2024-08-12
etc
Horseshit
LimpLicks
celebrity gossip
Musk
-
X's likelihood of prevailing in boycott suit is higher than I thought
, I thought it was just another case of Elon Musk abusing the court system. His M.O. is a SLAPP-style action to try to bully those he disagrees with, and by filing a federal lawsuit, he increases his chances of success, because there are no anti-SLAAP protections at the federal level. I wasn't seeing much information about X's actual legal arguments in the news coverage I saw about the lawsuit, so I decided to read the federal lawsuit myself. I hopped onto PACER and downloaded a copy, and I now understand (though don't necessarily agree with) the legal rationale behind X's suit.
X concedes that there's nothing wrong with each advertiser independently deciding that they want to stop advertising on X, and there's also nothing wrong with relying on a common source of information to make the determination about whether to boycott X. But what turns this into illegal collusion, the X lawsuit argues, is when businesses make those decisions contingent on cooperation with competitors. So, if one business says that it will engage in an advertising boycott of X, but only while its competitors engage in a similar boycott, then that constitutes illegal collusion, because it relies on their collective power to unduly influence X in ways that would have been impossible through "uncoordinated rivalry."
-
Elon Musk and the danger to democracy
It is hard to know where to start with Elon Musk. Long before he bought Twitter and renamed it X, he was spreading incendiary disinformation. This included a bizarre witch hunt against the British diver who helped rescue 12 boys and their soccer coach from a Thai cave. With no basis, Musk accused the man of being a “pedo guy” after he cast doubt on the submersible rescue vessel Musk had delivered. Musk has since deleted that tweet and others like it. But he keeps adding new posts to his burgeoning library of almost 49,000. In the last few days, he has commented repeatedly on the racist riots in Britain. He has forecast a coming UK civil war, condemned Britain’s prime minister Sir Keir Starmer for alleged bias towards non-whites and implied that Britain’s immigration policies were responsible for the murder of three girls last week in Southport. Posts by figures who were banned under Twitter’s previous ownership, such as Tommy Robinson, a fringe and four-times-jailed extreme right British activist, have gone viral.
-
More advertisers to flee X after recent Elon Musk lawsuit and riot comments
-
Elon Musk and X Are the Top Misinformation Spreaders Online
At the center of it all is Musk, whose turn to hard-right ideology has led him to spout and amplify untruths with abandon, algorithmically forcing them onto an audience of millions. But he wasn’t always so deep into the reservoir of easily debunked rumors and bogus claims. In this timeline, we trace how he turned X into a misinformation machine.
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
Economicon / Business / Finance
-
Stellantis to lay off up to 2,450 factory workers as classic RAM production ends
Chrysler-parent Stellantis is laying off as many as 2,450 factory workers from its Warren Truck assembly plant outside of Detroit as the automaker ends production of the Ram 1500 Classic truck. The layoffs will be effective as early as Oct. 8, the company said, as the plant moves from a two-shift to a one-shift operating pattern in general assembly. Production of the Jeep Wagoneer at the same facility will remain on two shifts, the company said.
-
India cannot fix its problems if it pretends they do not exist
-
Summers Calls for SEC, Exchanges to Probe Monday's VIX Surge
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
Harris / TBA 2024 / Democrats Demonstrate "Our Democracy"
Trump / Right / Jan6
-
Decay, Decrepitude, Deceit in Journalism
Russiagate continues to survive like a science fiction monster resilient to bullets. The latest effort at rehabilitating it is an interview by Adam Rawnsley in the current issue of Rolling Stone magazine of one Michael van Landingham, an intelligence analyst who is proud of having written the first draft of the cornerstone “analysis” of Russiagate, the so-called Intelligence Community Assessment.
-
Insecure Trump Lies, Claims Harris Crowd Was Manipulated With AI
Former president Donald Trump is trying to downplay his presidential opponents’ rally crowd sizes, falsely claiming that “nobody was there” at a Detroit event hosted by Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz. Trump, who is obsessed with the size of his own crowds and frequently exaggerates attendance numbers, is “unhappy” with the number of people who have been attending Harris and Walz’s campaign events, as Rolling Stone reported last week.
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
-
A CIA Agent Went Undercover With Islamic Radicals. It Cost His Life
Recruited into an ultra-secret agency program in the aftermath of 9/11, he lived undercover for roughly half a decade in the Middle East as an Islamist radical, burrowing into extremist groups, a U.S. intelligence officer embedded deeply behind the War on Terror’s front lines. He was the CIA’s equivalent of a jihadist Donnie Brasco. During his years undercover as an extremist, this man even infiltrated Al Qaeda itself, according to four former CIA officials. Intelligence he gathered was repeatedly briefed to the CIA director and the White House. Hayden, according to former officials, even pushed for an in-person meeting between the deep-cover operative and President Bush himself — the holy grail of honors for most CIA employees. And at one point, he would be snuck into the White House to meet the president. (Hayden declined to comment for this story. Bush did not return a request for comment.)
World
-
What makes somebody riot? Why do people throw bricks at police while being filmed by dozens of phones, knowing it could get them a jail sentence that ruins their lives? Their decision may be political. The current British riots — the country’s worst disorder since 2011 — clearly express anti-immigrant feeling. They were prompted by the fatal stabbing of three girls in Southport and the false rumour that the killer was a Muslim asylum seeker.
-
Far-right violence focused on areas that suffer from high levels of deprivation
A number of communities rocked by the most serious riots since 2011 suffer from high levels of deprivation and soaring levels of child poverty. More than 700 people have been arrested, dozens of police officers have been injured and communities are paralysed by fear, with the violent disorder concentrated in specific parts of the country. Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer vowed rioters “will regret” taking part in the violent scenes which have scarred the country over the last week, as more than 6,000 police are on standby for another potential weekend of unrest. The chaotic scenes across the country were initially sparked by the killing of three children on 29 July in Southport and the social media misinformation about the identity of the knife attacker, who was falsely identified as an asylum seeker. Thousands of far-right thugs infiltrated communities to attack asylum hotels, mosques, the police and Muslim neighbourhoods and businesses.
-
UK police commissioner threatens to extradite jail US citizens over online posts