You owe me something, but I can't figure out just what... As a Luddite IT specialist (YEP!) I have been using the phrase "putting the 'ass' in aspergers" for decades. Also, "I'm the aspergers, without the burgers." In addition to being on the spectrum I am fairly attached to my phrases - no surprise. Be gentle with them...
Question for Ask Matt: Can you explain your friend Tucker Carlson to me? I understand it’s showbiz. But how shouldn’t I view someone who exploits the attack of someone in their 80s by a mentally ill individual personal gain? I know you are or were close, and I’m having trouble not considering him fundamentally evil. Wishing to be open minded, I’m asking you how you view his efforts to end our democracy. Thanks.
Really enjoyed this one. Thanks for the link to the Weekly Standard piece. Almost 10 years old, and just as true as the day it was written. As a 35-year veteran of the journalism/communications biz I've had a front-row seat to the analog-to-digital transformation. I appreciate the technological advances -- my current laptop is considerably superior to the old Trash 80, and I enjoy reading books on a tablet -- but I'm also a social media luddite. I've had to use Twitter and its slightly less sinister cousin Facebook for professional purposes, but I avoid them in my personal life. I can't imagine there's too many people out there who care about my political opinions, or what I had for dinner.
Hey Matt, WTF? I'm a paying customer but I never know that you've released a new essay unless Drudge stumbles across it and aggregates it. Am I not holding my mouth right or what?
It could also be that you're not holding your mouth right. If the filter you set up doesn't work, try pushing you lower jaw forward and reaching your lower lip up over your upper lip. Keep your tongue pressed to the roof of your mouth. Then cross your eyes and hold it for 30 seconds. If that doesn't work, take a shot of your favorite whiskey and go to bed.
Are emails not showing up in your inbox? If you're gmail, many Substacks are getting lodged in Gmail's "Promotions Folder." So much so, that I've twice included instructionals in pieces to help people solve the problem. Of course, if they're gmail, they might not have seen the pieces!
Goddammit! Yup, that's it. I looked in my promotions folder, which I check less frequently than the Twitter account that I don't have, and there they are. I'm going to slaughter a goat and put its entrails on my keyboard at moonrise tonight. Then maybe Google will move you to the regular inbox.
You can actually disable your promotions folder if you wish to. Instructions included below (from an old piece.) If you don't, you should probably drag emails to your inbox or indicate that they're not spam, to train your Gmail not to kidnap them.
Disable your promotions folder outright. Here’s how you do it. First, find your promotions folder. You do this by going to “settings” (the little gear icon in the upper-right corner of your Gmail), then click “see all settings” (still on the right-hand side of the page), then click “Inbox” in the tabs that will appear around the middle of the page. Then you can uncheck your promotions box, save your changes, and you should never have to deal with this Google scourge again.
I thought the entire Twitter concept was asinine back in the days when Twitter had a 140 character limit. How interesting a thought can one express in 140 characters? Now the limit is 280. Twice the characters means twice the great thoughts, right? So let's be generous and agree that there are 14 original ideas or even interesting takes on older ideas that can be expressed in just 40 or 50 words. Seriously. Matt can't even clear his throat in 50 words, right? So even if you can only read at a speed of 50 words per minute you can read it all in, say, 15 minutes. Whatcha gonna do with the other 1,426 minutes in your day?
So it was pretty certain from jump that not every tweet was going to be intellectual gold. An old friend, a retired Marine Bird Colonel, is fond of pointing out (with fear and trepidation in his voice) that by definition 50% of people are dumber than the average guy. Therefore it should come as no surprise that many of the tweets revolve around speculation about other people's mothers' virtue and degenerate from there.
You thought it couldn't get worse but then came Donald Trump whose great contribution to American culture was to abolish dignity and shame. I am, he proclaimed in deed if not in voice, the quintessential scumbag, a liar and a cheat, a serial bankrupt, a failure at countless businesses (how on earth does someone fail at running a casino?), a megalomaniac to my core! I'm proud to be a scumbag and you should be proud to be one too. I've ridden scumbaggery to wealth and fame. Why shouldn't you?
The man famously claimed, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" And he was right, metaphorically anyway. Ten months later he was caught on a hot mike bragging to a television personality that:
“Yeah, that’s her. With the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.
“Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
And he was right. Didn't appear to cost him a vote, even among the evangelical set. Note to the white collars in the audience: hey reverend, you get that that's your daughter's pussy that Trump was talking about, right? Or the daughters of your congregants? Yeah, well, hate the sin but love the sinner, right?
But I digress. Twitter became enough of a shitstorm that the semi-grownups then in charge had to step in and hose down the riffraff, DJT included.
But wait, there's more! Now comes Elon the Magnificent, legend in his own mind, to try to eff up Twitter because he doesn't like their policies and pump his own balloon along the way. Until the oh shit moment when it became apparent that the courts had enough and were going to make him put 40 billion where his mouth is and actually buy that festering sewer. Musk hasn't been having the greatest of years and anyway $40 billion is real money no matter how rich one might be. Thinking hard he realizes, "Hmm, I'm going to have to figure out how to turn this suppurating sore into a money maker."
Currently roughly 90% of Twitter's income is derived from advertising. Musk apparently figured out what the Twitter executives he'd just run off already knew: Proctor and Gamble doesn't want its soap ads adjacent to some spittle-flecked diatribe about the f*cking (your choice of detested group or individual goes here).
I must say that I am enjoying a bit of schadenfreude here. The master entrepreneur is scratching around in the dirt for chump change for little blue check marks and fees to watch videos. Mars to Elon: the little blue check marks lose value as soon as anybody with a credit card can have one. Also, YouTube is, um, free?
My Aspie bookend children ages 26 & 28 got off Twitter years ago calling it a social cesspool. They’ve also figured out how not to be a-holes despite their awkward social skills. What rubs them the wrong way about the Twidiot-in-Chief is that he’s about the worst poster child for high functioning autistics you could get. He’s a provocateur for all the wrong reasons and when my two naive young men can see that you’d like to think the rest of his following could too. Hope for the masses is a hard thing…you’re constantly disappointed.
I’m one of those who uses and mostly enjoys Twitter. I use it as a kind of RSS feed, following journalists I like/respect. It’s easy to curate -- simply unfollow folks sharing content you don’t enjoy. I’m interested in the changes Musk will bring. And I certainly appreciate your take on this, Matt. It’s real food for thought for me. The whole blue check mark thing is funny to me. Watching folks lose their minds over the takeover is amusing to me. Twitter’s not the real world, but it does give us a glimpse into people’s minds. Which is alternatively horrifying and amusing.
Same. Hope Musk doesn't scare off the accounts that I find worthwhile (these days, having to do with UKR--FoPo coverage in the US ranges from spartan to non-existent).
I agree. Twitter is like a city with nice neighborhoods and some pretty sketchy ones (if not downright dangerous in some parts after dark). Not too difficult to keep to the clean, well-lit parts.
I don't have a social media dog in this fight since I dont use social media any more since my uncle sent me a message threatening to kick my ass. I guess he's angry with me. I'm not a Musk fan or detractor, but I dont get the vitriol here Matt. Elon Musk has said and done a lot of things, some of it stupid and even worse. He (by his own choice granted) lives a life with an entire industry of people that watches and comments on his every move; what it means, is it smart or dumb, etc, etc. IMO Musk has lots to take credit for in making this a better world...lots and lots and lots of people are richer because of Elon Musk. This post is making it's way online through his Starlink service. He's made space travel much less expensive. And he's made flamethrowers smh. In all cancel culture sucks regardless of where it comes from. Maybe he has already succeeded in destroying Twitter, saving all of us from ourselves.
I agree with Tim. Elon Musk is a study in itself (himself?), but on balance I believe he has done more that's beneficial to "Murka" than detrimental. If Twitter nosedives, who cares? If somehow it goes on to thrive, again, who cares? There's just way too much energy being spent on this.
I do like Jeff Buckley's "Satisfied Mind," but being a geezer, I still like Porter Wagoner's better. Besides, Porter's outfits were so classy.
Nice! I was wondering how long you would be able to lay off from digging into the Doublemint™ pleasure of Musk’s Twitter Muck “clean-up” (you held out a few days longer than I expected).
When will Americans abandon the “Celebrity Savior” routine. My fear is never. Musk is a clever narcissist, not a World Problem Solver. His character is in-congruent with the well-meaning messiah he is portrayed as: illegitimate kids ; using his platform to slander (pedophile gate) ; attention grabbing philanthropist (Starlink giveaway, until he sought a way to get paid by government, again). You don’t need to be anti-billionaire to be anti-Musk, you just need to be able to realize that someone who is successful at a solution to one problem (reusable rockets) does not necessarily have the answer to ALL problems (being able to recognize a mirror gazing narcissist is also helpful).
The odds that Twitter becomes meaningfully worse (if that is possible) are much greater than the odds for improvement. The only way to fix it would be to make users pay, continue to moderate content, and trim back on some of the anonymity to tamp down the pile on effect of attention seeking bad actors’ horrible tweets. He has touted the “free speech” angle so he will not be doing that. A more civil Twitter is a smaller Twitter, that does not compute in the billionaire, advertising driven business model.
Thanks for stating the obvious, Matt. Hopefully enough people will listen. Unlike the cave rescue diver Musk slandered as a pedophile, I will not be holding my breath.
Once again, I must comment on the enjoyment I get from reading your writings. You have a talent for combining philosophy with humor and political insight.
I believe the saying goes along the lines of, "Your right to free speech doesn't include the right to yell fire in a crowded theater." Words definitely have consequences, and anyone who doubts this can yell some insults in a bar populated by the objects of the insults. Just let me know where to send the get-well cards.
Musk is a great engineer who thinks outside of the box, as defined by conventional thinking. He stimulated the electric car industry, made reusable rockets, and tried to create a new way to dig tunnels. So many brilliant people need to understand that just because you excel at some occupation - medicine, law, engineering - doesn't make you an expert in everything else. To me, he fails as a human being in many ways, but then Einstein wasn't a great parent or husband.
Musk is correct in that we must establish ourselves on other planets or moons to help ensure the continuation of the human race. I may have read too much science fiction, but it would only take one giant meteor to wipe us out. Astronomers call these meteors "Planet Killers."
You are correct in not joining the cesspool known as Twitter. It's hard to believe that anything good or of consequence can come from this trash heap. Your quote from Kierkegaard is spot on. This is why our democracy is in so much danger. We can differ, and we do, on the size of the government, tax policy, and foreign affairs. Still, those things are political - voter suppression and the refusal to accept election results are leading us down the path to a form of government I don't like and am afraid of.
Demonizing people due to their sexual orientation, skin color, or religion is not something to be tolerated in a democracy. These issues have been weaponized by certain people on the right to mobilize their base and lead the unthinking masses to support their political candidates. In some cases, they have even captured Christianity to support their fears.
Of course, it is always possible that climate change will destroy us before the right turns this country into a theocracy.
“Musk is correct in that we must establish ourselves on other planets or moons to help ensure the continuation of the human race.”
I used to think this as well but I’ve become much more skeptical. Our species is too fundamentally connected to the environment in which we evolved- from the gravity that forms our skeleton, to the magnetic field-filtered sunlight and the bajillions of microbial life that sustains us. We can survive short term in simulated “Earth like” environments but I now strongly suspect that we cannot survive long term away from Earth while continuing to exist as anything we understand to be human.
I’m still an ardent supporter of the space program but not as a means to survive outside of Earth. As a means of learning more how to endure and prosper on it.
Enjoyed reading this, Edward. Pretty spot on, except for one thing.
"Musk is correct that we must establish ourselves on other planets or moons to help ensure the continuation of the human race."
You know the old saying about 'just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should'? Well, considering some of the 'human' traits and proclivities (and inventions - Twitter comes to mind) you so accurately wrote about here, maybe we should just stay home and cut the rest of the universe some slack?
I agree. We don't have to move. Why not just make our beds and tidy up the place? Have you ever been to Montana and Wyoming? We could fit the entire population of the U.S. there and still have decide lot sizes.
Never been west of the Mississippi, but I know there's a heck of a lot of room out there. Shoot, there's a lot of space in MI's U.P. for that matter. Of course, we'd have to go to war with the black flies and mosquitoes to claim it.
Tidy up the place. Yes. Not like we couldn't do it if we seriously set our minds to it.
Ha! I figured that's what you meant. My wife's much 'better traveled' than I've been. She was out west a few times before we met...Arizona, New Mexico. Said it was beautiful and was really impressed by the open space. She was in Texas a few times years ago to take care of her older brother when he was ill, but never got out of 'the city'.
Had a friend years ago who went to Wyoming to hunt Mule Deer, fell in love with the country and returned with his father every year after that for many years. Always was a bit envious of that. Never really had the opportunity to travel out that way for a couple of reasons... closest I ever got to a 'Lewis & Clark' thing was reading a book my wife gave me a couple of decades ago, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West, by Stephen Ambrose. Guess there was some criticism of Ambrose concerning plagiarism in some other of his works, but never heard anything about this particular one. Thought it was a great read, if you like that sort of thing.
I'm a full-throated evangelist for Undaunted Courage. Great book, even if mostly plagiarized from Meriwether Lewis's diaries. (That was a joke.) Amazing how so many of them survived the round trip. (Super sad what happened to Lewis in the end.)
Oh the travesty to humanity that liberal Twiiter is no more. Who are we the non-libs going to complain about now that King Twit controls the new and improved 1stA Twitter?
Well, "bootybergers" is good. Though I won't pinch it. (No slight intended to Aspies, lumping them in with Musk.) And as for putting a lot of effort in, that's why they pay us the big (by which I mean moderate) bucks.
I read that a Saudi Prince is the 2nd largest shareholder of Twitter, how does Elon square 1st Amendment rights with a shareholder not typically associated with 1st Amendment freedoms?
You owe me something, but I can't figure out just what... As a Luddite IT specialist (YEP!) I have been using the phrase "putting the 'ass' in aspergers" for decades. Also, "I'm the aspergers, without the burgers." In addition to being on the spectrum I am fairly attached to my phrases - no surprise. Be gentle with them...
Question for Ask Matt: Can you explain your friend Tucker Carlson to me? I understand it’s showbiz. But how shouldn’t I view someone who exploits the attack of someone in their 80s by a mentally ill individual personal gain? I know you are or were close, and I’m having trouble not considering him fundamentally evil. Wishing to be open minded, I’m asking you how you view his efforts to end our democracy. Thanks.
Really enjoyed this one. Thanks for the link to the Weekly Standard piece. Almost 10 years old, and just as true as the day it was written. As a 35-year veteran of the journalism/communications biz I've had a front-row seat to the analog-to-digital transformation. I appreciate the technological advances -- my current laptop is considerably superior to the old Trash 80, and I enjoy reading books on a tablet -- but I'm also a social media luddite. I've had to use Twitter and its slightly less sinister cousin Facebook for professional purposes, but I avoid them in my personal life. I can't imagine there's too many people out there who care about my political opinions, or what I had for dinner.
Wait... What *did* you have for dinner? Hmm? What?
ha
Hey Matt, WTF? I'm a paying customer but I never know that you've released a new essay unless Drudge stumbles across it and aggregates it. Am I not holding my mouth right or what?
It could also be that you're not holding your mouth right. If the filter you set up doesn't work, try pushing you lower jaw forward and reaching your lower lip up over your upper lip. Keep your tongue pressed to the roof of your mouth. Then cross your eyes and hold it for 30 seconds. If that doesn't work, take a shot of your favorite whiskey and go to bed.
Yeah, well Ray, I'm having the whiskey either way.
In that case, I would recommend returning your mouth to the default setting before imbibing.
Are emails not showing up in your inbox? If you're gmail, many Substacks are getting lodged in Gmail's "Promotions Folder." So much so, that I've twice included instructionals in pieces to help people solve the problem. Of course, if they're gmail, they might not have seen the pieces!
Goddammit! Yup, that's it. I looked in my promotions folder, which I check less frequently than the Twitter account that I don't have, and there they are. I'm going to slaughter a goat and put its entrails on my keyboard at moonrise tonight. Then maybe Google will move you to the regular inbox.
You can actually disable your promotions folder if you wish to. Instructions included below (from an old piece.) If you don't, you should probably drag emails to your inbox or indicate that they're not spam, to train your Gmail not to kidnap them.
Disable your promotions folder outright. Here’s how you do it. First, find your promotions folder. You do this by going to “settings” (the little gear icon in the upper-right corner of your Gmail), then click “see all settings” (still on the right-hand side of the page), then click “Inbox” in the tabs that will appear around the middle of the page. Then you can uncheck your promotions box, save your changes, and you should never have to deal with this Google scourge again.
Thanks. I don't want to disable the promotions folder. I'm going to try to set up a filter that assures your content will get through.
I thought the entire Twitter concept was asinine back in the days when Twitter had a 140 character limit. How interesting a thought can one express in 140 characters? Now the limit is 280. Twice the characters means twice the great thoughts, right? So let's be generous and agree that there are 14 original ideas or even interesting takes on older ideas that can be expressed in just 40 or 50 words. Seriously. Matt can't even clear his throat in 50 words, right? So even if you can only read at a speed of 50 words per minute you can read it all in, say, 15 minutes. Whatcha gonna do with the other 1,426 minutes in your day?
So it was pretty certain from jump that not every tweet was going to be intellectual gold. An old friend, a retired Marine Bird Colonel, is fond of pointing out (with fear and trepidation in his voice) that by definition 50% of people are dumber than the average guy. Therefore it should come as no surprise that many of the tweets revolve around speculation about other people's mothers' virtue and degenerate from there.
You thought it couldn't get worse but then came Donald Trump whose great contribution to American culture was to abolish dignity and shame. I am, he proclaimed in deed if not in voice, the quintessential scumbag, a liar and a cheat, a serial bankrupt, a failure at countless businesses (how on earth does someone fail at running a casino?), a megalomaniac to my core! I'm proud to be a scumbag and you should be proud to be one too. I've ridden scumbaggery to wealth and fame. Why shouldn't you?
The man famously claimed, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" And he was right, metaphorically anyway. Ten months later he was caught on a hot mike bragging to a television personality that:
“Yeah, that’s her. With the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.
“Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
And he was right. Didn't appear to cost him a vote, even among the evangelical set. Note to the white collars in the audience: hey reverend, you get that that's your daughter's pussy that Trump was talking about, right? Or the daughters of your congregants? Yeah, well, hate the sin but love the sinner, right?
But I digress. Twitter became enough of a shitstorm that the semi-grownups then in charge had to step in and hose down the riffraff, DJT included.
But wait, there's more! Now comes Elon the Magnificent, legend in his own mind, to try to eff up Twitter because he doesn't like their policies and pump his own balloon along the way. Until the oh shit moment when it became apparent that the courts had enough and were going to make him put 40 billion where his mouth is and actually buy that festering sewer. Musk hasn't been having the greatest of years and anyway $40 billion is real money no matter how rich one might be. Thinking hard he realizes, "Hmm, I'm going to have to figure out how to turn this suppurating sore into a money maker."
Currently roughly 90% of Twitter's income is derived from advertising. Musk apparently figured out what the Twitter executives he'd just run off already knew: Proctor and Gamble doesn't want its soap ads adjacent to some spittle-flecked diatribe about the f*cking (your choice of detested group or individual goes here).
I must say that I am enjoying a bit of schadenfreude here. The master entrepreneur is scratching around in the dirt for chump change for little blue check marks and fees to watch videos. Mars to Elon: the little blue check marks lose value as soon as anybody with a credit card can have one. Also, YouTube is, um, free?
So ... what's the value proposition here?
As a connoisseur of the fine rant, I give this one four-and-a-half thumbs up--way up!!
Make it five...I'll throw in the other half-a-thumb. I hunt and peck on the keyboard, so I don't really need it at the moment.
Whoa, W. Nice! Digression and all. Pretty much had me at "Matt can't clear his throat in 50 words".
Thanks :-)
You're welcome. Always enjoy your posts.
My Aspie bookend children ages 26 & 28 got off Twitter years ago calling it a social cesspool. They’ve also figured out how not to be a-holes despite their awkward social skills. What rubs them the wrong way about the Twidiot-in-Chief is that he’s about the worst poster child for high functioning autistics you could get. He’s a provocateur for all the wrong reasons and when my two naive young men can see that you’d like to think the rest of his following could too. Hope for the masses is a hard thing…you’re constantly disappointed.
I’m one of those who uses and mostly enjoys Twitter. I use it as a kind of RSS feed, following journalists I like/respect. It’s easy to curate -- simply unfollow folks sharing content you don’t enjoy. I’m interested in the changes Musk will bring. And I certainly appreciate your take on this, Matt. It’s real food for thought for me. The whole blue check mark thing is funny to me. Watching folks lose their minds over the takeover is amusing to me. Twitter’s not the real world, but it does give us a glimpse into people’s minds. Which is alternatively horrifying and amusing.
Same. Hope Musk doesn't scare off the accounts that I find worthwhile (these days, having to do with UKR--FoPo coverage in the US ranges from spartan to non-existent).
I agree. Twitter is like a city with nice neighborhoods and some pretty sketchy ones (if not downright dangerous in some parts after dark). Not too difficult to keep to the clean, well-lit parts.
I don't have a social media dog in this fight since I dont use social media any more since my uncle sent me a message threatening to kick my ass. I guess he's angry with me. I'm not a Musk fan or detractor, but I dont get the vitriol here Matt. Elon Musk has said and done a lot of things, some of it stupid and even worse. He (by his own choice granted) lives a life with an entire industry of people that watches and comments on his every move; what it means, is it smart or dumb, etc, etc. IMO Musk has lots to take credit for in making this a better world...lots and lots and lots of people are richer because of Elon Musk. This post is making it's way online through his Starlink service. He's made space travel much less expensive. And he's made flamethrowers smh. In all cancel culture sucks regardless of where it comes from. Maybe he has already succeeded in destroying Twitter, saving all of us from ourselves.
I agree with Tim. Elon Musk is a study in itself (himself?), but on balance I believe he has done more that's beneficial to "Murka" than detrimental. If Twitter nosedives, who cares? If somehow it goes on to thrive, again, who cares? There's just way too much energy being spent on this.
I do like Jeff Buckley's "Satisfied Mind," but being a geezer, I still like Porter Wagoner's better. Besides, Porter's outfits were so classy.
Ditto on Buckley and Wagoner's too. Sorry Matt, still love ya enough to subscribe though! 😂
Maybe you two should get a room? Only kidding - I try to save insults for free subscribers.
Ha! Well played! Ahh, the good ole days of polite disagreement...
Nice! I was wondering how long you would be able to lay off from digging into the Doublemint™ pleasure of Musk’s Twitter Muck “clean-up” (you held out a few days longer than I expected).
When will Americans abandon the “Celebrity Savior” routine. My fear is never. Musk is a clever narcissist, not a World Problem Solver. His character is in-congruent with the well-meaning messiah he is portrayed as: illegitimate kids ; using his platform to slander (pedophile gate) ; attention grabbing philanthropist (Starlink giveaway, until he sought a way to get paid by government, again). You don’t need to be anti-billionaire to be anti-Musk, you just need to be able to realize that someone who is successful at a solution to one problem (reusable rockets) does not necessarily have the answer to ALL problems (being able to recognize a mirror gazing narcissist is also helpful).
The odds that Twitter becomes meaningfully worse (if that is possible) are much greater than the odds for improvement. The only way to fix it would be to make users pay, continue to moderate content, and trim back on some of the anonymity to tamp down the pile on effect of attention seeking bad actors’ horrible tweets. He has touted the “free speech” angle so he will not be doing that. A more civil Twitter is a smaller Twitter, that does not compute in the billionaire, advertising driven business model.
Thanks for stating the obvious, Matt. Hopefully enough people will listen. Unlike the cave rescue diver Musk slandered as a pedophile, I will not be holding my breath.
Once again, I must comment on the enjoyment I get from reading your writings. You have a talent for combining philosophy with humor and political insight.
I believe the saying goes along the lines of, "Your right to free speech doesn't include the right to yell fire in a crowded theater." Words definitely have consequences, and anyone who doubts this can yell some insults in a bar populated by the objects of the insults. Just let me know where to send the get-well cards.
Musk is a great engineer who thinks outside of the box, as defined by conventional thinking. He stimulated the electric car industry, made reusable rockets, and tried to create a new way to dig tunnels. So many brilliant people need to understand that just because you excel at some occupation - medicine, law, engineering - doesn't make you an expert in everything else. To me, he fails as a human being in many ways, but then Einstein wasn't a great parent or husband.
Musk is correct in that we must establish ourselves on other planets or moons to help ensure the continuation of the human race. I may have read too much science fiction, but it would only take one giant meteor to wipe us out. Astronomers call these meteors "Planet Killers."
You are correct in not joining the cesspool known as Twitter. It's hard to believe that anything good or of consequence can come from this trash heap. Your quote from Kierkegaard is spot on. This is why our democracy is in so much danger. We can differ, and we do, on the size of the government, tax policy, and foreign affairs. Still, those things are political - voter suppression and the refusal to accept election results are leading us down the path to a form of government I don't like and am afraid of.
Demonizing people due to their sexual orientation, skin color, or religion is not something to be tolerated in a democracy. These issues have been weaponized by certain people on the right to mobilize their base and lead the unthinking masses to support their political candidates. In some cases, they have even captured Christianity to support their fears.
Of course, it is always possible that climate change will destroy us before the right turns this country into a theocracy.
“Musk is correct in that we must establish ourselves on other planets or moons to help ensure the continuation of the human race.”
I used to think this as well but I’ve become much more skeptical. Our species is too fundamentally connected to the environment in which we evolved- from the gravity that forms our skeleton, to the magnetic field-filtered sunlight and the bajillions of microbial life that sustains us. We can survive short term in simulated “Earth like” environments but I now strongly suspect that we cannot survive long term away from Earth while continuing to exist as anything we understand to be human.
I’m still an ardent supporter of the space program but not as a means to survive outside of Earth. As a means of learning more how to endure and prosper on it.
Enjoyed reading this, Edward. Pretty spot on, except for one thing.
"Musk is correct that we must establish ourselves on other planets or moons to help ensure the continuation of the human race."
You know the old saying about 'just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should'? Well, considering some of the 'human' traits and proclivities (and inventions - Twitter comes to mind) you so accurately wrote about here, maybe we should just stay home and cut the rest of the universe some slack?
I agree. We don't have to move. Why not just make our beds and tidy up the place? Have you ever been to Montana and Wyoming? We could fit the entire population of the U.S. there and still have decide lot sizes.
Never been west of the Mississippi, but I know there's a heck of a lot of room out there. Shoot, there's a lot of space in MI's U.P. for that matter. Of course, we'd have to go to war with the black flies and mosquitoes to claim it.
Tidy up the place. Yes. Not like we couldn't do it if we seriously set our minds to it.
Goddammit, meant “decent lot sizes.”
There’s a whole half a country waiting for you to explore. You need to do your own Lewis & Clark expedition. You’ll be amazed by the country we have.
Ha! I figured that's what you meant. My wife's much 'better traveled' than I've been. She was out west a few times before we met...Arizona, New Mexico. Said it was beautiful and was really impressed by the open space. She was in Texas a few times years ago to take care of her older brother when he was ill, but never got out of 'the city'.
Had a friend years ago who went to Wyoming to hunt Mule Deer, fell in love with the country and returned with his father every year after that for many years. Always was a bit envious of that. Never really had the opportunity to travel out that way for a couple of reasons... closest I ever got to a 'Lewis & Clark' thing was reading a book my wife gave me a couple of decades ago, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West, by Stephen Ambrose. Guess there was some criticism of Ambrose concerning plagiarism in some other of his works, but never heard anything about this particular one. Thought it was a great read, if you like that sort of thing.
Seconded on UC...uh...or thirded.
I'm a full-throated evangelist for Undaunted Courage. Great book, even if mostly plagiarized from Meriwether Lewis's diaries. (That was a joke.) Amazing how so many of them survived the round trip. (Super sad what happened to Lewis in the end.)
Oh the travesty to humanity that liberal Twiiter is no more. Who are we the non-libs going to complain about now that King Twit controls the new and improved 1stA Twitter?
Damn! There I go again getting pissed off about a title without reading the essay. To think, I had this rebuttal formed too...
Twitter is dumb and you put a lot of effort in your article to basically come to the same conclusion. My kid, who is an Aspie, calls it bootybergers.
Well, "bootybergers" is good. Though I won't pinch it. (No slight intended to Aspies, lumping them in with Musk.) And as for putting a lot of effort in, that's why they pay us the big (by which I mean moderate) bucks.
This was great. Thanks for continually giving me hope that there’s conservatives out there who don’t embarrass or revolt me.
I read that a Saudi Prince is the 2nd largest shareholder of Twitter, how does Elon square 1st Amendment rights with a shareholder not typically associated with 1st Amendment freedoms?
Well, he would have bought the guy out. So he gone.
Give me liberty or give me a blue check mark.