something more than that. When Musk looks in the mirror he sees a visionary genius with plans for mankind. Ally this pretentious self-image to immaturity, a brittle temperament, and a predilection for political activism on the grimy Maga side of the street, and I think we have a risk here. The Musk story could be going to a bad place. I feel queasy about him.
UK MPs accused of using foreign trips for sex tourism
A number of British lawmakers have been using parliamentary trips abroad as an opportunity for the covert use of sex workers and for raucous, excessive drinking, according to MPs, peers, diplomatic and parliamentary officials who spoke to POLITICO.
One former Conservative MP, now a member of the House of Lords, asked hosts for directions to the nearest brothel when he traveled to Southeast Asia on a visit with an all-party parliamentary group (APPG), according to another parliamentarian who was present.
A senior Labour MP displayed a fondness for “Russian girls” during trips overseas, according to a foreign diplomat, who said local officials felt powerless to intervene because they worried about preserving their influence in Westminster.
Two days ago a car carrying Musk’s two year old child from the airstrip was followed by an unknown driver. Musk himself was not present. The driver wore black gloves and balaclava and cut the Musk car off. He then jumped on the bonnet of Musk’s car to look through the windscreen. His intention was presumably not to take a selfie.
I am not surprised in the least that Musk is on a mission to shut down accounts that seek to amplify the movements of his jet in real time, even if he can’t stop the information at source. He had previously offered the kid running the ElonJet account $5k to shut it down, but the kid rebuffed him and asked for a $50k car instead.
Now you have members of the hostile US press piling into this story and amplifying the same data, thinking it a great way to antagonise someone they have a pathological hatred of. Shame on them, when you consider this was sparked by a 2 year old being threatened by a masked assailant.
He is just a fruitcake with far too much power, time he was cut down to size.
Yes, he is a whiny bell-end who paid far too much for a media company and has taken his eye off the ball on his other businesses.
Right wing tycoons buying up media companies in order to push their own agendas is nothing new, but previously more at a national rather than global level.
Twitter can be a great source of news, but best to stay away from Musks psychodrama.
For those of us who are not wholeheartedly supportive of the 'woke' agenda, the breakdown and trauma people are experiencing over Musk and Twitter is quite enjoyable to watch. The reality is that this was an organisation that had vast control over public discourse, but had been entirely captured by a particular political outlook which was increasingly asserting itself by way of 'content moderation'. Elon Musk may be making a bit of an idiot of himself at times; but fundamentally, he is conducting an act of great altruism and public service.
That's one take on it. A more rational one is that every social media site has to engage in content moderation. And Musk is demonstrating that he hasn't the first clue about how to go about it.
Absolutely right. And he can paint the fleeing advertisers as 'pressured by activists' or whatever, but the fact is they see his platform is a brand risk and it's quite easy to invest their money elsewhere.
If Twitter fails, it won't be because the user base collapses, it'll be revenue loss and/or infrastructure breakdown.
Bloomberg reckons Musk has raised around $40bn from seeing Tesla stock in the last year and a bit. He put about $27bn of his own cash into buying Tesla so he likely has sufficient to pay down most of the debt associated with the purchase, if he so chose - or cover the interest costs for a while.
His remaining Tesla stock is worth somewhere around $65bn.
I also read that, found the wording interesting. From the description, I'd have said it burst, rather than exploded, but maybe that's down to my own (idiosyncratic?) interpretation of those terms. The article later uses 'burst'.
More importantly, what happened to the fish? I'm guessing it didn't end well for them, but that doesn't seem to be reported. I'd like to imagine a few got washed into drains and escape, eventually, to the open sea. Could be a film, Auf Wiedersehen, Pets but I'm guessing that as they were tropical fish they would be unlikely to do well in the wilds of Berlin
Tbf, the aftermath looks like an explosion occurred.
It does. Will be interesting to learn the mode of failure when it's investigated.
More than a thousand tonnes of water involved. A heck of a lot of force released even if it was just that the glass cracked and collapsed.
Two days ago a car carrying Musk’s two year old child from the airstrip was followed by an unknown driver. Musk himself was not present. The driver wore black gloves and balaclava and cut the Musk car off. He then jumped on the bonnet of Musk’s car to look through the windscreen. His intention was presumably not to take a selfie.
I am not surprised in the least that Musk is on a mission to shut down accounts that seek to amplify the movements of his jet in real time, even if he can’t stop the information at source. He had previously offered the kid running the ElonJet account $5k to shut it down, but the kid rebuffed him and asked for a $50k car instead.
Now you have members of the hostile US press piling into this story and amplifying the same data, thinking it a great way to antagonise someone they have a pathological hatred of. Shame on them, when you consider this was sparked by a 2 year old being threatened by a masked assailant.
He is just a fruitcake with far too much power, time he was cut down to size.
Yes, he is a whiny bell-end who paid far too much for a media company and has taken his eye off the ball on his other businesses.
Right wing tycoons buying up media companies in order to push their own agendas is nothing new, but previously more at a national rather than global level.
Twitter can be a great source of news, but best to stay away from Musks psychodrama.
For those of us who are not wholeheartedly supportive of the 'woke' agenda, the breakdown and trauma people are experiencing over Musk and Twitter is quite enjoyable to watch. The reality is that this was an organisation that had vast control over public discourse, but had been entirely captured by a particular political outlook which was increasingly asserting itself by way of 'content moderation'. Elon Musk may be making a bit of an idiot of himself at times; but fundamentally, he is conducting an act of great altruism and public service.
I'm sorry you feel that way.
Personally I think finding enjoyment in "trolling the other side" thing is incredibly dangerous.
I think the basic reality is, that this perspective (rise above it all) has been tried and just doesn't work unfortunately; you become completely irrelevant in the discourse. This has been the experience of 'moderate centrists' in the culture wars of the past few years. Musk has a lot of flaws and is making mistakes, but fundamentally I think the big picture is that this is all a long overdue shift in the 'overton window'; it is very messy and imperfect, but could not have been achieved any other way.
One must either subscribe to one of two views?
Utter horseshit. One is allowed to be nuanced.
Indeed, if your view isn't nuanced, if you are so certain of your own moral superiority, then it's probably time to start looking at yourself. Because it's when people are convinced that it's a fight, and it's them in the right, well, that's when terrible things happen.
It's when people start justifying truly awful behaviour, because it's their side (and their side is the side of light, and the other is the side of darkness and their side is in the right), and the ends justify the means.
I am not arguing against nuance, in the end I probably ultimately have a similar point of view on this to you. I am not in any way supporting everything Elon Musk has said or done, particularly not the attacks he sometimes carries out on people seemingly on a whim; a dislikeable trait.
But what I have observed over the past few years is that a certain cultural situation has emerged where those on the 'left' are allowed to descend to extremely abusive behaviour online and in person, justified by references to 'grievances' and 'social justice'; whereas those on the 'right' are prohibited from doing so. As we have continuously failed to get this genie back in to the bottle, I think the only other option we have is to open up the floor for a fair fight. The hope is that the majority of people will just tire of the extremists on both sides and we will move on. Perhaps this is naive, but it is no answer to just keep on letting the 'left' control all areas of public discourse and to decide what is or isn't acceptable with reference to a zeitgeist they are continually reinventing, whilst we just watch from the wings making politely critical comments.
Right wing people are also to blame here, for embracing their role as shock jocks/pantomime villains, for money and notoriety. Ann Coulter, Katie Thingummybob, Alex Jones and to an extent Nigel Farage, are good examples, who have allowed themselves and their views to become associated with hectoring and personal abuse that distracts from their message.
UK MPs accused of using foreign trips for sex tourism
A number of British lawmakers have been using parliamentary trips abroad as an opportunity for the covert use of sex workers and for raucous, excessive drinking, according to MPs, peers, diplomatic and parliamentary officials who spoke to POLITICO.
One former Conservative MP, now a member of the House of Lords, asked hosts for directions to the nearest brothel when he traveled to Southeast Asia on a visit with an all-party parliamentary group (APPG), according to another parliamentarian who was present.
A senior Labour MP displayed a fondness for “Russian girls” during trips overseas, according to a foreign diplomat, who said local officials felt powerless to intervene because they worried about preserving their influence in Westminster.
If Elon Musk had not gutted Twitter’s legal department he might have had a few lawyers warning him about the implications for a social media platform when it begins to take editorial decisions.
Ludicrously rich businessmen are ten to a trilllion pounds but we have one here who thinks of himself as something more than that. When Musk looks in the mirror he sees a visionary genius with plans for mankind. Ally this pretentious self-image to immaturity, a brittle temperament, and a predilection for political activism on the grimy Maga side of the street, and I think we have a risk here. The Musk story could be going to a bad place. I feel queasy about him.
Seems to me Musk is yet another one of these middle aged rich blokes who goes off the deep end for constant adulation from social media (albeit with his wealth on a different scale to your Lineker's and Piers Morgan's of this world). Post the latest "cool" meme that you know your fans will give you the thumbs up and waste hours trying to "own" those who don't like you.
It seems a bit like the 21st Century equivalent of what middle aged men used to do buying flashy cars and motorbikes that looked like penis extensions.
Two days ago a car carrying Musk’s two year old child from the airstrip was followed by an unknown driver. Musk himself was not present. The driver wore black gloves and balaclava and cut the Musk car off. He then jumped on the bonnet of Musk’s car to look through the windscreen. His intention was presumably not to take a selfie.
I am not surprised in the least that Musk is on a mission to shut down accounts that seek to amplify the movements of his jet in real time, even if he can’t stop the information at source. He had previously offered the kid running the ElonJet account $5k to shut it down, but the kid rebuffed him and asked for a $50k car instead.
Now you have members of the hostile US press piling into this story and amplifying the same data, thinking it a great way to antagonise someone they have a pathological hatred of. Shame on them, when you consider this was sparked by a 2 year old being threatened by a masked assailant.
He is just a fruitcake with far too much power, time he was cut down to size.
Yes, he is a whiny bell-end who paid far too much for a media company and has taken his eye off the ball on his other businesses.
Right wing tycoons buying up media companies in order to push their own agendas is nothing new, but previously more at a national rather than global level.
Twitter can be a great source of news, but best to stay away from Musks psychodrama.
For those of us who are not wholeheartedly supportive of the 'woke' agenda, the breakdown and trauma people are experiencing over Musk and Twitter is quite enjoyable to watch. The reality is that this was an organisation that had vast control over public discourse, but had been entirely captured by a particular political outlook which was increasingly asserting itself by way of 'content moderation'. Elon Musk may be making a bit of an idiot of himself at times; but fundamentally, he is conducting an act of great altruism and public service.
That's one take on it. A more rational one is that every social media site has to engage in content moderation. And Musk is demonstrating that he hasn't the first clue about how to go about it.
Absolutely right. And he can paint the fleeing advertisers as 'pressured by activists' or whatever, but the fact is they see his platform is a brand risk and it's quite easy to invest their money elsewhere.
If Twitter fails, it won't be because the user base collapses, it'll be revenue loss and/or infrastructure breakdown.
Bloomberg reckons Musk has raised around $40bn from seeing Tesla stock in the last year and a bit. He put about $27bn of his own cash into buying Tesla so he likely has sufficient to pay down most of the debt associated with the purchase, if he so chose - or cover the interest costs for a while.
His remaining Tesla stock is worth somewhere around $65bn.
A point that seems to have been missed in nearly all reporting on Twitter. Musk didn't remove moderation - he changed the ratio of automated content removal to human moderators. That is, he massively downsized the human element in preference for more “AI”.
Yes, ChatGPT’s cousins are moderating Twitter,
According to various sources, Musk is trying a lot harder than the ancien regime to get material featuring child sexual exploitation off Twitter. I think all posters on PB would welcome any move in this direction, but it isn't really something we've seen reported here because a certain element on PB has decided that Musk belongs in the Trump category of 'threat to all that is sacred' and so every single development in his life/career is served up to us using partial information, as an example of how stupid and wrong he is.
Thats a side effect of the automation.
Much like the banning of the high end journalists who rewtweeted links to the flight tracker for his plane.
The interesting thing in all this is what people are not talking about. Automated moderation is cheaper and scales easily. What many opponents of what Musk is doing are really angry about, is that the previous human moderation has been reduced massively.
So, for example, bots found are sin binned. Without exceptions for the er… right ones. There was previously a very profitable industry in making stuff “trend” on Twitter. I actually got the full sales pitch from one “Social Media Space” company - was invited in to hear a presentation to very senior management.
I’m still surprised that people are surprised this went on - SEO for websites went to some quite dark and dodgy places.
If Elon Musk had not gutted Twitter’s legal department he might have had a few lawyers warning him about the implications for a social media platform when it begins to take editorial decisions.
Ludicrously rich businessmen are ten to a trilllion pounds but we have one here who thinks of himself as something more than that. When Musk looks in the mirror he sees a visionary genius with plans for mankind. Ally this pretentious self-image to immaturity, a brittle temperament, and a predilection for political activism on the grimy Maga side of the street, and I think we have a risk here. The Musk story could be going to a bad place. I feel queasy about him.
There is a growing tendency within big business and amongst its leaders to engage in political activism rather than being content to provide shareholder value and make profit within the law. I agree the trend is a negative one, but I find it strange that you're only just registering an objection now when an example has cropped up featuring someone who isn't aligned with your own political views.
Two days ago a car carrying Musk’s two year old child from the airstrip was followed by an unknown driver. Musk himself was not present. The driver wore black gloves and balaclava and cut the Musk car off. He then jumped on the bonnet of Musk’s car to look through the windscreen. His intention was presumably not to take a selfie.
I am not surprised in the least that Musk is on a mission to shut down accounts that seek to amplify the movements of his jet in real time, even if he can’t stop the information at source. He had previously offered the kid running the ElonJet account $5k to shut it down, but the kid rebuffed him and asked for a $50k car instead.
Now you have members of the hostile US press piling into this story and amplifying the same data, thinking it a great way to antagonise someone they have a pathological hatred of. Shame on them, when you consider this was sparked by a 2 year old being threatened by a masked assailant.
He is just a fruitcake with far too much power, time he was cut down to size.
Yes, he is a whiny bell-end who paid far too much for a media company and has taken his eye off the ball on his other businesses.
Right wing tycoons buying up media companies in order to push their own agendas is nothing new, but previously more at a national rather than global level.
Twitter can be a great source of news, but best to stay away from Musks psychodrama.
For those of us who are not wholeheartedly supportive of the 'woke' agenda, the breakdown and trauma people are experiencing over Musk and Twitter is quite enjoyable to watch. The reality is that this was an organisation that had vast control over public discourse, but had been entirely captured by a particular political outlook which was increasingly asserting itself by way of 'content moderation'. Elon Musk may be making a bit of an idiot of himself at times; but fundamentally, he is conducting an act of great altruism and public service.
That's one take on it. A more rational one is that every social media site has to engage in content moderation. And Musk is demonstrating that he hasn't the first clue about how to go about it.
Absolutely right. And he can paint the fleeing advertisers as 'pressured by activists' or whatever, but the fact is they see his platform is a brand risk and it's quite easy to invest their money elsewhere.
If Twitter fails, it won't be because the user base collapses, it'll be revenue loss and/or infrastructure breakdown.
Bloomberg reckons Musk has raised around $40bn from seeing Tesla stock in the last year and a bit. He put about $27bn of his own cash into buying Tesla so he likely has sufficient to pay down most of the debt associated with the purchase, if he so chose - or cover the interest costs for a while.
His remaining Tesla stock is worth somewhere around $65bn.
A point that seems to have been missed in nearly all reporting on Twitter. Musk didn't remove moderation - he changed the ratio of automated content removal to human moderators. That is, he massively downsized the human element in preference for more “AI”.
Yes, ChatGPT’s cousins are moderating Twitter,
According to various sources, Musk is trying a lot harder than the ancien regime to get material featuring child sexual exploitation off Twitter. I think all posters on PB would welcome any move in this direction, but it isn't really something we've seen reported here because a certain element on PB has decided that Musk belongs in the Trump category of 'threat to all that is sacred' and so every single development in his life/career is served up to us using partial information, as an example of how stupid and wrong he is.
"According to various sources"
Indeed, and I hope they are doing a better job. But do we have any independent sources for these claims, as the person I've mostly seen reporting this seems to be somewhat biased.
Remember: Musk lies. What we need are truly independent sources and reports on Twitter's output, and sadly that's incredibly hard for an external party to do.
A seat that used to be marginal for Labour but now where they pile up the votes, which isn't necessarily helpful under the FPTP system.
Which is one of several reasons that FPTP with piles of safe seats isn't a great system.
The more efficiently distributed Tory vote is a function of their percentage vote. Once that vote drops below a certain point the gearing works the other way and becomes a bloodbath, with the Labour vote being more efficient.
Overall this result is good for Labour, getting a 10% swing in such a low turnout.
And in so safe a seat. That is unusually good, according to Prof Curtis, FWIW.
That's my reading too and not because I want it to be.
I continue to think the Conservatives are in for an absolute shellacking at the next General Election. There's so much anger around and most of it is directed at them.
Any different though than a normal mid term?
Any different though than 87-90?
If you believe the wikiworm for opinion polls in that Parliament, Conservative were ahead until about April '89, and the worst it got for them was about L44C33 around March/April '90. The worst single poll for the Conservatives was L57C29.
So in terms of "bad for the Conservatives", yes this is worse than that. Not as good for Labour, but in 1990 the LibDems were still working out who they were.
Besides- a lot of that was fury about the Poll Tax, which is why it and its only friend in Cabinet had to go. Once Major came in, the polls were closeish right up to polling day. The Conservatives have changed leader twice this year, without getting close in the polls. And there isn't a flick-of-a-switch policy change they can make to stop people being cross with them.
“LibDems were still working out who they were.”
Here we are in 2022, and like to think they are getting somewhere with that.
Obviously I rely on you old codgers for your 97-92 and all that, but I’m going on my Dad telling me this is beginning to look like 92 all over again everyday day now Rishi government has wiped slate clean of everything that has gone before.
Changing leaders and direction and relaunching mid term, without going to membership, is a powerful tool. Starmer’s Labour are now looking so old hat and yesterdays option, and the massively inexperienced option to boot.
I don't get the fixation on here of drawing parallels from past elections. It won't be 1992, it won't be 1997, it won't be 2010. It'll be 2024. Sunak is not Major; Starmer is neither Blair nor Kinnock. The world is different, the political landscape is different.
Sounds glib, but it's true. We won't be seeing a repeat of any election here; that's not how history works.
That post's a keeper 😇
As is "...Rishi government has wiped slate clean of everything that has gone before..."
Count me among the unconvinced. And I was around to vote in 1992.
Have we done the latest Savanta poll? I remember MoonRabbit writing at length about the significance of the lead being down to 11% last time. Just random fluctuation in both cases, probably.
Recent Tweet from Britain Elects Westminster voting intention:
If Elon Musk had not gutted Twitter’s legal department he might have had a few lawyers warning him about the implications for a social media platform when it begins to take editorial decisions.
Ludicrously rich businessmen are ten to a trilllion pounds but we have one here who thinks of himself as something more than that. When Musk looks in the mirror he sees a visionary genius with plans for mankind. Ally this pretentious self-image to immaturity, a brittle temperament, and a predilection for political activism on the grimy Maga side of the street, and I think we have a risk here. The Musk story could be going to a bad place. I feel queasy about him.
There is a growing tendency within big business and amongst its leaders to engage in political activism rather than being content to provide shareholder value and make profit within the law. I agree the trend is a negative one, but I find it strange that you're only just registering an objection now when an example has cropped up featuring someone who isn't aligned with your own political views.
The 'growing tendency' has been around for rather a long time. See, for example, the original Henry Ford.
Or indeed the rather more uplifting example of Andrew Carnegie.
Two days ago a car carrying Musk’s two year old child from the airstrip was followed by an unknown driver. Musk himself was not present. The driver wore black gloves and balaclava and cut the Musk car off. He then jumped on the bonnet of Musk’s car to look through the windscreen. His intention was presumably not to take a selfie.
I am not surprised in the least that Musk is on a mission to shut down accounts that seek to amplify the movements of his jet in real time, even if he can’t stop the information at source. He had previously offered the kid running the ElonJet account $5k to shut it down, but the kid rebuffed him and asked for a $50k car instead.
Now you have members of the hostile US press piling into this story and amplifying the same data, thinking it a great way to antagonise someone they have a pathological hatred of. Shame on them, when you consider this was sparked by a 2 year old being threatened by a masked assailant.
He is just a fruitcake with far too much power, time he was cut down to size.
Yes, he is a whiny bell-end who paid far too much for a media company and has taken his eye off the ball on his other businesses.
Right wing tycoons buying up media companies in order to push their own agendas is nothing new, but previously more at a national rather than global level.
Twitter can be a great source of news, but best to stay away from Musks psychodrama.
For those of us who are not wholeheartedly supportive of the 'woke' agenda, the breakdown and trauma people are experiencing over Musk and Twitter is quite enjoyable to watch. The reality is that this was an organisation that had vast control over public discourse, but had been entirely captured by a particular political outlook which was increasingly asserting itself by way of 'content moderation'. Elon Musk may be making a bit of an idiot of himself at times; but fundamentally, he is conducting an act of great altruism and public service.
That's one take on it. A more rational one is that every social media site has to engage in content moderation. And Musk is demonstrating that he hasn't the first clue about how to go about it.
Absolutely right. And he can paint the fleeing advertisers as 'pressured by activists' or whatever, but the fact is they see his platform is a brand risk and it's quite easy to invest their money elsewhere.
If Twitter fails, it won't be because the user base collapses, it'll be revenue loss and/or infrastructure breakdown.
Bloomberg reckons Musk has raised around $40bn from seeing Tesla stock in the last year and a bit. He put about $27bn of his own cash into buying Tesla so he likely has sufficient to pay down most of the debt associated with the purchase, if he so chose - or cover the interest costs for a while.
His remaining Tesla stock is worth somewhere around $65bn.
A point that seems to have been missed in nearly all reporting on Twitter. Musk didn't remove moderation - he changed the ratio of automated content removal to human moderators. That is, he massively downsized the human element in preference for more “AI”.
Yes, ChatGPT’s cousins are moderating Twitter,
According to various sources, Musk is trying a lot harder than the ancien regime to get material featuring child sexual exploitation off Twitter. I think all posters on PB would welcome any move in this direction, but it isn't really something we've seen reported here because a certain element on PB has decided that Musk belongs in the Trump category of 'threat to all that is sacred' and so every single development in his life/career is served up to us using partial information, as an example of how stupid and wrong he is.
Thats a side effect of the automation.
Much like the banning of the high end journalists who rewtweeted links to the flight tracker for his plane.
The interesting thing in all this is what people are not talking about. Automated moderation is cheaper and scales easily. What many opponents of what Musk is doing are really angry about, is that the previous human moderation has been reduced massively.
So, for example, bots found are sin binned. Without exceptions for the er… right ones. There was previously a very profitable industry in making stuff “trend” on Twitter. I actually got the full sales pitch from one “Social Media Space” company - was invited in to hear a presentation to very senior management.
I’m still surprised that people are surprised this went on - SEO for websites went to some quite dark and dodgy places.
Will moderated automation actually work, though? As blackhats work out how the algorithms work there will be a constant battle between updates to the automation and the blackhats, with the risk of innocent users being blacklisted / shadowbanned etc - and which needs people to actually address.
Allegedly YouTube creators have suffered from this recently, with videos being flagged or demonetised for no apparent reason, and finding it difficult to get the 'decision' reversed. And there are far more Twitter users than YouTube creators.
This is a very big increase indeed. Ukraine has had consequences.
Pacifist Japan unveils biggest military build-up since World War Two https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=341884 ..."Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a serious violation of laws that forbid the use of force and has shaken the foundations of the international order," the strategy paper said. ...Kishida's plan will double defense outlays to about 2 percent of gross domestic product over five years, blowing past a self-imposed 1 percent spending limit that has been in place since 1976.
It will increase the defense ministry's budget to around a tenth of all public spending at current levels, and will make Japan the world's third-biggest military spender after the United States and China, based on current budgets...
This is a very big increase indeed. Ukraine has had consequences.
Pacifist Japan unveils biggest military build-up since World War Two https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=341884 ..."Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a serious violation of laws that forbid the use of force and has shaken the foundations of the international order," the strategy paper said. ...Kishida's plan will double defense outlays to about 2 percent of gross domestic product over five years, blowing past a self-imposed 1 percent spending limit that has been in place since 1976.
It will increase the defense ministry's budget to around a tenth of all public spending at current levels, and will make Japan the world's third-biggest military spender after the United States and China, based on current budgets...
There have been allegations that Putin was considering attacking Japan last year. Allegedly. Hard to believe, though - then again, Putin is not exactly acting logically. IMO it's more likely they went through a process of wargaming a whole series of potential conflicts, of which this was one, before they decided on Ukraine.
If Elon Musk had not gutted Twitter’s legal department he might have had a few lawyers warning him about the implications for a social media platform when it begins to take editorial decisions.
Ludicrously rich businessmen are ten to a trilllion pounds but we have one here who thinks of himself as something more than that. When Musk looks in the mirror he sees a visionary genius with plans for mankind. Ally this pretentious self-image to immaturity, a brittle temperament, and a predilection for political activism on the grimy Maga side of the street, and I think we have a risk here. The Musk story could be going to a bad place. I feel queasy about him.
Seems to me Musk is yet another one of these middle aged rich blokes who goes off the deep end for constant adulation from social media (albeit with his wealth on a different scale to your Lineker's and Piers Morgan's of this world). Post the latest "cool" meme that you know your fans will give you the thumbs up and waste hours trying to "own" those who don't like you.
It seems a bit like the 21st Century equivalent of what middle aged men used to do buying flashy cars and motorbikes that looked like penis extensions.
There is that aspect, very much so, but this is a different level of power and influence to the likes of those names. It's above my paygrade to design a remedy but it again makes me ponder what a crazy and surely improvable economic model it is that allows single individuals to amass wealth on this scale in a world of scarce and finite resource.
China’s government has decided how it’s going to deal with its last, terrible Covid wave, as they finally reopen. They will pretend it’s not happening. Which, fittingly, is where we all began, three long years ago
I also read that, found the wording interesting. From the description, I'd have said it burst, rather than exploded, but maybe that's down to my own (idiosyncratic?) interpretation of those terms. The article later uses 'burst'.
More importantly, what happened to the fish? I'm guessing it didn't end well for them, but that doesn't seem to be reported. I'd like to imagine a few got washed into drains and escape, eventually, to the open sea. Could be a film, Auf Wiedersehen, Pets but I'm guessing that as they were tropical fish they would be unlikely to do well in the wilds of Berlin
Any sharks in there may end up on a killing Spree.
Two days ago a car carrying Musk’s two year old child from the airstrip was followed by an unknown driver. Musk himself was not present. The driver wore black gloves and balaclava and cut the Musk car off. He then jumped on the bonnet of Musk’s car to look through the windscreen. His intention was presumably not to take a selfie.
I am not surprised in the least that Musk is on a mission to shut down accounts that seek to amplify the movements of his jet in real time, even if he can’t stop the information at source. He had previously offered the kid running the ElonJet account $5k to shut it down, but the kid rebuffed him and asked for a $50k car instead.
Now you have members of the hostile US press piling into this story and amplifying the same data, thinking it a great way to antagonise someone they have a pathological hatred of. Shame on them, when you consider this was sparked by a 2 year old being threatened by a masked assailant.
He is just a fruitcake with far too much power, time he was cut down to size.
Yes, he is a whiny bell-end who paid far too much for a media company and has taken his eye off the ball on his other businesses.
Right wing tycoons buying up media companies in order to push their own agendas is nothing new, but previously more at a national rather than global level.
Twitter can be a great source of news, but best to stay away from Musks psychodrama.
For those of us who are not wholeheartedly supportive of the 'woke' agenda, the breakdown and trauma people are experiencing over Musk and Twitter is quite enjoyable to watch. The reality is that this was an organisation that had vast control over public discourse, but had been entirely captured by a particular political outlook which was increasingly asserting itself by way of 'content moderation'. Elon Musk may be making a bit of an idiot of himself at times; but fundamentally, he is conducting an act of great altruism and public service.
I'm sorry you feel that way.
Personally I think finding enjoyment in "trolling the other side" thing is incredibly dangerous.
I think the basic reality is, that this perspective (rise above it all) has been tried and just doesn't work unfortunately; you become completely irrelevant in the discourse. This has been the experience of 'moderate centrists' in the culture wars of the past few years. Musk has a lot of flaws and is making mistakes, but fundamentally I think the big picture is that this is all a long overdue shift in the 'overton window'; it is very messy and imperfect, but could not have been achieved any other way.
One must either subscribe to one of two views?
Utter horseshit. One is allowed to be nuanced.
Indeed, if your view isn't nuanced, if you are so certain of your own moral superiority, then it's probably time to start looking at yourself. Because it's when people are convinced that it's a fight, and it's them in the right, well, that's when terrible things happen.
It's when people start justifying truly awful behaviour, because it's their side (and their side is the side of light, and the other is the side of darkness and their side is in the right), and the ends justify the means.
I am not arguing against nuance, in the end I probably ultimately have a similar point of view on this to you. I am not in any way supporting everything Elon Musk has said or done, particularly not the attacks he sometimes carries out on people seemingly on a whim; a dislikeable trait.
But what I have observed over the past few years is that a certain cultural situation has emerged where those on the 'left' are allowed to descend to extremely abusive behaviour online and in person, justified by references to 'grievances' and 'social justice'; whereas those on the 'right' are prohibited from doing so. As we have continuously failed to get this genie back in to the bottle, I think the only other option we have is to open up the floor for a fair fight. The hope is that the majority of people will just tire of the extremists on both sides and we will move on. Perhaps this is naive, but it is no answer to just keep on letting the 'left' control all areas of public discourse and to decide what is or isn't acceptable with reference to a zeitgeist they are continually reinventing, whilst we just watch from the wings making politely critical comments.
Right wing people are also to blame here, for embracing their role as shock jocks/pantomime villains, for money and notoriety. Ann Coulter, Katie Thingummybob, Alex Jones and to an extent Nigel Farage, are good examples, who have allowed themselves and their views to become associated with hectoring and personal abuse that distracts from their message.
Have we done the latest Savanta poll? I remember MoonRabbit writing at length about the significance of the lead being down to 11% last time. Just random fluctuation in both cases, probably.
Recent Tweet from Britain Elects Westminster voting intention:
I think we have. It's at the lower end of recent LLG scores at 56% but one up from the previous. Some other pollsters have LLG at over 60%. Mid 50s is closer to what we were seeing in the latter days of Boris, before the Truss disaster.
On topic: Re our ongoing battle of the 2 opinion camps re the GE – Tory brand trashed, Labour majority nailed on, maybe a biggie vs Mountain to climb, Hung Parliament or small Labour majority – the byelection imo slightly (but only slightly) favours the first.
Two days ago a car carrying Musk’s two year old child from the airstrip was followed by an unknown driver. Musk himself was not present. The driver wore black gloves and balaclava and cut the Musk car off. He then jumped on the bonnet of Musk’s car to look through the windscreen. His intention was presumably not to take a selfie.
I am not surprised in the least that Musk is on a mission to shut down accounts that seek to amplify the movements of his jet in real time, even if he can’t stop the information at source. He had previously offered the kid running the ElonJet account $5k to shut it down, but the kid rebuffed him and asked for a $50k car instead.
Now you have members of the hostile US press piling into this story and amplifying the same data, thinking it a great way to antagonise someone they have a pathological hatred of. Shame on them, when you consider this was sparked by a 2 year old being threatened by a masked assailant.
He is just a fruitcake with far too much power, time he was cut down to size.
Yes, he is a whiny bell-end who paid far too much for a media company and has taken his eye off the ball on his other businesses.
Right wing tycoons buying up media companies in order to push their own agendas is nothing new, but previously more at a national rather than global level.
Twitter can be a great source of news, but best to stay away from Musks psychodrama.
For those of us who are not wholeheartedly supportive of the 'woke' agenda, the breakdown and trauma people are experiencing over Musk and Twitter is quite enjoyable to watch. The reality is that this was an organisation that had vast control over public discourse, but had been entirely captured by a particular political outlook which was increasingly asserting itself by way of 'content moderation'. Elon Musk may be making a bit of an idiot of himself at times; but fundamentally, he is conducting an act of great altruism and public service.
That's one take on it. A more rational one is that every social media site has to engage in content moderation. And Musk is demonstrating that he hasn't the first clue about how to go about it.
Absolutely right. And he can paint the fleeing advertisers as 'pressured by activists' or whatever, but the fact is they see his platform is a brand risk and it's quite easy to invest their money elsewhere.
If Twitter fails, it won't be because the user base collapses, it'll be revenue loss and/or infrastructure breakdown.
Bloomberg reckons Musk has raised around $40bn from seeing Tesla stock in the last year and a bit. He put about $27bn of his own cash into buying Tesla so he likely has sufficient to pay down most of the debt associated with the purchase, if he so chose - or cover the interest costs for a while.
His remaining Tesla stock is worth somewhere around $65bn.
If Elon Musk had not gutted Twitter’s legal department he might have had a few lawyers warning him about the implications for a social media platform when it begins to take editorial decisions.
Ludicrously rich businessmen are ten to a trilllion pounds but we have one here who thinks of himself as something more than that. When Musk looks in the mirror he sees a visionary genius with plans for mankind. Ally this pretentious self-image to immaturity, a brittle temperament, and a predilection for political activism on the grimy Maga side of the street, and I think we have a risk here. The Musk story could be going to a bad place. I feel queasy about him.
Seems to me Musk is yet another one of these middle aged rich blokes who goes off the deep end for constant adulation from social media (albeit with his wealth on a different scale to your Lineker's and Piers Morgan's of this world). Post the latest "cool" meme that you know your fans will give you the thumbs up and waste hours trying to "own" those who don't like you.
It seems a bit like the 21st Century equivalent of what middle aged men used to do buying flashy cars and motorbikes that looked like penis extensions.
There is that aspect, very much so, but this is a different level of power and influence to the likes of those names. It's above my paygrade to design a remedy but it again makes me ponder what a crazy and surely improvable economic model it is that allows single individuals to amass wealth on this scale in a world of scarce and finite resource.
It isn't exactly a new concept that a small number of people are big winners in capitalist societies, nor that they have then tried to use that wealth to influence / shape the world towards their beliefs / vision of how things should be.
The difference now is that you can message millions of people instantly.
Two days ago a car carrying Musk’s two year old child from the airstrip was followed by an unknown driver. Musk himself was not present. The driver wore black gloves and balaclava and cut the Musk car off. He then jumped on the bonnet of Musk’s car to look through the windscreen. His intention was presumably not to take a selfie.
I am not surprised in the least that Musk is on a mission to shut down accounts that seek to amplify the movements of his jet in real time, even if he can’t stop the information at source. He had previously offered the kid running the ElonJet account $5k to shut it down, but the kid rebuffed him and asked for a $50k car instead.
Now you have members of the hostile US press piling into this story and amplifying the same data, thinking it a great way to antagonise someone they have a pathological hatred of. Shame on them, when you consider this was sparked by a 2 year old being threatened by a masked assailant.
He is just a fruitcake with far too much power, time he was cut down to size.
Yes, he is a whiny bell-end who paid far too much for a media company and has taken his eye off the ball on his other businesses.
Right wing tycoons buying up media companies in order to push their own agendas is nothing new, but previously more at a national rather than global level.
Twitter can be a great source of news, but best to stay away from Musks psychodrama.
For those of us who are not wholeheartedly supportive of the 'woke' agenda, the breakdown and trauma people are experiencing over Musk and Twitter is quite enjoyable to watch. The reality is that this was an organisation that had vast control over public discourse, but had been entirely captured by a particular political outlook which was increasingly asserting itself by way of 'content moderation'. Elon Musk may be making a bit of an idiot of himself at times; but fundamentally, he is conducting an act of great altruism and public service.
That's one take on it. A more rational one is that every social media site has to engage in content moderation. And Musk is demonstrating that he hasn't the first clue about how to go about it.
Absolutely right. And he can paint the fleeing advertisers as 'pressured by activists' or whatever, but the fact is they see his platform is a brand risk and it's quite easy to invest their money elsewhere.
If Twitter fails, it won't be because the user base collapses, it'll be revenue loss and/or infrastructure breakdown.
Bloomberg reckons Musk has raised around $40bn from seeing Tesla stock in the last year and a bit. He put about $27bn of his own cash into buying Tesla so he likely has sufficient to pay down most of the debt associated with the purchase, if he so chose - or cover the interest costs for a while.
His remaining Tesla stock is worth somewhere around $65bn.
A point that seems to have been missed in nearly all reporting on Twitter. Musk didn't remove moderation - he changed the ratio of automated content removal to human moderators. That is, he massively downsized the human element in preference for more “AI”.
Yes, ChatGPT’s cousins are moderating Twitter,
According to various sources, Musk is trying a lot harder than the ancien regime to get material featuring child sexual exploitation off Twitter. I think all posters on PB would welcome any move in this direction, but it isn't really something we've seen reported here because a certain element on PB has decided that Musk belongs in the Trump category of 'threat to all that is sacred' and so every single development in his life/career is served up to us using partial information, as an example of how stupid and wrong he is.
Thats a side effect of the automation.
Much like the banning of the high end journalists who rewtweeted links to the flight tracker for his plane.
The interesting thing in all this is what people are not talking about. Automated moderation is cheaper and scales easily. What many opponents of what Musk is doing are really angry about, is that the previous human moderation has been reduced massively.
So, for example, bots found are sin binned. Without exceptions for the er… right ones. There was previously a very profitable industry in making stuff “trend” on Twitter. I actually got the full sales pitch from one “Social Media Space” company - was invited in to hear a presentation to very senior management.
I’m still surprised that people are surprised this went on - SEO for websites went to some quite dark and dodgy places.
Will moderated automation actually work, though? As blackhats work out how the algorithms work there will be a constant battle between updates to the automation and the blackhats, with the risk of innocent users being blacklisted / shadowbanned etc - and which needs people to actually address.
Allegedly YouTube creators have suffered from this recently, with videos being flagged or demonetised for no apparent reason, and finding it difficult to get the 'decision' reversed. And there are far more Twitter users than YouTube creators.
As with all these things, it’s not 100% one or the other. Twitter is now using a higher ratio of automation (which every major platform has to use) to human moderators.
The arms race between all kinds of fiddling with websites to increase their ranking ended in victory for Google, by the way. SEO now consists of putting up large amounts of relevant content, not piles of weird JavaScript hacks.
So that is a possible indicator.
Spam email can be killed dead by a modern filter - another example. I run my own domain - no one in the family has received a spam email in years, and we don’t seem to have a problem with emails being lost in the filter.
So that’s another.
“AI” is basically pattern recognition, by training it with a zillion examples. With content moderation, the updating of the model is continuous, as more content rolls through.
There’s a fair bit of evidence that automated systems can do a fairly good job, from other sites. They question comes, as you say, from the responsiveness of the appeals system.
China’s government has decided how it’s going to deal with its last, terrible Covid wave, as they finally reopen. They will pretend it’s not happening. Which, fittingly, is where we all began, three long years ago
I am sure China have been covering up real death figures from the day dot...well.we know they did in Wuhan, but I am sure this has continued. Even if the Winnie the Pooh himself doesn't order a cover up, local officials can never admit their province is doing worse than others.
If Elon Musk had not gutted Twitter’s legal department he might have had a few lawyers warning him about the implications for a social media platform when it begins to take editorial decisions.
Ludicrously rich businessmen are ten to a trilllion pounds but we have one here who thinks of himself as something more than that. When Musk looks in the mirror he sees a visionary genius with plans for mankind. Ally this pretentious self-image to immaturity, a brittle temperament, and a predilection for political activism on the grimy Maga side of the street, and I think we have a risk here. The Musk story could be going to a bad place. I feel queasy about him.
There is a growing tendency within big business and amongst its leaders to engage in political activism rather than being content to provide shareholder value and make profit within the law. I agree the trend is a negative one, but I find it strange that you're only just registering an objection now when an example has cropped up featuring someone who isn't aligned with your own political views.
I'm struggling to think of a left liberal equivalent to Musk. The world's (then) richest man has bought Twitter and is leaning heavily into right wing, conspiracy tinged, culture war politics.
On topic: Re our ongoing battle of the 2 opinion camps re the GE – Tory brand trashed, Labour majority nailed on, maybe a biggie vs Mountain to climb, Hung Parliament or small Labour majority – the byelection imo slightly (but only slightly) favours the first.
Even if nothing else goes wrong between now and the GE, and assuming the war ends and inflation is heading back towards 'normal' and somehow the strikers are placated etc etc the GE will still have a tired Tory government (14 years? Probably) and its time for a change. I'm never convinced that most people pay a lot of attention to politics. On PB we are the extreme minority. But people do make their minds up and I think a lot have said 'enough'.
I think the only issue is whether its Labour as most seats, in power with confidence and supply/formal coalition (unlikely) or Labour majority. I think the sides issues will stop it being a stupidly large majority - Scotland for one, and also Sunak is a less polarising figure than Truss would have been. That and the boundary changes. but time will tell!
If Elon Musk had not gutted Twitter’s legal department he might have had a few lawyers warning him about the implications for a social media platform when it begins to take editorial decisions.
Ludicrously rich businessmen are ten to a trilllion pounds but we have one here who thinks of himself as something more than that. When Musk looks in the mirror he sees a visionary genius with plans for mankind. Ally this pretentious self-image to immaturity, a brittle temperament, and a predilection for political activism on the grimy Maga side of the street, and I think we have a risk here. The Musk story could be going to a bad place. I feel queasy about him.
Seems to me Musk is yet another one of these middle aged rich blokes who goes off the deep end for constant adulation from social media (albeit with his wealth on a different scale to your Lineker's and Piers Morgan's of this world). Post the latest "cool" meme that you know your fans will give you the thumbs up and waste hours trying to "own" those who don't like you.
It seems a bit like the 21st Century equivalent of what middle aged men used to do buying flashy cars and motorbikes that looked like penis extensions.
There is that aspect, very much so, but this is a different level of power and influence to the likes of those names. It's above my paygrade to design a remedy but it again makes me ponder what a crazy and surely improvable economic model it is that allows single individuals to amass wealth on this scale in a world of scarce and finite resource.
It isn't exactly a new concept that a small number of people are big winners in capitalist societies, nor that they have then tried to use that wealth to influence / shape the world towards their beliefs / vision of how things should be.
The difference now is that you can message millions of people instantly.
As old as the hills, yes, and not limited to capitalism either.
Two days ago a car carrying Musk’s two year old child from the airstrip was followed by an unknown driver. Musk himself was not present. The driver wore black gloves and balaclava and cut the Musk car off. He then jumped on the bonnet of Musk’s car to look through the windscreen. His intention was presumably not to take a selfie.
I am not surprised in the least that Musk is on a mission to shut down accounts that seek to amplify the movements of his jet in real time, even if he can’t stop the information at source. He had previously offered the kid running the ElonJet account $5k to shut it down, but the kid rebuffed him and asked for a $50k car instead.
Now you have members of the hostile US press piling into this story and amplifying the same data, thinking it a great way to antagonise someone they have a pathological hatred of. Shame on them, when you consider this was sparked by a 2 year old being threatened by a masked assailant.
He is just a fruitcake with far too much power, time he was cut down to size.
Yes, he is a whiny bell-end who paid far too much for a media company and has taken his eye off the ball on his other businesses.
Right wing tycoons buying up media companies in order to push their own agendas is nothing new, but previously more at a national rather than global level.
Twitter can be a great source of news, but best to stay away from Musks psychodrama.
For those of us who are not wholeheartedly supportive of the 'woke' agenda, the breakdown and trauma people are experiencing over Musk and Twitter is quite enjoyable to watch. The reality is that this was an organisation that had vast control over public discourse, but had been entirely captured by a particular political outlook which was increasingly asserting itself by way of 'content moderation'. Elon Musk may be making a bit of an idiot of himself at times; but fundamentally, he is conducting an act of great altruism and public service.
I'm sorry you feel that way.
Personally I think finding enjoyment in "trolling the other side" thing is incredibly dangerous.
I think the basic reality is, that this perspective (rise above it all) has been tried and just doesn't work unfortunately; you become completely irrelevant in the discourse. This has been the experience of 'moderate centrists' in the culture wars of the past few years. Musk has a lot of flaws and is making mistakes, but fundamentally I think the big picture is that this is all a long overdue shift in the 'overton window'; it is very messy and imperfect, but could not have been achieved any other way.
One must either subscribe to one of two views?
Utter horseshit. One is allowed to be nuanced.
Indeed, if your view isn't nuanced, if you are so certain of your own moral superiority, then it's probably time to start looking at yourself. Because it's when people are convinced that it's a fight, and it's them in the right, well, that's when terrible things happen.
It's when people start justifying truly awful behaviour, because it's their side (and their side is the side of light, and the other is the side of darkness and their side is in the right), and the ends justify the means.
I am not arguing against nuance, in the end I probably ultimately have a similar point of view on this to you. I am not in any way supporting everything Elon Musk has said or done, particularly not the attacks he sometimes carries out on people seemingly on a whim; a dislikeable trait.
But what I have observed over the past few years is that a certain cultural situation has emerged where those on the 'left' are allowed to descend to extremely abusive behaviour online and in person, justified by references to 'grievances' and 'social justice'; whereas those on the 'right' are prohibited from doing so. As we have continuously failed to get this genie back in to the bottle, I think the only other option we have is to open up the floor for a fair fight. The hope is that the majority of people will just tire of the extremists on both sides and we will move on. Perhaps this is naive, but it is no answer to just keep on letting the 'left' control all areas of public discourse and to decide what is or isn't acceptable with reference to a zeitgeist they are continually reinventing, whilst we just watch from the wings making politely critical comments.
Right wing people are also to blame here, for embracing their role as shock jocks/pantomime villains, for money and notoriety. Ann Coulter, Katie Thingummybob, Alex Jones and to an extent Nigel Farage, are good examples, who have allowed themselves and their views to become associated with hectoring and personal abuse that distracts from their message.
Alex Jones has a message?
He's mad as hell and not going to take it anymore...
Two days ago a car carrying Musk’s two year old child from the airstrip was followed by an unknown driver. Musk himself was not present. The driver wore black gloves and balaclava and cut the Musk car off. He then jumped on the bonnet of Musk’s car to look through the windscreen. His intention was presumably not to take a selfie.
I am not surprised in the least that Musk is on a mission to shut down accounts that seek to amplify the movements of his jet in real time, even if he can’t stop the information at source. He had previously offered the kid running the ElonJet account $5k to shut it down, but the kid rebuffed him and asked for a $50k car instead.
Now you have members of the hostile US press piling into this story and amplifying the same data, thinking it a great way to antagonise someone they have a pathological hatred of. Shame on them, when you consider this was sparked by a 2 year old being threatened by a masked assailant.
He is just a fruitcake with far too much power, time he was cut down to size.
Yes, he is a whiny bell-end who paid far too much for a media company and has taken his eye off the ball on his other businesses.
Right wing tycoons buying up media companies in order to push their own agendas is nothing new, but previously more at a national rather than global level.
Twitter can be a great source of news, but best to stay away from Musks psychodrama.
For those of us who are not wholeheartedly supportive of the 'woke' agenda, the breakdown and trauma people are experiencing over Musk and Twitter is quite enjoyable to watch. The reality is that this was an organisation that had vast control over public discourse, but had been entirely captured by a particular political outlook which was increasingly asserting itself by way of 'content moderation'. Elon Musk may be making a bit of an idiot of himself at times; but fundamentally, he is conducting an act of great altruism and public service.
I'm sorry you feel that way.
Personally I think finding enjoyment in "trolling the other side" thing is incredibly dangerous.
I think the basic reality is, that this perspective (rise above it all) has been tried and just doesn't work unfortunately; you become completely irrelevant in the discourse. This has been the experience of 'moderate centrists' in the culture wars of the past few years. Musk has a lot of flaws and is making mistakes, but fundamentally I think the big picture is that this is all a long overdue shift in the 'overton window'; it is very messy and imperfect, but could not have been achieved any other way.
One must either subscribe to one of two views?
Utter horseshit. One is allowed to be nuanced.
Indeed, if your view isn't nuanced, if you are so certain of your own moral superiority, then it's probably time to start looking at yourself. Because it's when people are convinced that it's a fight, and it's them in the right, well, that's when terrible things happen.
It's when people start justifying truly awful behaviour, because it's their side (and their side is the side of light, and the other is the side of darkness and their side is in the right), and the ends justify the means.
I am not arguing against nuance, in the end I probably ultimately have a similar point of view on this to you. I am not in any way supporting everything Elon Musk has said or done, particularly not the attacks he sometimes carries out on people seemingly on a whim; a dislikeable trait.
But what I have observed over the past few years is that a certain cultural situation has emerged where those on the 'left' are allowed to descend to extremely abusive behaviour online and in person, justified by references to 'grievances' and 'social justice'; whereas those on the 'right' are prohibited from doing so. As we have continuously failed to get this genie back in to the bottle, I think the only other option we have is to open up the floor for a fair fight. The hope is that the majority of people will just tire of the extremists on both sides and we will move on. Perhaps this is naive, but it is no answer to just keep on letting the 'left' control all areas of public discourse and to decide what is or isn't acceptable with reference to a zeitgeist they are continually reinventing, whilst we just watch from the wings making politely critical comments.
Right wing people are also to blame here, for embracing their role as shock jocks/pantomime villains, for money and notoriety. Ann Coulter, Katie Thingummybob, Alex Jones and to an extent Nigel Farage, are good examples, who have allowed themselves and their views to become associated with hectoring and personal abuse that distracts from their message.
Alex Jones has a message?
Yes, he undoubtedly has a message. I am not saying it's one I agree with.
I am reminded of a US interview by Piers Morgan of Jesse Ventura, sometime US politician and nowadays conspiracy theorist TV presenter. Ventura was so polite, measured and convincing in his answers that he made Morgan lose his cool, and provoked a widespread discussion about the theories he was elucidating.
The next week, the same show featured Piers interviewing Alex Jones - with the opposite outcome - Jones shouty and unpleasant, actively repelling the viewer from being convinced by anything he said. Wittingly or unwittingly, Jones was being used to put people off - undoing the damage caused by Ventura.
On topic: Re our ongoing battle of the 2 opinion camps re the GE – Tory brand trashed, Labour majority nailed on, maybe a biggie vs Mountain to climb, Hung Parliament or small Labour majority – the byelection imo slightly (but only slightly) favours the first.
Even if nothing else goes wrong between now and the GE, and assuming the war ends and inflation is heading back towards 'normal' and somehow the strikers are placated etc etc the GE will still have a tired Tory government (14 years? Probably) and its time for a change. I'm never convinced that most people pay a lot of attention to politics. On PB we are the extreme minority. But people do make their minds up and I think a lot have said 'enough'.
I think the only issue is whether its Labour as most seats, in power with confidence and supply/formal coalition (unlikely) or Labour majority. I think the sides issues will stop it being a stupidly large majority - Scotland for one, and also Sunak is a less polarising figure than Truss would have been. That and the boundary changes. but time will tell!
Yep. So you are not yet ready to choose a camp. Me neither. I lean to the 'Labour and Big' tent but it's not the sort of lean that has me at any risk of falling over.
Two days ago a car carrying Musk’s two year old child from the airstrip was followed by an unknown driver. Musk himself was not present. The driver wore black gloves and balaclava and cut the Musk car off. He then jumped on the bonnet of Musk’s car to look through the windscreen. His intention was presumably not to take a selfie.
I am not surprised in the least that Musk is on a mission to shut down accounts that seek to amplify the movements of his jet in real time, even if he can’t stop the information at source. He had previously offered the kid running the ElonJet account $5k to shut it down, but the kid rebuffed him and asked for a $50k car instead.
Now you have members of the hostile US press piling into this story and amplifying the same data, thinking it a great way to antagonise someone they have a pathological hatred of. Shame on them, when you consider this was sparked by a 2 year old being threatened by a masked assailant.
He is just a fruitcake with far too much power, time he was cut down to size.
Yes, he is a whiny bell-end who paid far too much for a media company and has taken his eye off the ball on his other businesses.
Right wing tycoons buying up media companies in order to push their own agendas is nothing new, but previously more at a national rather than global level.
Twitter can be a great source of news, but best to stay away from Musks psychodrama.
For those of us who are not wholeheartedly supportive of the 'woke' agenda, the breakdown and trauma people are experiencing over Musk and Twitter is quite enjoyable to watch. The reality is that this was an organisation that had vast control over public discourse, but had been entirely captured by a particular political outlook which was increasingly asserting itself by way of 'content moderation'. Elon Musk may be making a bit of an idiot of himself at times; but fundamentally, he is conducting an act of great altruism and public service.
That's one take on it. A more rational one is that every social media site has to engage in content moderation. And Musk is demonstrating that he hasn't the first clue about how to go about it.
Absolutely right. And he can paint the fleeing advertisers as 'pressured by activists' or whatever, but the fact is they see his platform is a brand risk and it's quite easy to invest their money elsewhere.
If Twitter fails, it won't be because the user base collapses, it'll be revenue loss and/or infrastructure breakdown.
Bloomberg reckons Musk has raised around $40bn from seeing Tesla stock in the last year and a bit. He put about $27bn of his own cash into buying Tesla so he likely has sufficient to pay down most of the debt associated with the purchase, if he so chose - or cover the interest costs for a while.
His remaining Tesla stock is worth somewhere around $65bn.
Tax!
Do billionaires pay tax ?
Musk will be paying a lot of tax.
The enquiry was tongue in cheek.
But seriously, what is the likely rate at which he'll be dinged ? I'm not up on US tax for the mega wealthy (other than a vague awareness of such things as the carried interest exemption).
China’s government has decided how it’s going to deal with its last, terrible Covid wave, as they finally reopen. They will pretend it’s not happening. Which, fittingly, is where we all began, three long years ago
I am sure China have been covering up real death figures from the day dot...well.we know they did in Wuhan, but I am sure this has continued. Even if the Winnie the Pooh himself doesn't order a cover up, local officials can never admit their province is doing worse than others.
This will test their skills
It is estimated ~1m extra Chinese deaths will be recorded in the next 3 months. We can also expect chaos at overwhelmed hospitals. That’s REALLY hard to hide
China’s government has decided how it’s going to deal with its last, terrible Covid wave, as they finally reopen. They will pretend it’s not happening. Which, fittingly, is where we all began, three long years ago
I am sure China have been covering up real death figures from the day dot...well.we know they did in Wuhan, but I am sure this has continued. Even if the Winnie the Pooh himself doesn't order a cover up, local officials can never admit their province is doing worse than others.
This will test their skills
It is estimated ~1m extra Chinese deaths will be recorded in the next 3 months. We can also expect chaos at overwhelmed hospitals. That’s REALLY hard to hide
Also, I believe the number of ICU beds / capita in China is very low. Yes they shown they can impressively knock up those temporary building in a few days, but they aren't ICU facilities.
Two days ago a car carrying Musk’s two year old child from the airstrip was followed by an unknown driver. Musk himself was not present. The driver wore black gloves and balaclava and cut the Musk car off. He then jumped on the bonnet of Musk’s car to look through the windscreen. His intention was presumably not to take a selfie.
I am not surprised in the least that Musk is on a mission to shut down accounts that seek to amplify the movements of his jet in real time, even if he can’t stop the information at source. He had previously offered the kid running the ElonJet account $5k to shut it down, but the kid rebuffed him and asked for a $50k car instead.
Now you have members of the hostile US press piling into this story and amplifying the same data, thinking it a great way to antagonise someone they have a pathological hatred of. Shame on them, when you consider this was sparked by a 2 year old being threatened by a masked assailant.
He is just a fruitcake with far too much power, time he was cut down to size.
Yes, he is a whiny bell-end who paid far too much for a media company and has taken his eye off the ball on his other businesses.
Right wing tycoons buying up media companies in order to push their own agendas is nothing new, but previously more at a national rather than global level.
Twitter can be a great source of news, but best to stay away from Musks psychodrama.
For those of us who are not wholeheartedly supportive of the 'woke' agenda, the breakdown and trauma people are experiencing over Musk and Twitter is quite enjoyable to watch. The reality is that this was an organisation that had vast control over public discourse, but had been entirely captured by a particular political outlook which was increasingly asserting itself by way of 'content moderation'. Elon Musk may be making a bit of an idiot of himself at times; but fundamentally, he is conducting an act of great altruism and public service.
I'm sorry you feel that way.
Personally I think finding enjoyment in "trolling the other side" thing is incredibly dangerous.
I think the basic reality is, that this perspective (rise above it all) has been tried and just doesn't work unfortunately; you become completely irrelevant in the discourse. This has been the experience of 'moderate centrists' in the culture wars of the past few years. Musk has a lot of flaws and is making mistakes, but fundamentally I think the big picture is that this is all a long overdue shift in the 'overton window'; it is very messy and imperfect, but could not have been achieved any other way.
One must either subscribe to one of two views?
Utter horseshit. One is allowed to be nuanced.
Indeed, if your view isn't nuanced, if you are so certain of your own moral superiority, then it's probably time to start looking at yourself. Because it's when people are convinced that it's a fight, and it's them in the right, well, that's when terrible things happen.
It's when people start justifying truly awful behaviour, because it's their side (and their side is the side of light, and the other is the side of darkness and their side is in the right), and the ends justify the means.
I am not arguing against nuance, in the end I probably ultimately have a similar point of view on this to you. I am not in any way supporting everything Elon Musk has said or done, particularly not the attacks he sometimes carries out on people seemingly on a whim; a dislikeable trait.
But what I have observed over the past few years is that a certain cultural situation has emerged where those on the 'left' are allowed to descend to extremely abusive behaviour online and in person, justified by references to 'grievances' and 'social justice'; whereas those on the 'right' are prohibited from doing so. As we have continuously failed to get this genie back in to the bottle, I think the only other option we have is to open up the floor for a fair fight. The hope is that the majority of people will just tire of the extremists on both sides and we will move on. Perhaps this is naive, but it is no answer to just keep on letting the 'left' control all areas of public discourse and to decide what is or isn't acceptable with reference to a zeitgeist they are continually reinventing, whilst we just watch from the wings making politely critical comments.
Right wing people are also to blame here, for embracing their role as shock jocks/pantomime villains, for money and notoriety. Ann Coulter, Katie Thingummybob, Alex Jones and to an extent Nigel Farage, are good examples, who have allowed themselves and their views to become associated with hectoring and personal abuse that distracts from their message.
Alex Jones has a message?
Yes, he undoubtedly has a message. I am not saying it's one I agree with.
I am reminded of a US interview by Piers Morgan of Jesse Ventura, sometime US politician and nowadays conspiracy theorist TV presenter. Ventura was so polite, measured and convincing in his answers that he made Morgan lose his cool, and provoked a widespread discussion about the theories he was elucidating.
The next week, the same show featured Piers interviewing Alex Jones - with the opposite outcome - Jones shouty and unpleasant, actively repelling the viewer from being convinced by anything he said. Wittingly or unwittingly, Jones was being used to put people off - undoing the damage caused by Ventura.
Sure, style matters. But what is the Jones message? I've never detected anything beyond batshit crazy lies and delusions. It's boring as hell to anybody unburdened with mental incapacity. Unlistenable. The message is the tedium.
If Elon Musk had not gutted Twitter’s legal department he might have had a few lawyers warning him about the implications for a social media platform when it begins to take editorial decisions.
Ludicrously rich businessmen are ten to a trilllion pounds but we have one here who thinks of himself as something more than that. When Musk looks in the mirror he sees a visionary genius with plans for mankind. Ally this pretentious self-image to immaturity, a brittle temperament, and a predilection for political activism on the grimy Maga side of the street, and I think we have a risk here. The Musk story could be going to a bad place. I feel queasy about him.
There is a growing tendency within big business and amongst its leaders to engage in political activism rather than being content to provide shareholder value and make profit within the law. I agree the trend is a negative one, but I find it strange that you're only just registering an objection now when an example has cropped up featuring someone who isn't aligned with your own political views.
I'm struggling to think of a left liberal equivalent to Musk. The world's (then) richest man has bought Twitter and is leaning heavily into right wing, conspiracy tinged, culture war politics.
Gates? Soros? Musk is only an oddity because of his stance, not because of his involvement with activism.
Two days ago a car carrying Musk’s two year old child from the airstrip was followed by an unknown driver. Musk himself was not present. The driver wore black gloves and balaclava and cut the Musk car off. He then jumped on the bonnet of Musk’s car to look through the windscreen. His intention was presumably not to take a selfie.
I am not surprised in the least that Musk is on a mission to shut down accounts that seek to amplify the movements of his jet in real time, even if he can’t stop the information at source. He had previously offered the kid running the ElonJet account $5k to shut it down, but the kid rebuffed him and asked for a $50k car instead.
Now you have members of the hostile US press piling into this story and amplifying the same data, thinking it a great way to antagonise someone they have a pathological hatred of. Shame on them, when you consider this was sparked by a 2 year old being threatened by a masked assailant.
He is just a fruitcake with far too much power, time he was cut down to size.
Yes, he is a whiny bell-end who paid far too much for a media company and has taken his eye off the ball on his other businesses.
Right wing tycoons buying up media companies in order to push their own agendas is nothing new, but previously more at a national rather than global level.
Twitter can be a great source of news, but best to stay away from Musks psychodrama.
For those of us who are not wholeheartedly supportive of the 'woke' agenda, the breakdown and trauma people are experiencing over Musk and Twitter is quite enjoyable to watch. The reality is that this was an organisation that had vast control over public discourse, but had been entirely captured by a particular political outlook which was increasingly asserting itself by way of 'content moderation'. Elon Musk may be making a bit of an idiot of himself at times; but fundamentally, he is conducting an act of great altruism and public service.
That's one take on it. A more rational one is that every social media site has to engage in content moderation. And Musk is demonstrating that he hasn't the first clue about how to go about it.
Absolutely right. And he can paint the fleeing advertisers as 'pressured by activists' or whatever, but the fact is they see his platform is a brand risk and it's quite easy to invest their money elsewhere.
If Twitter fails, it won't be because the user base collapses, it'll be revenue loss and/or infrastructure breakdown.
Bloomberg reckons Musk has raised around $40bn from seeing Tesla stock in the last year and a bit. He put about $27bn of his own cash into buying Tesla so he likely has sufficient to pay down most of the debt associated with the purchase, if he so chose - or cover the interest costs for a while.
His remaining Tesla stock is worth somewhere around $65bn.
Tax!
Do billionaires pay tax ?
Musk will be paying a lot of tax.
He recently dumped ~$6 billion in to a foundation.
For months now my mum's home has insisted on masks, as per gov guidelines (even though they were not laws), and the home had a pile of masks at the door for those visitors that forgot to bring one.
So I would duly don a mask when walking through the home to mum's room.
During that walk you would see that residents were not wearing masks (the guidelines didn't specify this). The carers were generally wearing masks but not always and those that were wearing one tended to cover their mouth but not nose. Occasionally a staff member would take a photo for posting on the home's Facebook page and then they made sure that all visitors and carers had a mask worn properly for the photo!
In short, the whole thing was a farce.
As soon as I got to mum's room I took it off, of course, and would only put it back on when prompted by a passing carer, and then took it off again. The government should have changed these guidelines months ago. I won't go on about how all this has affected my mum because I've done this before but I'm still simmering with rage over this.
I visited a geriatric ward in a hospital recently (several times) - it was exactly as you describe. Absolutely farcical, and bloody pointless.
I also read that, found the wording interesting. From the description, I'd have said it burst, rather than exploded, but maybe that's down to my own (idiosyncratic?) interpretation of those terms. The article later uses 'burst'.
More importantly, what happened to the fish? I'm guessing it didn't end well for them, but that doesn't seem to be reported. I'd like to imagine a few got washed into drains and escape, eventually, to the open sea. Could be a film, Auf Wiedersehen, Pets but I'm guessing that as they were tropical fish they would be unlikely to do well in the wilds of Berlin
I heard on Deuschlandfunk (national radio) news about 2 hours ago that the fish have been transferred to another aquarium in Berlin. I have no idea how they managed to do that.
Update: "Alle Fische sind tot!" All the fish have died, so the earlier report was wrong.
It happened aroud a quarter past six, so hardly anyone was in the hotel lobby, which seems to have kept the injuries down to two people.
The simping over a billionaire by a handful on here is incredibly pathetic. All someone powerful has to do is say they are fighting woke, and a certain type of fool will swallow everything they say. Whether it is Putin, or Trump, or Orban, or Musk.
What we have here is a billionaire using his power and resources to silence dissent against him.
He says he is supportive of free speech as the reason to bring outright racists and Nazis back to the platform. Then he threatens to incite online mobs against companies dropping advertisement spend with him. He blocks a high profile US Representative from her account because of criticism. He uses a single stalker incident that happened nowhere near an airport, as proven by geo-tags against him, to not only ban someone covering legal information over his private jet. He then bans major journalists who are critical of him who haven't even published information on his movements. Oh and he bans the account of Mastodon, which hasn't broken any rules, just because he doesn't like the threat to his monopoly.
It is clear to anyone that actually values free speech that this is a incredibly dangerous precedent for democracy. It is a billionaire wielding a platform for his own political ends, deliberately selecting which speech is allowed and ending criticism of him. But those cheering him on don't actually care about free speech, they are just manipulated by partisanship due to a framing of him being on their side. Fawning over Musk as being altruistic just makes you the peasant at medieval court trying to prove you are the most subservient to the local exploitative baron.
If Elon Musk had not gutted Twitter’s legal department he might have had a few lawyers warning him about the implications for a social media platform when it begins to take editorial decisions.
Ludicrously rich businessmen are ten to a trilllion pounds but we have one here who thinks of himself as something more than that. When Musk looks in the mirror he sees a visionary genius with plans for mankind. Ally this pretentious self-image to immaturity, a brittle temperament, and a predilection for political activism on the grimy Maga side of the street, and I think we have a risk here. The Musk story could be going to a bad place. I feel queasy about him.
There is a growing tendency within big business and amongst its leaders to engage in political activism rather than being content to provide shareholder value and make profit within the law. I agree the trend is a negative one, but I find it strange that you're only just registering an objection now when an example has cropped up featuring someone who isn't aligned with your own political views.
I'm struggling to think of a left liberal equivalent to Musk. The world's (then) richest man has bought Twitter and is leaning heavily into right wing, conspiracy tinged, culture war politics.
Gates? Soros? Musk is only an oddity because of his stance, not because of his involvement with activism.
Gates and Soros don't use their wealth to silence criticism of them.
Comments
(2) The result was entirely consistent with a mid-term by-election.
Consequently we can conclude that this is evidence to support the proposition that "how people say in mid term they'll vote in a general election tomorrow" coincides with "how they would vote in a mid-term by-election tomorrow", which we know doesn't correlate well with "how they will end up voting in a general election in a couple of years time".
And no, he couldn't afford it.
It wouldn't bankrupt him, but it would bankrupt the company, and lose him any business credibility.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/12/10/final-2019-general-election-mrp-model-small-
For months now my mum's home has insisted on masks, as per gov guidelines (even though they were not laws), and the home had a pile of masks at the door for those visitors that forgot to bring one.
So I would duly don a mask when walking through the home to mum's room.
During that walk you would see that residents were not wearing masks (the guidelines didn't specify this). The carers were generally wearing masks but not always and those that were wearing one tended to cover their mouth but not nose. Occasionally a staff member would take a photo for posting on the home's Facebook page and then they made sure that all visitors and carers had a mask worn properly for the photo!
In short, the whole thing was a farce.
As soon as I got to mum's room I took it off, of course, and would only put it back on when prompted by a passing carer, and then took it off again. The government should have changed these guidelines months ago. I won't go on about how all this has affected my mum because I've done this before but I'm still simmering with rage over this.
https://benjaminlauderdale.net/files/blog/2019_YouGov_MRP_Initial_Assessment.pdf
MRP got 93.5% right. Most of the wrongs were because they underestimated the Conservative national vote margin over Labour (predicted 8.8% vs 11.8% actual).
Still a little bit better prediction than just using UNS, apparently. So an error in polling in general rather than a fault in MRP.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2019_United_Kingdom_general_election
In which case:
1. Maybe the government was in trouble from the minute it had to spend money on Covid and stop afterwards.
Right policy, electorally unfortunate timing.
2. The economic prognosis for the next two years matters. Is there a pathway where the average voter, navigating by whether money or month runs out first, will feel good over the next two years?
Something like 41%, 34%.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63996982
Of the big two remaining, he probably won't have any serious issues with going full antivaxxer, but signing up to full climate change denial will run into the issue that the entire reason for Tesla was climate change.
It'll be interesting to see which element of his ego gives way.
It's one thing to get the national shares right, but the art is in turning those into seat counts. Saying that X got the (probably easier) bit right and Y got the (probably harder) bit wrong doesn't tell us all that much.
oting intention firms up.
Any different though than 87-90?
You are not comparing like with like. Struggling to think of an analogy but try guessing how many rooms are in a house and how many bricks are in it. One is much easier than the other.
Musk has now done enough that he'll be able to sell Teslas to American conservatives. I have no idea whether he'll sell enough to make up for the liberal customers he'll lose.
So in terms of "bad for the Conservatives", yes this is worse than that. Not as good for Labour, but in 1990 the LibDems were still working out who they were.
Besides- a lot of that was fury about the Poll Tax, which is why it and its only friend in Cabinet had to go. Once Major came in, the polls were closeish right up to polling day. The Conservatives have changed leader twice this year, without getting close in the polls. And there isn't a flick-of-a-switch policy change they can make to stop people being cross with them.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/dec/16/rehan-ahmed-to-become-england-youngest-ever-mens-test-debutant-cricket-azhar-ali
And, following @ydoethur 's advice,
...Ahmed first, one of two changes to the England side that took an unassailable 2-0 lead in Multan. Leicestershire’s leg-spinning all-rounder was named as a straight swap for Will Jacks, while Ollie Pope has been relieved of the gloves to focus on his batting, Ben Foakes returning and Jimmy Anderson told to rest his 40-year-old legs...
If Twitter fails, it won't be because the user base collapses, it'll be revenue loss and/or infrastructure breakdown.
Utter horseshit. One is allowed to be nuanced.
Indeed, if your view isn't nuanced, if you are so certain of your own moral superiority, then it's probably time to start looking at yourself. Because it's when people are convinced that it's a fight, and it's them in the right, well, that's when terrible things happen.
It's when people start justifying truly awful behaviour, because it's their side (and their side is the side of light, and the other is the side of darkness and their side is in the right), and the ends justify the means.
More importantly, what happened to the fish? I'm guessing it didn't end well for them, but that doesn't seem to be reported. I'd like to imagine a few got washed into drains and escape, eventually, to the open sea. Could be a film, Auf Wiedersehen, Pets
Considering how important the modelling of turnout in different groups is in making an accurate overall projection, I should think the resemblance between the MRP and the by-election result is best viewed as fortuitous.
His remaining Tesla stock is worth somewhere around $65bn.
Here we are in 2022, and like to think they are getting somewhere with that.
Obviously I rely on you old codgers for your 97-92 and all that, but I’m going on my Dad telling me this is beginning to look like 92 all over again everyday day now Rishi government has wiped slate clean of everything that has gone before.
Changing leaders and direction and relaunching mid term, without going to membership, is a powerful tool. Starmer’s Labour are now looking so old hat and yesterdays option, and the massively inexperienced option to boot.
Sounds glib, but it's true. We won't be seeing a repeat of any election here; that's not how history works.
I’m not so sure though. It’s was gobbled up on promise of Boris PM getting Brexit done, and all the trade deals and growth and sunlit uplands from that promise. These voters done even have to switch to reform or labour, merely stay home. Maybe voters swallowed last time can be spewed out this time angry at being let down?
You will likely be posting as silanedrip2 or something by then though, and deny all knowledge
Yes, ChatGPT’s cousins are moderating Twitter,
But what I have observed over the past few years is that a certain cultural situation has emerged where those on the 'left' are allowed to descend to extremely abusive behaviour online and in person, justified by references to 'grievances' and 'social justice'; whereas those on the 'right' are prohibited from doing so. As we have continuously failed to get this genie back in to the bottle, I think the only other option we have is to open up the floor for a fair fight. The hope is that the majority of people will just tire of the extremists on both sides and we will move on. Perhaps this is naive, but it is no answer to just keep on letting the 'left' control all areas of public discourse and to decide what is or isn't acceptable with reference to a zeitgeist they are continually reinventing, whilst we just watch from the wings making politely critical comments.
UK MPs accused of using foreign trips for sex tourism
A number of British lawmakers have been using parliamentary trips abroad as an opportunity for the covert use of sex workers and for raucous, excessive drinking, according to MPs, peers, diplomatic and parliamentary officials who spoke to POLITICO.
One former Conservative MP, now a member of the House of Lords, asked hosts for directions to the nearest brothel when he traveled to Southeast Asia on a visit with an all-party parliamentary group (APPG), according to another parliamentarian who was present.
A senior Labour MP displayed a fondness for “Russian girls” during trips overseas, according to a foreign diplomat, who said local officials felt powerless to intervene because they worried about preserving their influence in Westminster.
https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-mps-parliament-appg-house-of-commons-accused-of-using-foreign-trips-for-sex-tourism/
Sure hope they have CCTV to show what happened.
There may be PBers with more experience.
It seems a bit like the 21st Century equivalent of what middle aged men used to do buying flashy cars and motorbikes that looked like penis extensions.
Much like the banning of the high end journalists who rewtweeted links to the flight tracker for his plane.
The interesting thing in all this is what people are not talking about. Automated moderation is cheaper and scales easily. What many opponents of what Musk is doing are really angry about, is that the previous human moderation has been reduced massively.
So, for example, bots found are sin binned. Without exceptions for the er… right ones. There was previously a very profitable industry in making stuff “trend” on Twitter. I actually got the full sales pitch from one “Social Media Space” company - was invited in to hear a presentation to very senior management.
I’m still surprised that people are surprised this went on - SEO for websites went to some quite dark and dodgy places.
Indeed, and I hope they are doing a better job. But do we have any independent sources for these claims, as the person I've mostly seen reporting this seems to be somewhat biased.
Remember: Musk lies. What we need are truly independent sources and reports on Twitter's output, and sadly that's incredibly hard for an external party to do.
Count me among the unconvinced.
And I was around to vote in 1992.
Recent Tweet from Britain Elects
Westminster voting intention:
LAB: 45% (+3)
CON: 29% (-2)
LDEM: 8% (-2)
REF: 6% (+1)
GRN: 3% (-)
via @Savanta_UK, 09 - 11 Dec
https://sotn.newstatesman.com/2022/10/britainpredicts
Or indeed the rather more uplifting example of Andrew Carnegie.
Allegedly YouTube creators have suffered from this recently, with videos being flagged or demonetised for no apparent reason, and finding it difficult to get the 'decision' reversed. And there are far more Twitter users than YouTube creators.
Ukraine has had consequences.
Pacifist Japan unveils biggest military build-up since World War Two
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=341884
..."Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a serious violation of laws that forbid the use of force and has shaken the foundations of the international order," the strategy paper said.
...Kishida's plan will double defense outlays to about 2 percent of gross domestic product over five years, blowing past a self-imposed 1 percent spending limit that has been in place since 1976.
It will increase the defense ministry's budget to around a tenth of all public spending at current levels, and will make Japan the world's third-biggest military spender after the United States and China, based on current budgets...
https://eurasiantimes.com/vladimir-putin-actually-wanted-to-attack-japan-before/
The difference now is that you can message millions of people instantly.
The arms race between all kinds of fiddling with websites to increase their ranking ended in victory for Google, by the way. SEO now consists of putting up large amounts of relevant content, not piles of weird JavaScript hacks.
So that is a possible indicator.
Spam email can be killed dead by a modern filter - another example. I run my own domain - no one in the family has received a spam email in years, and we don’t seem to have a problem with emails being lost in the filter.
So that’s another.
“AI” is basically pattern recognition, by training it with a zillion examples. With content moderation, the updating of the model is continuous, as more content rolls through.
There’s a fair bit of evidence that automated systems can do a fairly good job, from other sites. They question comes, as you say, from the responsiveness of the appeals system.
I think the only issue is whether its Labour as most seats, in power with confidence and supply/formal coalition (unlikely) or Labour majority. I think the sides issues will stop it being a stupidly large majority - Scotland for one, and also Sunak is a less polarising figure than Truss would have been. That and the boundary changes.
but time will tell!
I am reminded of a US interview by Piers Morgan of Jesse Ventura, sometime US politician and nowadays conspiracy theorist TV presenter. Ventura was so polite, measured and convincing in his answers that he made Morgan lose his cool, and provoked a widespread discussion about the theories he was elucidating.
The next week, the same show featured Piers interviewing Alex Jones - with the opposite outcome - Jones shouty and unpleasant, actively repelling the viewer from being convinced by anything he said. Wittingly or unwittingly, Jones was being used to put people off - undoing the damage caused by Ventura.
But seriously, what is the likely rate at which he'll be dinged ? I'm not up on US tax for the mega wealthy (other than a vague awareness of such things as the carried interest exemption).
It is estimated ~1m extra Chinese deaths will be recorded in the next 3 months. We can also expect chaos at overwhelmed hospitals. That’s REALLY hard to hide
I visited a geriatric ward in a hospital recently (several times) - it was exactly as you describe. Absolutely farcical, and bloody pointless.
It happened aroud a quarter past six, so hardly anyone was in the hotel lobby, which seems to have kept the injuries down to two people.
What we have here is a billionaire using his power and resources to silence dissent against him.
He says he is supportive of free speech as the reason to bring outright racists and Nazis back to the platform. Then he threatens to incite online mobs against companies dropping advertisement spend with him. He blocks a high profile US Representative from her account because of criticism. He uses a single stalker incident that happened nowhere near an airport, as proven by geo-tags against him, to not only ban someone covering legal information over his private jet. He then bans major journalists who are critical of him who haven't even published information on his movements. Oh and he bans the account of Mastodon, which hasn't broken any rules, just because he doesn't like the threat to his monopoly.
It is clear to anyone that actually values free speech that this is a incredibly dangerous precedent for democracy. It is a billionaire wielding a platform for his own political ends, deliberately selecting which speech is allowed and ending criticism of him. But those cheering him on don't actually care about free speech, they are just manipulated by partisanship due to a framing of him being on their side. Fawning over Musk as being altruistic just makes you the peasant at medieval court trying to prove you are the most subservient to the local exploitative baron.