onfocus

Alito, and the kinds of people who can afford to pay Alito, are bristling merely because justices are being investigated like any other public officials with power.

A+ headline

Musk and the people backing all this are more interested in reshaping the global order than in earning fake “fiat currency.” Their real goal is to usher in “hard currency” and re-base global currencies around scarcity and physical assets. So no it really doesn’t matter much what happens to Twitter’s ad model in the meantime. It will probably do alright, and they can probably find other ways to make money, like adding in payments and weird Dogecoin schemes.

Yeah, this article by Dave Troy from last October was not only prescient but has timely reasons why Twitter and Bluesky might not be the competitors you think they are.

“National Geographic will continue to publish a monthly magazine that is dedicated to exceptional multi-platform storytelling with cultural impact. Staffing changes will not change our ability to do this work, but rather give us more flexibility to tell different stories and meet our audiences where they are across our many platforms. Any insinuation that the recent changes will negatively impact the magazine, or the quality of our storytelling, is simply incorrect,” a National Geographic spokesperson told PetaPixel.

The staff reductions will continue until flexibility (the reason people still buy paper magazines) improves.

There is no historical basis rooted in the founding era for it either: The Constitution by its own text explicitly rejects the existence of such a norm, as do several of the Federalist Papers, and the debate at the Constitutional Convention itself. The United States has a storied and continuous history prosecuting federal officials of both parties and across all branches starting in the founding era and which is unbroken through to 2022.

This article by Matt Tait thoroughly cuts through the BS about former Presidents being immune to prosecution for crimes. The media bosses want Trump back so badly that they’re spinning yarns about norms.

YouTube provided no evidence for its assertion that hosting and promoting 2020 election lies would not “meaningfully” increase the risk of harm. It seems curious, given the events of January 6, the ongoing threats to election workers, and the fact that about half of Americans didn’t think votes in the the midterm elections would be counted properly.

aka: this profitable, engaged audience segment is only profitable if you can feed them engaging monetized content. Eroding democracy and encouraging political violence are externalities.

Most of the subreddits have pledged to go private — preventing outside access — for 48 hours, though some, like the 26 million-member community r/videos, have said they’ll remain private indefinitely.

Volunteer labor isn’t an infinite resource. Reddit needs to maintain that resource with an imminent IPO, but it sounds like the current CEO doesn’t think it’s necessary.

See also: this summary by Cyber Yuki (click Show More).

Twitter has long been described, even by its most ardent users, as a hellsite. But under Elon Musk, Twitter has evolved into a platform that is indistinguishable from the wastelands of alternative social-media sites such as Truth Social and Parler. It is now a right-wing social network.

I think it has been since 2016 when they chose not to enforce their terms of service for Trump. The billionaire buyout just brought it to this ultimate state faster.

This is not, as CNN’s Chris Licht portrays it, a news company reporting on the existence of support for Trump; it’s a news company orchestrating a broadcast to accentuate support for Trump and silence those who disliked his responses. It is CNN making news instead of reporting it.

CNN, propagandist. Media bosses really want to bring fascism to America.

The nation is not “barreling toward default,” nor is it “careening,” or even “drifting” there. It is being pushed there by Republicans.

The media has had since at least 2016 to figure out how to cover irrational politics and they haven’t. They still imagine a world where Republicans want a functioning government—they don’t. Default is a win for them and stories should reflect that.

This unbroken stream of Musk blarney and BS should be enough to deter the press from automatically reporting the tycoon’s publicity hounding. But as with Donald Trump, the press seems unable to resist splashing coverage on Musk’s unnewsworthy high jinks, even though the stories have now become as common as dog-bites-man.

They're easy stories to write that people love to read. I'm not sure how people can break out of that feedback loop. I know I have no trouble hearing about the antics and I'm not even on the SS Twitanic anymore.

During a Q&A session held on the Warner Bros. Burbank studio immediately after the conference, Max and HBO Content Head Casey Bloys declined to answer a question from a reporter regarding Rowling’s controversial reputation and how it might affect the show.

“No, I don’t think this is the forum,” Bloys said during the Q&A. “That’s a very online conversation, very nuanced and complicated and not something we’re going to get into.”

It is not nuanced. They're doing business with someone who thinks trans people shouldn't exist. Time to cancel my HBO Max subscription.

Update (4/21): If you're saying to yourself, 'what's wrong with JKR?', ContraPoints posted an amazing summary with historical context: The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling.