Sunday, October 30, 2022

Who will leave Twitter?

I wrote articles — "Quit Twitter?" and "We May Not Have Twitter Tomorrow" — on Medium.

Umair Haque, writing on Medium, October 29, 2022:

"Racial slurs are hate, and “free speech” is about government interference, not your so-called right to hate someone. ...much of the rest of the world bans hate speech precisely because it has consequences. It manifests in violence. Hate is the intent to hurt someone, to do harm them, and in that sense, it is a form of violence itself, because it begs and calls for the real thing."

Elon Musk tweet, November 9, 2022:

Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months.

This has been happening:

An account comments: Well, that didn’t take long at all lol (This is not Lebron James). In reply to a fake LeBron James account: I am officially requesting a trade. Thank you #LakersNation for all the support through the years. 100 Onto bigger and better things!
An account comments: Big day for the politicians of my youth. In reply to a fake George Bush account: I miss killing Iraqis. To which replied a fake Tony Blair account: Same tbh.
An account comments: Two great new verified accounts! In reply to: a fake Ben Shapiro account: Matt Walsh won't stop calling me and talking about genitalia. And a fake President Biden account: im over here stroking my dick i got lotion on my dick rn
Zack Budryk with a blue-check says: Hi, I'm Twitter's head of advertising. I've been talking to a lot of big brands who are concerned about the potential for verified accounts to pose as them and tweet 'Inflate me daddy' and I'm going to say, once again, we are WORKING ON IT
An account comments: I take it all back. this new verification scheme is flawless. They're responding to a tweet from a fake Elon Musk account: Starting today we'll begin offering Twitter Gold: a free subscription that gets you yearly family vacations and nightly dinners with me. If your name is Grimes. Please come back. I love you.

How'd it turn out? In April 2024 news, Musk will change the policy so "he'll be giving away blue checks to prominent users, but still offering the rest of us plebeians the option to buy one."

"'I think it’s an admission that (Musk) still doesn’t really understand what the value of the blue check has always been … the value in it was that when you saw a blue check on a person’s account, you knew that the person was who they were claiming to be,' said Jason Goldman, Twitter’s former head of product, who left the company in 2010. 'The value that accrued from that was for Twitter as a whole, not for the person who had a blue check mark.'"
— Elon Musk’s X is back to giving out free blue checks. It’s no surprise they were a tough sell, Clare Duffy, CNN, April 4, 2024

man on a typewriter

Oh, hey

Another fun edition of how it started vs how it’s going. youtu.be/LuZOLCvCbWo?...

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— Blue Sedition Podcast (@blue-sedition.com) October 8, 2024 at 10:23 AM

In the last 48 hours, Musk's reactions to the Epstein release show exactly why he bought Twitter. He's used the platform to call coverage of his emails with Epstein as "lies," elevated his fans who have defended him, and gotten positive reinforcement from his AI chatbot.

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— Ryan Mac 🙃 (@rmac.bsky.social) February 1, 2026 at 8:31 PM
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Saturday, October 29, 2022

Where you can learn more about "Nightmare on Elm Street"

The Movies That Made Us is on Netflix. Season 3 includes "Nightmare on Elm Street".

I wrote an essay about this film in It Came From the Closet (October 2022).

IT CAME FROM THE CLOSET book cover
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Wednesday, October 26, 2022

In ChristoQfascist conspiracy theory, Satan makes people transgender

"QAnon adherents believe that Donald Trump is trying to save the world from a cabal of satanic pedophiles. The conspiracy theory’s narrative includes centuries-old antisemitic tropes, like the belief that the cabal is harvesting blood from abused children, and it names specific people, including Democratic politicians and Hollywood celebrities, as participants in a global plot. Experts call these extreme, baseless claims 'an incitement to violence'.
* * *
'QAnon is popular on the sovereign citizen child custody groups, in part because its believers claim that the government and child protective agencies are abusing the children they take from their parents’ custody,' wrote the Daily Beast reporter Will Sommer, who has published in-depth investigations of several kidnapping cases with links to QAnon."
— "QAnon: a timeline of violence linked to the conspiracy theory," Lois Beckett, The Guardian, October 16, 2020.

doorbell

"Ex-Gay Christian Author Calls Trans People Satanic Enemies of God." Esther Spurrill-Jones. April 7, 2023.

READ more on Julie Green: "Doug Mastriano’s campaign “prophet”: Political executions are coming, Biden “is no longer alive,” Pelosi drinks “children’s blood”" Eric Hananoki, Media Matters, Aug 17, 2022.

Day 2 of the conference:

Mastriano was scheduled to speak but was too busy to come due to his political campaign schedule.

The Federalist published an article: "‘Hail Satan! Hail Thyself’: What The Gender Cult And Satanism Have In Common" (Georgi Boorman. August 7, 2023). The final lines are that "it should come as no surprise that rebellion against God’s design for humanity is satanically inspired. That is, after all, his mission." On the way there, readers wind through ridiculous academic-sounding prose like: "While Baphomet has a complicated history of iterations and interpretation, it’s not unreasonable to imagine that gender-confused young people might welcome this binary-breaking symbol of 'balance and harmony' and see a satanic sect as a spiritual home for them." This is not serious.

Headline for ‘Hail Satan! Hail Thyself’: What The Gender Cult And Satanism Have In Common. The cover art is a femme-looking person with a big Afro.
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Online course on fascism and racism

There's a free online course on "Against Oppression: Black Antifascism(s)"

lightning

Also

Speaking as someone who lives in Texas, a lot of Republicans are adamantly convinced that a luxurious cradle to the grave welfare system exclusively for illegal immigrants exists and it’s making everything expensive for regular citizens. bsky.app/profile/mtsw...

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— Adam Serwer (@adamserwer.bsky.social) September 18, 2024 at 11:10 PM

Most of these people do not consider themselves racist and a good number I have met share the ethnic backgrounds of the people being demonized. It is extremely difficult to talk them out of it bsky.app/profile/adam...

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— Adam Serwer (@adamserwer.bsky.social) September 18, 2024 at 11:12 PM

This is how the NYT literally whitewashes Trump's racist comment: "We’re just destroying the fabric of life in our country,” Mr. Trump said, referring to Democrats’ immigration policies. “And we’re not going to take it any longer. And you got to get rid of these people. Give me a shot.”

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— TVMoJoe (@tvmojoe.bsky.social) September 18, 2024 at 10:51 PM
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Is 2°C warming inevitable?

The Washington Post editorial, Oct. 29, 2022:

"At the 2015 Paris climate conference, nations agreed to limit global warming to under 2 degrees Celsius relative to preindustrial levels — and preferably to under 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). According to a new report the United Nations released on Thursday, the more ambitious 1.5 degree target is now all but out of reach.

This year’s U.N. Environment Program’s Emissions Gap Report found that there was “no credible pathway” to remain under 1.5 degrees Celsius — and that countries are falling “pitifully short” in making good on their national commitments. Under the current policy framework, global temperatures are projected to rise 2.8 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. If nations scale up according to their agreed-upon climate pledges, the projected temperature increase will be between 2.4 and 2.6 degrees Celsius — which would threaten billions of people.

This prognosis comes on the heels of another U.N. analysis released Wednesday, which considered countries’ voluntary emissions commitments. It found modest increases in emissions reductions and adaptation goals over the past year, but not enough to put the world on a better trajectory. Though countries agreed to establish more rigorous emissions plans after last year’s climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, just 24 nations have actually done so. The additional Glasgow pledges would reduce emissions by less than 1 percent by 2030.

And their conclusion? "...the U.N. system represents the world’s best hope at averting catastrophe." So basically, we are in trouble.

"His [Robinson's] next novel is likely to be set in the Arctic, where scientists are debating controversial ideas for manipulating the climate in a bid to stop the region's self-fulfilling feedback loop of ice melt and warming waters. The techniques, which could be implemented in polar regions and elsewhere, range from injecting aerosols into the atmosphere to underwater curtains that shield glaciers from warm water, or seeding massive algae blooms that can sink carbon to the seafloor.

Some of these suggestions have alarmed certain groups of scientists who see hubris and the potential for distraction where Robinson sees noble desperation. 'I see immense resistance to geoengineering that is ignorant and reflexive and comes out of a moral calculus of, like, 1990,” he says. The moral hazard associated with continuing to burn fossil fuels because of the existence of an escape clause is 'not relevant', he adds. 'We know we have to decarbonise. We know we’re not. It’s desperate.'"

—Writer Kim Stanley Robinson: ‘If the world fails, business fails’ The cult sci-fi author on Mars, Musk — and how speculative fiction can offer real-life solutions to the climate crisis. Kenza Bryan. November 17, 2023.

"The United Nations reported Wednesday that global warming will rise to between 2.1 and 2.9 degrees Celsius based on the world’s current climate pledges – way beyond the 1.5 degrees nations are trying to stay below."
"World still way off track on goal to keep global warming below dangerous threshold, UN says." By Ella Nilsen and Radina Gigova, CNN, October 26, 2022

Another perspective from Karl Burkart (Oct. 25, 2022):

"...the gnawing sense that solving climate change is just too difficult, and that exceeding the 1.5°C limit in global temperature rise at this point is a foregone conclusion.

Now let’s ask ourselves, who would benefit from this narrative? Why of course, the fossil fuel industry and the institutional investors...

* * *

Back in the mid-2000s, the industry devised a five-phased strategy to delay regulatory action on climate change. ...the final phase is to promote the idea that it’s just too expensive and/or too late to do anything about it.

This final phase has always worried me the most. There’s nothing like a sense of doom and perpetual anxiety to make people check out..."

The ocean is really good at absorbing carbon.

Update: The 1.5-degree climate goal may be ‘deader than a doornail,’ and scientists are bitterly divided over it Laura Paddison, CNN, January 18, 2024

1.5 is possible if you're "clutching at straws," says the Washington Post editorial board (January 18, 2024). But look at reality:

"Last week, the European climate monitor Copernicus reported that the globe’s average temperature hit 14.98 degrees Celsius last year, 1.48 degrees above that of the second half of the 19th century. Two U.S. agencies, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, followed suit, putting warming since then at 1.4 and 1.35 degrees, respectively. The synthesis by the World Meteorological Organization landed on 1.45 degrees above the preindustrial average, with an uncertainty band of plus or minus 0.12 degrees."

So what does that mean? It means we have to "put more tools on the table."

"If the fracturing of our once stable climate doesn’t terrify you, then you don’t fully understand it. The reality is that, as far as we know, and in the natural course of events, our world has never — in its entire history — heated up as rapidly as it is doing now. Nor have greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere ever seen such a precipitous hike.
* * *
The truth is that people can take being scared if they know there is still hope and that they can do something to make things better, or at least stop things getting worse."

Opinion: I’m a climate scientist. Am I obliged to scare you? Opinion by Bill McGuire, CNN, March 7, 2024

There's an increasingly good chance the world will stop runaway global warming. But I see no realistic route to 1.5C. We need to plan for 2.4C, understanding what that looks like and how we mitigate the impact on our lives. #climate

— Iain Roberts (@slowbikeiain.bsky.social) October 19, 2024 at 3:22 AM
trees

"Two new studies conclude it’s a signal the planet is likely on track to breach the Paris climate agreement goal of restricting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The studies, both published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, are the latest evidence the world is failing to tackle the climate crisis, and they come just weeks after an even starker warning from renowned climate scientist James Hansen, who said the planet was on course to shoot past 2 degrees of global warming over the next two decades." (CNN, February 10, 2025)

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Saturday, October 22, 2022

To-read: Books I've seen mentioned on Twitter

An eclectic list.

tree
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Recent tweets about climate (Oct 2022)

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